International Policy Analysis 1 Arms control and disarmament – many still associate these concepts with a bygone age, with summit meet­ings of the superpowers in Vienna and Reykjavik and the Helsinki Final Act within the framework of the CSCE. But they are still very topical. Disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation lie at the core of Social Democratic foreign and security policy. In the context of détente and Ostpolitik they were instru­ments of crisis management and a platform for insti­tutionalized dialogue between different political sys­tems and worldviews. After a decade of disarmament that began in 1987 with the INF Treaty and ended in 1997 with the con­vention on chemical weapons, military expenditure has increased significantly since 1998. According to the SIPRI Yearbook 2007, in 2006 approximately € 900 billion were expended on military purposes worldwide, 3.5 percent more than in 2005. In the last ten years global defense spending has increased by 37 percent. The USA is at the forefront by a consider­able margin: with € 396.2 billion it accounts for 42 percent of global defense spending. In the inter­national arms trade, too, there has been a 50-percent rise since 2002. Almost 20 years after the end of the Cold War there are still around 32,000 nuclear warheads world­wide. Humanity’s capacity to destroy the world several times over has therefore barely diminished since 1989. Instead, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruc­tion has exploded. Furthermore, among the planning staff of the Great Powers the atom bomb is enjoying a strategic renaissance. Virtually unnoticed by the general public the leading military powers have been embroiled in a new nuclear arms race that must be halted urgently. Disarmament and arms control are today indisput­ably in a profound – perhaps even existential – crisis. Has arms control therefore exhausted its influence over international relations? Absolutely not! Having said that, it must be recognized that fundamental achievements in the area of arms control – from which Europe has benefited considerably – are under threat. Neither the amended Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe(CFE) nor the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty(CTBT) are in force. In 2005 the review conference on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty broke down. The increasing spread of missile systems is also a major cause for concern. The diagnosis is therefore clear: the whole system of international relations and treaties intended to prevent arms proliferation is in imminent danger of collapse. It dates from a time of“clearness,” namely the Cold War. The nuclear“balance of terror” was certainly not as stable and assured as it may appear in retrospect. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in recent decades there have been four nuclear false alarms: in 1979, 1980, 1983, and 1995 either the USA or Russia had their fingers dangerously near the trigger. The East–West conflict was, more­over, a chronologically delimited exceptional situation. Two rare factors came together: a military balance of power and rational political leaders. Neither can be counted on any longer. Today, regional powers have come on the scene that pursue their power interests outside any kind of East–West pattern. Although it is true that the threat of a“nuclear world war” has diminished, at the same time in place of this clearly discernible danger hitherto unknown threats to inter­national security have arisen: weak and unstable states with weapons of mass destruction, or non-state actors that are increasingly gaining in importance. With the passing of the Cold War by and large aware­ness of the need to maintain what has been achieved in terms of arms control, as well as further efforts in the area of disarmament and arms control, appears to have been lost. In this connection it is the existing multilateral treaties that form the basis for a coopera­tive security architecture. The purpose of formulating the following ten theses – basically, a list of measures with concrete proposals – is to establish why disarmament and arms control remain indispensable for a peaceful world order. If they are implemented consistently they can strengthen cooperation and peaceful coexistence. This is of course conditional upon the political will, which, however, has been lacking in recent years. 1. Overcome the crisis of the nuclear non-proliferation regime At the beginning of the twenty-first century nu­clear weapons are no longer perceived only as the ultimate deterrent, but increasingly as a means of conducting war. With the ongoing modernization of their arsenals not only the USA, but also Russia, China, France, and the UK are calling into question the disarmament commitment of Article VI of the Non-proliferation Treaty(NPT) and deviating from the 13-point action plan adopted by consensus at the Review Conference in 2000. Despite declara­tions to the contrary on the UN Security Council fewer and fewer nuclear states are prepared to provide assurances of non-deployment and fur­thermore reserve the right to deploy nuclear weap­ons preventatively. Instead of the aim of a“nuclear weapon free world” laid down in the nuclear non­proliferation treaty a“renuclearization” of world politics threatens. We therefore urgently need to give nuclear disarmament new momentum. The Rolf Mützenich, Member of the German Bundestag and Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.