Noncompliance and punishment: lessons from multilateral chemical, biological, and nuclear arms control

Abstract

Incidents of noncompliance with existing multilateral arms-control treaties and subsequent enforcement actions can help to inform the design of future treaties. This article uses examples of noncompliance with the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, and 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to identify factors that have determined the nature of compliance-enforcement actions. The punitivist model of treaty design and enforcement is introduced and is used alongside the established transformationalist and managerialist models to analyze incidents of noncompliance and identify factors shaping compliance-enforcement actions. Two such factors are found to play important roles: the scale of acts of noncompliance and the identity of the perpetrator. The scale of the act of noncompliance dictates whether the compliance-enforcement actions specified in the treaty text are followed. Responses to large-scale acts do follow the treaty-specified actions, while the small-scale acts analyzed in this article all elicit a managerialist response of consultation and cooperation, regardless of actions stipulated in the treaty text. In all cases, the identity of the perpetrator is crucial: the permanent members of the UN Security Council and their allies are fundamentally impervious to punitive measures.