Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY

OCCASIONAL

PAPER

October 2021

Volume 1, Number 10

Securing Compliance with

Arms Control Agreements

Susan Koch

Securing Compliance with Arms

Control Agreements

Susan Koch

National Institute Press®

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary ............................................................................ v

Introduction ......................................................................................... 1

Case Study One: Allied Powers Versus the German Violations

of the Versailles Treaty Disarmament Clauses, 1919-1935 ............ 3

Case Study Two: United States Versus the Soviet Krasnoyarsk

Radar Violation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty,

1983-1989 ............................................................................................ 12

Case Study Three: United States and Others Versus the Iraqi

Real and Apparent Violations of the UNSCRs on WMD

Disarmament, 1991-2003 .................................................................. 19

Case Study Four: United States and Others Versus the North

Korean Violations of Its Nuclear Arms Control Obligations,

1992-2020 ............................................................................................ 24

Lessons Learned and Strategies for the Future............................. 36

Conclusion ......................................................................................... 60

About the Author.............................................................................. 63

This Occasional Paper is an updated, shorter version of Susan Koch, Kurt

Guthe and Thomas Scheber, Securing Compliance with Arms Control

Agreements (Fairfax, VA: National Institute for Public Policy Press,

2018).

Executive Summary

Violations of arms control agreements are a problem of the

past, the present, and almost certainly the future. This

report analyzes four cases over the past 100 years through

the lens of twelve core questions, in an effort to discern

patterns of noncompliance and potential strategies to secure

compliance in the future. The four cases are:

1. Allied Powers Versus the German Violations of the

Versailles Treaty Disarmament Clauses, 1919-1935.

2. United States Versus the Soviet Krasnoyarsk Radar

Violation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty,

1983-1993.

3. United States and Others Versus the Iraqi Real and

Apparent Violations of the United Nations Security

Council Resolutions (UNSCRs) on Weapons of Mass

Destruction (WMD) Disarmament, 1991-2003.

4. United States and Others Versus North Korean

Violations of its Nuclear Arms Control Obligations,

1992-2020.

Of the four cases, only the Soviet Krasnoyarsk radar

violation was peacefully resolved by agreement between

the parties. The Allies ultimately acceded to Germany’s

noncompliance with the disarmament obligations of the

Versailles Treaty; the eventual outbreak of war in 1939 was

unrelated to Germany’s arms control noncompliance. Iraq’s

violations of its arms control obligations under several

UNSCRs led directly to war, although ironically the cause

was primarily Iraq’s failure to disclose that it no longer held

the prohibited WMD and longer-range missiles. Finally,

every effort over the past three decades has failed to secure

North Korean compliance with its nuclear arms control

obligations.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements vi

While each of the four cases is unique, they demonstrate

patterns of noncompliance; our understanding of, and

response to, those patterns may help to improve our ability

to secure better compliance in the future.

First, authoritarian regimes are more prone to

noncompliance than democratic ones. They have little if

any respect for the rule of law and are accountable to no one

but themselves. Next, governments are more likely to

violate agreements that they are forced to accept. Countries

that are thoroughly defeated in war may be more prepared

to accept victors’ demands than others. Contrast

Germany’s very different compliance behavior after the

First and Second World Wars.

Asymmetries in stakes and resolve among the parties

may be the most critical determinants of noncompliance. In

the Versailles and North Korean cases, the violators’ stake

in noncompliance was greater than the enforcers’ stake in

compliance. In the Iraq case, the same was true for many

years, until the United States and United Kingdom – but not

other members of the First Gulf War coalition – chose to go

to war. In the fourth case, the U.S. determination to see the

Krasnoyarsk radar eliminated was longer-lasting than the

Soviet desire to retain it, allowing the peaceful resolution of

the issue.

Three of the four cases demonstrate that where violators

are determined, the most effective inducement may be the

threat of military action, whether occupation or attack.

However, only in the Iraqi case, did two of the main parties

follow through with actual invasion. While that certainly

resolved the compliance issues, the price was enormous.

Compliance is generally easier to enforce for bilateral

than multilateral agreements. The only successful case

studied in this report is also the only purely bilateral one.

Finally, violations of arms control agreements are

difficult—and perhaps nearly impossible—to deter. Arms

control agreements over the past 100-plus years that were

vii Occasional Paper

never violated are rare. The demilitarization of Germany

and Japan were exceptions, but in both cases, the leadership

and the population embraced that outcome only after the

devastation of the Second World War.

The first element of a strategy to secure arms control

compliance must be a clear-headed analysis of whether the

agreement serves the national interest. If it does not, the

effort should not be pursued, no matter how politically

popular it might be. If a potential agreement passes the first

test, the next task would be to prepare for noncompliance.

For most agreements, the Reagan maxim of “trust but

verify” should be amended to “verify but still don’t trust.”

Carefully-crafted monitoring and verification measures are

required. A party should never assume that weaker

provisions are acceptable because of improved relations

with the other. If on-site monitoring is not possible, as with

some UNSCRs , every effort should be made to ensure that

the resolution empowers member states to enforce its

provisions, consistent with international law.

The Versailles and Iraq cases demonstrate the difficulty

of securing compliance by a party that is forced to accept a

post-war agreement, but has not been destroyed in the war.

This is not to argue that war aims should always include

destruction and regime overthrow, but that the compliance

implications should be carefully considered in devising the

peace or armistice arrangements. Perhaps the most

effective approach would be to require armed military

escorts for post-conflict inspectors, with authorization to

use force if required. As a last resort, national rights to use

force to compel compliance should be recognized.

The case studies in this report also demonstrate that it is

more difficult to secure compliance with multilateral

agreements than with bilateral. In some instances, such as

the UNSCRs, there is no alternative to multilateral

approaches. In others, a multilateral agreement might be

preferable, in order to involve all of the states required to

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements viii

enforce compliance. Multilateral compliance enforcement

might be improved with carefully-developed rules for

inspectors’ rights, responsibilities and decision procedures.

The leadership of international disarmament commissions

should be chosen for expertise and dedication, not to satisfy

political criteria such as national representation.

Further, the United States must consider what violations

might be most likely and what to do if they occur.

Anticipation of potential violations and responses would be

both technically and politically difficult, but would send an

essential deterrent message. While the United States must

make clear that it will respond decisively to arms control

violations, it must not establish red lines that it is not

prepared to honor. Messages of intent to respond must be

clear and credible to be effective.

No foolproof strategy is available to deter or otherwise

prevent future violations of arms control agreements, or to

ensure effective responses to cheating. However, we can

seek to improve our ability to prevent violations and restore

compliance. Implementation of the recommendations

presented here would take considerable effort, but would

be well worth it if they enhanced the chances of securing

compliance.

Introduction

Violations of arms control agreements are a problem of the

past, the present, and almost certainly the future. Arms

control agreements limit aspects of arms competition, but

not the underlying rivalries, ambitions, and insecurities that

motivate states to seek military advantage through, among

other means, cheating on agreements. Failure to prevent or

respond to violations could place the United States and our

allies at a disadvantage and potentially in danger, and also

weaken arms control as an instrument for decreasing the

likelihood of conflict, limiting the destructiveness of war,

and reducing the burden of defense.

This paper examines four case studies of arms control

violations spanning 100 years:

1. Allied Powers Versus the German Violations of the

Versailles Treaty Disarmament Clauses, 1919-1935.

2. United States Versus the Soviet Krasnoyarsk Radar

Violation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)

Treaty, 1983-1993.

3. United States and Others Versus the Iraqi Real and

Apparent Violations of the UNSCRs on WMD

Disarmament, 1991-2003.

4. United States and Others Versus North Korean

Violations of its Nuclear Arms Control Obligations,

1992-2020.

The final section of this paper answers the following

questions about the four cases in order to discern patterns

that may provide lessons on improving arms control

compliance.

Did the character of the government committing

the violation incline it toward breaching the

agreement?

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 2

What did the violator hope to gain? What

consequences did it anticipate?

Had the violator accepted the agreement

willingly or under duress? Was acceptance of the

agreement the result of a strategic decision or was

it a tactical expedient?

Were there aspects of the agreement that

increased the likelihood of violations? Were

there deficiencies in verification capabilities that

the violator could exploit?

Were the proscribed capabilities easy or hard to

conceal? Could they be clandestinely obtained

from third parties?

When detected, was the violation blatant or

plausibly ambiguous? Were its consequences seen

as serious or relatively unimportant?

Was the response to the violation undertaken by

one or multiple parties? Were there differences

within the government, or within and among the

governments, responding to the violation? Were

there differing assessments of the violation and

possible responses?

What types of responses to the violation were

considered or adopted? How effective were

those that were pursued?

If the response involved inducements as well as

penalties, was the combination more effective

than either alternative alone?

10.

What tools and tactics were available to the

violator to inhibit, fend off, or withstand a

response? Which were chosen and why?

3 Occasional Paper

11.

Were there important asymmetries in the stakes

and resolve between the violator and the

enforcer(s) that had a significant influence on the

outcome of the case?

12.

Why did deterrence of the violation fail?

Why did efforts to restore compliance

succeed or fail?

Case Study One: Allied Powers Versus the

German Violations of the Versailles Treaty

Disarmament Clauses, 1919-1935

The years 1919-1935 covered two very different periods.

Throughout the 1920s, the democratic governments of the

Weimar Republic committed numerous Versailles

violations, in large part clandestinely. When some of those

violations were discovered, the German Government

complied to the minimum extent required, and/or played

down their significance. None of the Weimar violations had

a dramatic military effect by itself, but together many

helped to lay the foundations for the rearmament of the

1930s. The second period began with the ascension to

power of Adolf Hitler. Clandestine violations at first

accelerated and expanded. Within two years, they gave way

to overt remilitarization. Hitler officially repudiated the

Versailles military clauses in January 1935, and ended the

last vestige of Versailles arms control when he sent troops

into the demilitarized zone on the left bank of the Rhine.

In May 1919, the German Government received the

Versailles Treaty; it did not participate in the negotiations,

and the changes it requested were mostly rejected.

The

Norman A. Graebner and Edward M. Bennett, The Versailles Treaty and

Its Legacy: The Failure of the Wilsonian Vision (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2011), pp. 57-58.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 4

provisions concerning military force were designed to make

Germany incapable of any external military action. The

major ones were as follows:

• Army: reduction to 100,000 men, including no more

than 4000 officers; abolition of the Great General

Staff, staff colleges and military academies; abolition

of conscription; required service periods of 25 years

for officers and 12 for enlisted men; prohibition of

tanks, heavy artillery and chemical weapons; deep

reductions in other armaments and ammunitions;

• Air: abolition of the Flying Corps and prohibition of

military aircraft;

• Navy: reduction to 15,000 sailors, including no more

than 1500 officers; limit of 6 battleships, 6 light

cruisers, 12 destroyers, 12 torpedo boats; strict limits

on displacement of any replacements; ban on

submarines;

• Other: reduction of national police force to 150,000

lifetime employees; ban on paramilitary

organizations; ban on import of all arms and

military materiel; closure of all military production,

development, design or storage facilities unless

approved by the Allies; ban on any military forces

on the left bank of the Rhine or within 50 kilometers

of the right bank.

The Treaty created three Inter-Allied Commissions of

Control (IACCs) with “anytime, anywhere” access to

monitor the army, naval and air provisions that had a time

limit. A serious problem developed after the Allies decided

to require a German liaison committee to coordinate

5 Occasional Paper

disarmament. This became “a committee of obstruction,”

often blocking or delaying IACC access to military or

industrial sites. The IACCs ended in early 1927, even

though several compliance issues remained. Responsibility

for investigating compliance with the Versailles

disarmament provisions devolved to the League of Nations,

which did precisely nothing.

Weimar Republic

The environment in the 1920s for implementation of the

Versailles disarmament provisions was not propitious. The

Versailles provisions were rejected as unfair and

unacceptable by most segments of German society—from

the political and military leadership to the workers whose

jobs were threatened by disarmament and to all whose

livelihood was threatened by rampant postwar inflation.

The period saw the rise of both the Bolshevik movement

and the ultimately more important far-right paramilitary

groups. The pre-1918 military and monarchy were not

discredited; blame for Germany’s postwar difficulties was

placed instead on a supposed “stab in the back” by the

Weimar Government and its supporters in accepting the

Versailles terms. Further, because Germany was not

invaded during the First World War, its civilian and

military-related infrastructures was intact. All of those

factors helped the Weimar Government to sustain and

foster a personnel, technological and industrial foundation

for the rearmament of the 1930s.

Barton Whaley, Covert German Rearmament, 1919-1939: Deception and

Misperception (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America,

Foreign Intelligence Book Series, 1984), p. 9.

See Philip Towle, “Forced Disarmament in the 1920s and After,”

Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (August 2006), pp. 323-344, and

Andrew Barros, “Disarmament as a Weapon: Anglo-French Relations

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 6

The German Army worked from the start to delay or

evade implementation of the Versailles military clauses.

The Great General Staff was technically abolished, but in

fact immediately reestablished in the guise of the Troops

Office Although the Army reportedly sought to keep its

treaty noncompliance secret from the central government,

at least some senior civilian leaders apparently knew of and

supported military evasions of Versailles.

The Allies reportedly succeeded in persuading

Germany to reduce its army to 100,000 men.

However, this

“legal army” kept close relations with numerous large

paramilitary groups, often composed of demobilized

troops. The police forces were never reduced to their 1913

level or decentralized in accordance with the Treaty. The

hundreds of thousands of German police and paramilitary

groups helped to provide an important basis for the large

Wehrmacht of the 1930s.

Further, contrary to the Allies’ intention, the ban on

conscription and the length of service times, combined with

the retention of the de facto General Staff and the nationalist

backlash to Versailles, led to the German army being

“forged into a tightly-knit, highly disciplined cadre force,

and the Problems of Enforcing German Disarmament, 1919-28,” Journal

of Strategic Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (April 2006), pp. 301-321.

See Hans W. Gatzke, Stresemann and the Rearmament of Germany

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954), and Burns and

Urquidi, op. cit., p. 176.

Richard J. Shuster, German Disarmament after World War I: The

Diplomacy of International Arms Inspection 1920-1931 (Ne York: Routledge

2006) pp. 77-78.

Neal H. Petersen, “The Versailles Treaty: Imposed Disarmament,” in

Richard Dean Burns, ed., Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament,

Vol. II, Part 3: Historical Dimensions to 1945 (New York: Charles

Scribner’s Sons, 1993), p. 631.

7 Occasional Paper

designed not only to resist foreign attack but to provide the

basis for later expansion.”

The IACCs also focused on the major German weapons

firms, especially Krupp. Under strict allied supervision, the

Krupp complex in Germany was allowed to produce only

four types of guns and replacement parts for ships, but

maintained much of its skilled work force. Further, Krupp

developed and produced new artillery, anti-aircraft guns

and tanks in wholly-owned plants in Sweden and the

Netherlands.

These plants circumvented Versailles, but

probably dd not violate it because arms production abroad

was not explicitly prohibited

As required by the Treaty, the German army destroyed

virtually all of its tanks, armored cars and heavy artillery.

Army leaders reportedly saw this as another opportunity to

lay a foundation for a future modern military—unlike

France and Great Britain, which had huge quantities of

aging equipment. Beginning in 1925, top Krupp arms

designers, operating under a false name, “developed eight

types of heavy artillery, howitzers, and light field guns; a

new, mobile 201-mm mortar; and an entire family of tanks.”

Secret prototype production of tanks and armored cars

began in 1926 and also took place openly in Sweden.

The

1922 Treaty of Rapallo between Germany and the Soviet

Union led quickly to clandestine military cooperation which

further circumvented the Versailles provisions. A Junkers

aircraft plant became one of the most important in the

Richard Dean Burns and Donald Urquidi, Disarmament in Perspective:

An Analysis of Selected Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements between

the World Wars 1919-1939, Vol. I Disarmament and the Peace Conference

(Los Angeles: California State College at Los Angeles Foundation, July

1968), p. 176.

Burton Whaley, Covert German Rearmament, 1919-1939: Deception and

Misperception (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America,

Foreign Intelligence Books Series, 1984), pp. 10-11.

Whaley, op. cit., pp. 28-33.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 8

Soviet Union, and a joint armored warfare testing facility in

Kazan reportedly was critical to later German tank

warfare.

The German Navy in the 1920s also helped to establish

a foundation for Hitler’s navy a decade later. After an initial

violation of the Treaty (when the Navy scuttled its fleet in

Scapa Flow rather than surrender it to the Allies), the Navy

complied with the central limits on the size and number of

its ships. However, in the mid-1920s, it secretly trained

volunteer sailors who could function as a reserve.

important, development and production of German-

designed submarines took place in the Netherlands, Japan,

Spain, Finland and Turkey. Late in the period of this case

study, U-boat frames and parts were smuggled into the Kiel

naval base; by 1934, 12 submarines simply awaited

assembly.

In 1929, production started on three pocket

battleships that would exceed the Treaty tonnage limits.

Violations of the air provisions of Versailles were

widespread and often difficult to detect, given the dual-use

nature of aircraft. Experienced pilots were incorporated

throughout the Army, and the War Ministry secretly

funded private aviation activities. German aircraft

development work took place in the Netherlands,

Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, and Russia. The 1926

creation of Lufthansa as the state commercial airline

Ian Johnson, “Sowing the Wind: The First Soviet-German Military

Pact and the Origins of World War II,” in War on the Rocks, available at

https://warontherocks.com.

Captain Schuessler (Navy), ed., “The Fight of the Navy Against

Versailles 1919-1935,” Published by the High Command of the German

Navy Berlin 1937, in Nuernberg Military Tribunal, Trials of War

Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council

Law No. 10, Nuernberg, October 1946-April 1949, Vol. X (Washington:

Government Publishing Office, 1951), pp. 447-448.

Whaley, op. cit., pp. 27-28.

Burns, ed., op. cit., p. 14.

9 Occasional Paper

provided a perfect cover for air force testing and training.

Also important was the clandestine German-Soviet air

training and testing facility at Lipetsk, at which almost 1000

German pilots, mechanics and engineers trained, and all

German aircraft manufacturers tested their prototypes.

Thus, as with the Army and Navy, violations and

circumventions of the Versailles air clauses helped to build

a solid foundation for the Nazi Luftwaffe.

Germany was, of course, fully responsible for its

violations and evasions of the Versailles disarmament

clauses. Weakness of enforcement, however, contributed

importantly, caused by serious British-French differences

and from a combination of “enforcement fatigue” and

wishful thinking that affected even France by 1925.

France initially insisted on strict implementation of all

Versailles Treaty provisions, in an effort to prevent

Germany from ever again threatening France. Most battles

of the First World War took place on French territory, with

consequent huge economic damage and loss of life. France

and Belgium occupied the Ruhr in 1923 after Germany

failed to meet its reparations obligations, and advocated

Rhineland occupations in response to disarmament

shortcomings.

The British motivations were completely different.

London wanted early implementation of the major

Versailles disarmament provisions, an end to the IACCs

within months, and German admission to the League of

Nations. The United Kingdom seemed more concerned

with threats from the Soviet Union, the German Communist

Party and an overly-dominant France than with German

resurgence. Further, many in the British Government and

Ibid., pp. 14-15.

Johnson, op. cit., pp. 2-3.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 10

society came to view the Treaty as unduly harsh, meriting

loose enforcement at most.

In the early 1920s, when Britain and France presented a

united front and brandished the threat of new or continued

territorial occupations, they had some success in

persuading Germany to improve compliance. But the

outcome was different after the Allied Control Commission

in December 1924 reported several areas of continued

German noncompliance: reconstruction of the Great

General Staff; recruitment and training of volunteers;

conversion of arms factories; excess military equipment;

and failure to reorganize the police, to prohibit war material

export and import, or to adjust Army recruitment and

organization.

Germany reacted with a proposal for a

western security treaty, which supposedly would address

France’s fundamental concerns about German armament.

The result was the October 1925 Locarno Pact, for which the

French, British and Germany Foreign Ministers received the

Nobel Peace Prize. The “Spirit of Locarno”—wishful

thinking reinforced by fatigue—led the French to join the

British in withdrawal from the Rhineland on January 31,

1926, despite the outstanding compliance issues.

One year

later, the IACCs were disbanded, even though most of those

issues were unresolved. With the end of Allied monitoring,

German research development and production of

prohibited arms began to accelerate. Moreover, the absence

of in-country monitors and the weakness of Allied

intelligence “meant that design, testing, and training could

proceed under thinner, less hampering cover.”

Nazi Rearmament

Barros, op. cit., passim.

Gatzke, op. cit., pp. 28-29.

Ibid., pp. 34-45.

Burns, ed., op. cit., p. 17.

11 Occasional Paper

For the first two years that Hitler was in power, he

continued the Weimar practice of covert violations and

open evasions, but on a much greater scale. In 1933, he put

the main paramilitary organizations under Army

jurisdiction. To circumvent the conscription ban, Hitler in

1934 created the National Labor Service, obligatory for 18-

year-old males. The secret air force was expanded, under

civilian cover. In April 1934, rearmament was secretly

ordered.

In March 1935, Hitler publicly renounced the Versailles

disarmament provisions. He introduced universal military

service and announced the creation of the Wehrmacht, which

was to have 500,000 men in 36 divisions. Air Minister

Hermann Goering announced the formation of the

Luftwaffe. The Allies objected, but took no action. In April

1935, the French, British and Italian prime ministers

reaffirmed the Locarno Pact and agreed to oppose any

further German effort to change the Versailles Treaty; the

pattern of 1930s appeasement was established.

In March 1936, German troops marched into the

Rhineland. The British and French responded with strong

words. The Allied reactions to the remilitarization of the

Rhineland, as well as to all the other military actions by

Hitler starting in 1935, were based on a strong

overestimation of German military strength, consequent

fear of armed conflict, and a British tendency toward

appeasement that would find its apotheosis at Munich in

1938.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 12

Case Study Two: United States Versus

the Soviet Krasnoyarsk Radar

Violation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile

(ABM) Treaty, 1983-1989

The central obligation of the 1972 Treaty between the

United States and the Soviet Union on the Limitation of

Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM Treaty) was “not to

deploy ABM systems for a defense of the territory of its

country and not to provide a base for such a defense, and

not to deploy ABM systems for defense of an individual

region except as provided for in Article III of the Treaty.”

Article III allowed two ABM deployment sites of 100

launchers each—one around the national capital and one

around an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silo

field; a 1974 protocol reduced that to one site, defending

either the national capital or an ICBM field.

Large-phased array radars (LPARs) for ballistic missile

detection and tracking were considered the long-lead-time

components for defense of the national territory. The Treaty

allowed early-warning LPARs only on the national

periphery and oriented outward—thus permitting

legitimate early warning capabilities, while limiting the

tracking and handoff capability that could give the radars

an active missile defense role.

ABM radars, whose

numbers and capabilities were specified, were allowed only

at the permitted ABM deployment sites. The Treaty did not

mention, and therefore did not constrain, LPARs other than

for early warning and ABM.

In July 1983, the Intelligence Community discovered an

LPAR under construction near the city of Krasnoyarsk in

Carnes Lord and Roger Barnett, Soviet Arms Control Violations and

United States Compliance Policy (Fairfax, VA: National Security Research,

August 1988), p. 230.

13 Occasional Paper

Siberia.

Analysts estimated that construction started in

1981 or 1982. We do not know why it took U.S. intelligence

a year or more to find this huge installation. The LPAR

could not be hidden, even in early construction stages. The

transmitter building grew to approximately 180 feet tall, 500

feet long and 300 feet wide; the receiver was just as long and

wide, but even taller, at 270 feet.

The Krasnoyarsk radar was neither located on the

periphery of Soviet territory nor oriented outward. Instead,

it was over 700 km. from the nearest border (to the south),

and oriented northeast. The radar clearly violated the

Treaty unless it was to operate for a purpose other than

ballistic missile detection and tracking. As a result, the

Soviets for several years argued that the radar was for space

track, but its design, location and orientation were ill suited

for that purpose.

In 1986, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) found

that “the primary mission of this radar is ballistic missile

detection and tracking. Further, we believe the

Krasnoyarsk LPAR closes the final gap in the Soviet ballistic

missile early warning (BMEW) and tracking network that

includes LPARs and the older Hen House type radars.” The

CIA report—or at least those portions made public—did not

address whether the Krasnoyarsk radar was well suited for

a battle management role, which would greatly enhance its

potential contribution to a territorial ballistic missile

defense.

The first Presidential Report to Congress on Soviet arms

control compliance after the discovery of the Krasnoyarsk

radar found that it “almost certainly [emphasis added]

Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, The

Krasnoyarsk Radar: Closing the Final Gap in Coverage for Ballistic Missile

Early Warning, June 19, 1986, Release as Sanitized 2000, p. 1.

Lord and Barnett, op. cit., p. 236.

Central Intelligence Agency, op. cit., p. 1.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 14

constitutes a violation of legal obligations under the Anti-

Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.”

Subsequent annual

reports made progressively stronger judgments. In 1985,

the United States found for the first time that the radar “and

other ABM-related Soviet activities suggest that the USSR

may be preparing an ABM defense of its national

territory.”

In 1987, the radar was judged “a significant

violation of a central element” of the Treaty.

That

essentially meant that it was a material breach of the ABM

Treaty.

The United States first raised the Krasnoyarsk violation

in the Standing Consultative Commission (SCC), the ABM

Treaty implementation body, in Summer 1983. The Soviet

delegation insisted that the radar was for space track, and

that in any case compliance determinations would not be

possible before the radar began to operate.

Beginning in January 1985, bilateral consideration of the

Krasnoyarsk radar shifted to the ministerial and

Presidential levels. Foreign Minister Shevardnadze and

General Secretary Gorbachev, who came into office in

March 1985, did not repeat the space track argument, but

instead floated various proposals to resolve the issue. One

The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, The President’s Report

to the Congress on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements,

January 31, 1984, available at https://www.cia.gov, p. 4.

The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, The President’s

Unclassified Report on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements,

December 23, 1985, available at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu, pp.

6-8.

The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, The President’s

Unclassified Report on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements,

December 2, 1988, p. 16.

“Decisions Regarding Instructions for the SCC Session Beginning

October 9, 1985,” September 28, 1985, attachment to Memorandum for

Director of Central Intelligence, From Chief, Arms Control Intelligence Staff,

Subject: SCC-XXIX Decision Document, 7 October 1985, Sanitized Copy

Approved for Release 2011/06/04, available at www.cia.gov, p. 33.

15 Occasional Paper

idea was to cease construction at Krasnoyarsk if the United

States would do the same with LPAR construction at Thule,

Greenland and Fylingdales, the United Kingdom. The

United States countered that those two radars were

“grandfathered” under the ABM Treaty, and were simply

being modernized in accordance with the Treaty.

In one

final effort to salvage the Krasnoyarsk radar, Gorbachev

proposed in September 1988 to convert it into a “Center for

International Cooperation in Peaceful Space Activities,”

and to invite American scientists to the site.

The proposal

was a non-starter: it did not meet the U.S. requirements for

dismantlement, and the site was an impractical,

inhospitable one for an international center. Finally, in

September 1989, Gorbachev wrote to President George

H.W. Bush that the Soviet Union would dismantle the

Krasnoyarsk radar without conditions.

One month later,

in a speech to the Supreme Soviet, Shevardnadze

announced that the radar was a “clear violation” of the

ABM Treaty and would be dismantled.

We likely will never know why or precisely for what

specific functions(s) the Soviet Union decided to locate the

LPAR at Krasnoyarsk. Most former Soviet officials

maintain that it was for early warning, designed to close a

gap in early warning coverage. They claim that they

See, for example, Department of State Briefing Paper, The Geneva

Talks, n.d. [October 16, 1985], p. 2; and Department of State, Executive

Secretariat, “Memorandum of Conversation, The Secretary’s Meeting

with Shevardnadze – Second Small Group Meeting: Arms Control

Issues,” Washington, September 22, 1988, in James Graham Wilson, ed.,

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981-1988, Volume VI – Soviet

Union October 1986-January 1989 (Washington: United States

Government Publishing Office, 2016), pp. 1157-1159.

Idem.

The White House, Memorandum of Conversation: Meeting with Eduard

Shevardnadze, Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, September 21, 1989,

declassified on August 21, 2009, p. 4, available at

https://bush41library.tamu.edu.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 16

originally chose a location in the far northeast that would be

both Treaty-compliant and effective in closing the gap.

However, that site was both remote and above the

permafrost, making the radar difficult and expensive to

construct, maintain and operate. These same commentators

claim that the Soviet Government knew the Krasnoyarsk

radar would violate the ABM Treaty, but doubted that the

United States would see it as more than a technical

violation.

From the time the Krasnoyarsk construction was

discovered, U.S. Government agencies agreed that it

violated the ABM Treaty, but differed on the reasons for the

site and its battle management potential. Defense

Department officials dismissed the production

costs/difficulty arguments used to justify the choice of

Krasnoyarsk. They found the site to be optimized for battle

management, in conjunction with the other Pechora-class

LPARs.

The United States held steadfastly to its position that the

only way to resolve the Krasnoyarsk violation was to

dismantle the radar. Only the foundations of the

transmitter and receiver buildings could remain.

That

resistance to compromise, and continued pressure at the

highest levels, combined with the Gorbachev Government’s

desire to forge closer relations with the West including

through arms control, ultimately proved effective in

persuading the Soviets to abandon the Krasnoyarsk LPAR.

Aleksandr G. Savelyev and Nikolay Detinov. “View from Russia: The

Krasnoyarsk Affair,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1993), pp. 345-

346, and Raymond Garthoff, “Case of the Wandering Radar,” Bulletin of

the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 47, No. 6 (July-August 1991), pp. 7-8.

For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Lord and Barnett, op .cit.,

pp. 253-261.

See, for example, The White House, National Security Directive 36:

United States Arms Control Policy, February 6, 1990, declassified on

March 22, 2010, p. 6, available at https://bush41library.tamu.edu.

17 Occasional Paper

Still, the United States did little to threaten

consequences if the Soviet Union continued to pursue the

Krasnoyarsk radar and other treaty violations. In May 1986,

the President announced responses to Soviet arms control

violations. The primary ones were abandonment of the

interim restraint policy,

and continuation of the strategic

modernization and Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

programs. The President also directed a Defense

Department study of further ICBM options and acceleration

of the advanced cruise missile program. There were no

responses tailored specifically to the Krasnoyarsk violation.

While the United States held firm in demanding the full

dismantlement of the Krasnoyarsk radar, it did not sustain

the one diplomatic threat it made to induce Soviet

compliance. In March 1987, the President stated that:

“Compliance with past arms control commitments is an

essential prerequisite for future arms control agreements.”

Yet nine months later, in December 1987, the United States

and Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear

Forces (INF) Treaty.

Thereafter the U.S. Government continued to link the

Defense and Space and START agreements to resolution of

compliance issues. For example, at the August 1988 ABM

Treaty Review Conference, the United States “made clear

that the continuing existence of the Krasnoyarsk radar

makes it impossible to conclude any future arms

agreements in the START or Defense and Space areas.”

Under the interim restraint policy, adopted in 1982, the United States

would continue to abide by the provisions of SALT II as long as the

Soviet Union did the same and the sides were negotiating a new START

Treaty.

The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, The President’s

Unclassified Report on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements,

March 10, 1987, available at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu, p. 3.

“United States Unilateral Statement Following ABM Treaty Review,”

Geneva, Switzerland, August 31, 1988, available at https://2009-

2017.state.gov. The Nuclear and Space Talks (NST), which began in

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 18

That condition was relaxed after the Soviet admission of the

Krasnoyarsk violation and agreement to dismantle the

radar. In July 1991, President Bush and General Secretary

Gorbachev signed the START Treaty.

In January 1993, the George H.W. Bush

Administration—in its last compliance report and the first

after the fall of the Soviet Union – reported that: “In April

1992, the United States, in light of the changed political and

security relationship between the two countries, agreed in

principle to a Russian request to convert the Krasnoyarsk

radar (which it has been dismantling, as an ABM Treaty

violation), into a furniture factory.”

Press reports

indicated that the transmitter and receiver buildings were

significantly reduced by February 1993.

In 1993, the annual compliance report stated that “the

United States detected no activities on the part of the states

of the former Soviet Union that gave rise to questions

regarding compliance with the provisions of the ABM

Treaty.”

The Krasnoyarsk issue was over. Completely

unrelated, the Treaty would end in June 2002.

March 1985, formed the umbrella for three different U.S.-Soviet

negotiations, on INF, START and Defense and Space arms control.

Initially, the Soviet Union insisted that none of the agreements could be

completed until all three were. Gorbachev dropped that linkage at

Reykjavik in October 1986. The INF and START Treaties were signed in

1987 and 1991, respectively; the sides never completed a Defense and

Space agreement.

The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Adherence to and

Compliance with Arms Control Agreements and The President’s Report to

Congress on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements, January

14, 1993, available at https://babel.hathitrust.org, p. 12. During the

period of this report, Congress ceased to require the Soviet

noncompliance report, and called instead for a broader compliance

report.

Department of State, Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control

Agreements: 1998 Report Submitted to the Congress, Washington, DC, n.d.

[probably 1999], p. 4, available at https://1997-2001.state.gov.

19 Occasional Paper

Case Study Three: United States and Others

Versus the Iraqi Real and Apparent

Violations of the UNSCRs on WMD

Disarmament, 1991-2003

Iraq’s disarmament obligations arose from its August 1990

invasion of Kuwait and subsequent defeat in the 1991 Gulf

War. From April 1991 to November 2002, the UN Security

Council passed seven resolutions on Iraq’s WMD

disarmament and related obligations, The first and most

important was UNSCR 687, which required Iraq to

“unconditionally accept the destruction, removal or

rendering harmless, under international supervision, of all

chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents

and all related subsystems and components and all

research, development, support and manufacturing

facilities… all ballistic missiles with a range greater than one

hundred and fifty kilometers and related major parts, and

repair and production facilities.” UNSCR 687 also forbade

Iraq to acquire or develop nuclear weapons, nuclear-

weapons material or any related subsystems, components,

research, development, support or manufacturing facilities.

It required Iraq to declare locations and amounts of all

prohibited items, to accept on-site inspection, and to turn

over all prohibited items for elimination or removal.

UNSCR 687 created the UN Special Commission

(UNSCOM) to carry out inspections and address chemical

and biological weapons and related components,

equipment and facilities. The International Atomic Energy

Agency (IAEA) was to do the same in the nuclear area. If

Commercial satellite photography in 2017 revealed that at some point

the radar was completely dismantled.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 20

and when Iraq accepted the resolution, a formal cease-fire

would take effect.

UNSCOM inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in

November 1998. In December 1999, UNSCR 1284 in

December 1999 created the UN Monitoring and Verification

Commission (UNMOVIC) to replace UNSCOM. Neither

UNMOVIC nor the IAEA was able to enter Iraq for almost

three years after the passage of this resolution. Finally, in

November 2002, the Security Council unanimously passed

UNSCR 1441 – the last and the most emphatic of the WMD

compliance resolutions. Finding Iraq in “material breach of

its obligations under relevant resolutions,” and giving it “a

final opportunity to comply,” the resolution required Iraq

to provide “a currently accurate, full, and complete

declaration of all aspects of its [WMD and delivery vehicle]

programmes” and to grant expanded access to UNMOVIC

and IAEA inspectors.

Closely related to the UNSCRs on Iraqi disarmament

were those on sanctions. UNSCR 661 in August 1990

imposed comprehensive economic and financial sanctions

on Iraq.

UNSCRs in 1991 softened those slightly, allowing

limited oil sales with revenue to go to humanitarian relief.

In 1995, the UNSC created the Oil-for-Food Program, which

was to finance humanitarian relief and reparations to

Kuwait. Although Iraq blatantly exploited the program, it

continued until just before the 2003 invasion.

After agreeing to UNSCR 687, Iraq tried to get by with

incomplete accounting, deception, and impediments to UN

United Nations Security Council, Resolution 687 (1991) Adopted by the

Security Council at its 2981

meeting on 3 April 1991, S/RES/687 (1991),

available at http://un.org, paras. 8-13.

United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1441 (2002) Adopted by the

Security Council at its 4644

meeting, on 8 November 1992, S/RES/1441

(2002), paras. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 13, available at http://www.un.org.

United Nations Security Council, Resolution 661 (1990) of 6 August

1990, available at http://www.un.org.

21 Occasional Paper

inspections. Its first formal declarations about its WMD

programs in April 1991 declared that it had 53 Scud-type

missiles, some chemical weapons, and no biological

weapons or nuclear weapons program.

That was all a lie.

Iraq also tried to sanitize some sites before inspections and

to hide many records documenting its WMD programs. In

November 1993, Iraq agreed to the UN demand for a

permanent UNSCOM/IAEA monitoring system.

As UN

inspectors conducted a “baseline survey,” Iraq formed a

counterpart organization to monitor their movement,

obstruct any surprise inspections, and prevent inspectors

from finding anything that Iraq did not want them to find.

Over time, the Iraqi regime manipulated various UN

participants in an effort to gain some more control over the

inspection process as well as over its facilities and

capabilities. Toward this end, Iraq reportedly used bribes

and other economic incentives to win the support of

countries with influence in the UNSC, most notably Russia

and France.

In August 1995, Hussein Kamel, the son-in-law of

Saddam Hussein and the person responsible for Iraq’s

military industry and WMD, fled Iraq and was granted

asylum in Jordan. Thereafter, Iraqi officials quickly

provided new information on WMD programs to UNSCOM

and the IAEA, and blamed the earlier, evasive declarations

on Kamel himself. The new revelations included

documentation of biological weapons production and a

“crash program” to develop a nuclear weapon. The nuclear

Charles Duelfer, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq (New York:

Public Affairs, 2009), p. 79.

“Regime Strategy and WMD Timeline Events,” in Comprehensive

Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, September 30,

2004, available at https://www.cia.gov.

Duelfer, op. cit., pp. 92-93.

Ibid., p. 170.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 22

program involved diverting “fissionable material from

research reactor fuel that was under IAEA safeguards.”

Revelations from the Kamel defection reenergized

inspection activities, dimmed the Iraqis’ hope of having

sanctions lifted, and ultimately led to increase Iraqi

opposition to UNSCOM. In October 1997, Iraq expelled all

U.S. members of inspection teams. The UN withdrew all

inspectors in protest and the United States and Great Britain

once again began a military buildup in the Gulf.

Inspections resumed in February 1998, were suspended in

October, and then resumed in November. They did not

continue for long.

In December 1998, the heads of UNSCOM and the IAEA

reported on their experience in Iraq over the previous

month. The IAEA said that it had received “the necessary

level of cooperation to enable [inspections, visits, interviews

and technical discussions] to be completed efficiently and

effectively.”

The UNSCOM judgment was very different,

reporting that during the previous month Iraq had initiated

“new forms of restrictions” on the Commission’s work” and

“ensured that no progress was able to be made in either the

fields of disarmament or accounting for its prohibited

weapons programs.”

Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004), p. 30.

U.S. Department of Defense, Fact Sheet on Operation Desert Fox,

available at http://archive.defense.gov/specials/desert_fox/.

“Annex I: Letter dated 14 December 1998 from the Director General of

the International Atomic Energy Agency addressed to the Secretary-

General,” in Letter Dated 15 December 1998 from the Secretary-General

Addressed to the President of the Security Council, S/1998/1172, available

at http://www.us.org.

“Annex II: Letter Dated 15 December 1998 from the Executive

Chairman of the Special Commission established by the Secretary-

General pursuant to paragraph 9(b)(i) of Security Council resolution 687

(1991) addressed to the Secretary-General,” in Letter Dated 15 December

1998, op. cit., p. 7.

23 Occasional Paper

That night, inspectors began evacuating Iraq.

The next

day, the United States and Great Britain launched

Operation Desert Fox—a 70-hour air campaign against key

targets in Iraq, including WMD- and missile-related

facilities.

According to the US Air Force, “Operation

Desert Fox inflicted serious damage to Iraq’s missile

development program, although its effects on any WMD

program were not clear.”

Inspectors were not allowed in Iraq between Operation

Desert Fox in December 1998, and November 2002 (just after

passage of the UNSCR essentially approving the

subsequent invasion). Saddam Hussein undoubtedly

hoped that a new show of cooperation would stave off the

invasion. In January 2003, UNMOVIC briefed the UNSC

that it still had major unanswered questions about Iraqi

work on VX, unaccounted chemical bombs, anthrax

production and stockpiling, and development of two new

missiles tested beyond 150 km.

Two weeks later, the IAEA

reported much more positively that “the IAEA concluded,

by December 1998, that it had neutralized Iraq’s past

nuclear programme and that, therefore, there were no

unresolved disarmament issues left at that time….We have

to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or

nuclear related activities in Iraq.”

On March 18, 2003, all UNMOVIC and IAEA inspectors

left Iraq. Two days later, United States and coalition forces

Duelfer, op. cit., pp. 157-158.

Department of Defense, Operation Desert Fox, op. cit.

Captain Gregory Ball, USAFR, “1998—Operation Desert Fox,”

August 23, 2011; available at www.afhistory.af.mil.

The Security Council, 27 January 2003: An Update on Inspection,

Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC, Dr. Hans Blix, as delivered, available

at http://www.un.org.

“Mohamed El Baradei’s report to the UN security council,” The

Guardian, February 14, 2003, available at

https://www.theguardian.com.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 24

launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was only after the

2003 invasion that the United States and other countries

discovered that virtually all Iraqi WMD and prohibited

missile capabilities had already been destroyed – including

those described by UNMOVIC as outstanding issues in

January.

Nevertheless, Iraq clearly and repeatedly violated

successive UNSCRs, including by its false declarations,

unilateral destruction of prohibited items without

inspectors’ supervision, and obstruction of inspection

teams. The U.S. Iraq Survey Group (ISG) also found that

Saddam Hussein planned to resurrect Iraq’s WMD and

longer-range missile capability after sanctions were lifted,

focusing initially on chemical weapons and ballistic

missiles, and looking to biological and nuclear weapons

capability over the longer term.

This case study ends with a major outstanding question,

which may never be fully resolved. Why did Saddam

Hussein go to such lengths to create strong suspicions in the

international community that he retained chemical and

biological weapons, longer-range missiles, and associated

capabilities – thus violating UN Security Council

transparency obligations, and inviting the military action

that he wanted to avoid?

Case Study Four: United States and

Others Versus the North Korean

Violations of Its Nuclear Arms Control

Obligations, 1992-2020

Throughout the period of this case study, North Korea’s

noncompliance with its nuclear agreements and

“Key Findings: Biological,” in Comprehensive Report of the Special

Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, op. cit.

25 Occasional Paper

international resolutions followed a repetitive, cyclical

pattern. The list of nuclear-related international obligations

that the North Koreans violated during the period of this

case study is a long one:

• The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), to

which it acceded in December 1985;

• The January 1992 IAEA Safeguards Agreement;

• The January 1992 Joint Declaration of South and

North Korea on the Denuclearization of the Korean

Peninsula (hereafter “Denuclearization

Agreement”);

• The October 1994 Agreed Framework between the

United States and the Democratic People’s

Republic of Korea;

• The September 2005 Joint Statement of the Fourth

Round of the Six-Party Talks;

• The February and October 2007 Implementation

Agreements for the Si-Party Talks Joint Statement;

and

• UNSCRs 1695 (July 2006), 1718 (October 2006), 1874

(June 2009). 2094 (March 2013), 2270 (March 2016),

2321 (November 2016), and 2375 (September 2017).

The main actors involved with those agreements were

North and Korea, the United States, Japan, China, Russia,

the IAEA and the UNSC. The focus in the 1990s was on

bilateral agreements with North Korea: first by South

Korea, and then by the United States. During the George

W. Bush Administration, attention shifted to multilateral

efforts, in the Six-Party Talks,

the IAEA and the UNSC.

Under President Obama, the sole focus came to be the

UNSC. The Trump Administration adopted a new bilateral

The Six Parties were China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea,

and the United States.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 26

approach, featuring personal diplomacy between the

President and Chairman Kim Jong-Un. Despite these

different approaches over the past three decades, the

outcomes have remained the same: continued North

Korean noncompliance and consequent qualitative and

quantitative improvements in its nuclear weapons

programs.

The Agreement-Violation Cycle

North Korea joined the NPT in 1985, and violated it almost

immediately Pyongyang failed to comply with the NPT

obligation to conclude a comprehensive IAEA safeguards

agreement within 18 months of Treaty accession. In what

became a continuing pattern, the visible compliance issue

involved monitoring and verification, but behind North

Korea’s refusal to accept international nuclear monitoring

lay its determination to preserve and advance its nuclear

weapons program.

In January 1992, North and South Korea completed the

Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean

Peninsula, under which they committed not to produce,

possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons, or to pursue

uranium enrichment or nuclear reprocessing. The

Denuclearization Agreement also provided for verification

by mutually agreed inspections.

That provision was never

implemented. Even more important were North Korea’s

violations of the core elements of the agreement: its

continued clandestine efforts to develop fissile material and

nuclear weapons.

North Korea finally concluded an IAEA Safeguards

Agreement in April 1992.

True to form, it submitted

Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, available

at https://2001-2009.state.gov.

International Atomic Energy Agency Information Circular, Agreement

of 30 January 1992 between the Government of the Democratic People’s

27 Occasional Paper

woefully incomplete nuclear material declarations to the

IAEA, declaring a mere 90 grams of plutonium and seven

nuclear facilities. After North Korea refused to allow IAEA

inspections of two undeclared facilities, the IAEA Board of

Governors in February 1993 required North Korea to accept

a mandatory “special inspection” of the two facilities. In

response, North Korea not only refused to comply, but gave

notice of intent to withdraw from the NPT.

On June 11, 1993, just one day before that NPT

withdrawal was to take effect, senior U.S. and North Korean

negotiators issued on June 11, 1993 a Joint Statement, under

which the two sides “agreed to principles of: assurances

against the threat and use of force, including nuclear

weapons; peace and security in a nuclear-free Korean

Peninsula, including impartial application of full-scope

safeguards, mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty,

and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs; and

support for the peaceful reunification of North Korea.” In

exchange, the DPRK suspended its withdrawal from the

NPT.

Despite this agreement, North Korea systematically

stymied IAEA inspection efforts over the next year. Then,

Republic of Korea and the International Atomic Energy Agency for the

Application of Safeguards in Connection with the Treaty on the Non-

Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, INFIRC/403, May 1992, available at

https://www.iaea.org.

David Fischer, “The DPRK’s Violation of the NPT Safeguards

Agreement with the IAEA,” excerpt from History of the International

Atomic Energy Agency(Vienna: IAEA, 1997), available at

https://www.iaea.org, pp. 1-2; and International Atomic Energy

Agency, Fact Sheet on DPRK Nuclear Safeguards, n.d., available at

https://www.iaea.org.

Embassy of Korea in the U.S., Joint Statement of Democratic People’s

Republic of Korea and the United States of America, New York, June 11, 1993”

available at www.nautilus.org. See Also Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman

and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear

Crisis (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, April 2004),

Chapter 3.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 28

in June 1994, Pyongyang gave notice of intent to withdraw

from the IAEA.

In response, the United States considered

various options – military, economic, diplomatic – none of

which was deemed both effective and palatable.

This “first North Korean nuclear crisis” was resolved (at

least temporarily) in October 1994, when the United States

and North Korea signed the Agreed Framework. Under

that accord, Pyongyang would receive substantial benefits

essentially for complying with its NPT, IAEA Safeguards

and Denuclearization Agreement obligations.

In the Agreed Framework, the United States committed

to:

• Provide formal assurances to North Korea against

the threat of U.S. nuclear weapons use;

• Create an international consortium to supply two

light water power reactors (LWRs) to the North;

• Arrange for heavy fuel oil (HFO) supplies to the

North;

• Work with the North on means to store and dispose

of spent fuel without reprocessing;

• Ease trade restrictions and progress toward

diplomatic relations.

North Korea committed to:

• Remain an NPT party;

• Allow implementation of its IAEA safeguards

agreement, although full compliance would await

“significant completion” of the LWR project;

International Atomic Energy Agency General Conference,

Implementation of the Agreement between the Agency and the Democratic

People’s Republic of Korea for the Application of Safeguards in Connection

with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (INFIRC/403,

GC(XXXVIII/19), September 16, 1994, available at

https://www.iaea.org.

29 Occasional Paper

• “consistently take steps to implement” the 1992

Denuclearization Agreement, and engage in a

North-South dialogue;

• Freeze its graphite-moderate reactors and related

facilities, and finish dismantling them when the

LWR project was completed.

The Agreed Framework collapsed in Fall 2002. In

October, North Korea admitted privately to a U.S.

Government delegation that it had a clandestine uranium

enrichment program. In response, the North was found in

noncompliance with all of its nuclear obligations—NPT,

IAEA Safeguards, Denuclearization Agreement and Agreed

Framework—and HFO deliveries were suspended. The

LWR project was suspended in 2003, and finally terminated

in November 2005.

In December 2002, following suspension of HFO

deliveries, North Korea announced that it would restart the

nuclear facilities frozen under the Agreed Framework. It

cut all IAEA seals, disrupted surveillance equipment, and

ordered all inspectors to leave the country. On January 6,

the IAEA Board of Governors found North Korea in

noncompliance with its Safeguards Agreement.

January 10, Pyongyang announced that it would withdraw

from the NPT the next day. North Korea claimed that it did

International Atomic Energy Information Circular, Agreed Framework

of 21 October 1994 between the United States of America and the Democratic

People’s Republic of Korea, INFCIRC/457, November 2, 1994, available at

https://www.iaea.org.

International Atomic Energy Agency Media Advisory, IAEA Board of

Governors Adopts Resolution on Safeguards in North Korea, 6 January 2003,

available at www.iaea.org. The resolution found North Korea in

violation of its Safeguards Agreement, but did not address NPT

compliance. Because the IAEA is not a party to the NPT, it cannot judge

any state’s compliance with the Treaty; however, it is a party to all

Safeguards Agreements.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 30

not need to wait the required three months before

withdrawal, because in 1993 it had suspended withdrawal

only one day before the end of the notification period. Many

governments and observers questioned that argument, but

China blocked any UNSC consideration of the legality of the

withdrawal.

In response to North Korea’s NPT withdrawal, the

United States levied some new unilateral sanctions, but also

pursued a diplomatic track in the Six-Party Talks. Those

resulted on September 19, 2005 in a Joint Statement in

which:

• The parties reaffirmed the goal of “the verifiable

denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a

peaceful manner;”

• North Korea committed to abandoning all nuclear

weapons and nuclear programs, and “returning, at

an early date,” to the NPT;

• The sides reaffirmed the 1992 North-South

Denuclearization Agreement;

• The U.S. affirmed that it had no nuclear weapons on

the Peninsula “and has no intention to attack or

invade the DPRK with nuclear or conventional

weapons;”

• The United States and Japan undertook to take

steps to normalize their relations with North Korea;

• The sides agreed to pursue bilateral and/or

multilateral cooperation on energy, trade and

investment;

See George Bunn and John B. Rhinelander, “NPT Withdrawal: Time

for the Security Council to Step In,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 35 (May

2005).

31 Occasional Paper

• China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United

States expressed willingness to provide energy

assistance to the DPRK;

• South Korea reaffirmed a proposal to provide two

million kilowatts of electric power to the North;

• The parties “agreed to discuss, at an appropriate

time, the subject” of LWRs

• The “directly related parties” committed to

negotiate a “permanent peace regime on the Korean

Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum;”

• The parties “agreed to take coordinated steps to

implement the aforementioned consensus in a

phased manner in line with the principle of

‘commitment for commitment, action for action.’”

The next three and a half years witnessed a cycle of

escalating North Korean provocations and U.S. concessions.

On July 4, 2006 U.S. time (a date hardly chosen at random),

Pyongyang launched seven ballistic missiles in rapid

succession; the UNSC responded with its first sanctions

resolution. This, and all subsequent UNSCRs on North

Korea, demanded that it return to, and comply with, the

NPT, and end all ballistic missile programs. The

subsequent resolutions also called for an end to North

Korean nuclear programs. The North ignored all of them.

While not an explicit part of the Joint Statement, the energy assistance

was agreed to include 50,000 MT of HFO in a first phase and the

equivalent of up to one million MT of HFO in a second phase. “Before

the Six Party Talks broke down in March 2009, the DPRK had received

500,000 MT of HFO and equipment and 245,110 MT of fuel-equivalent

assistance.” Mark E. Manyin and Mary Beth D. Nikitin, Foreign

Assistance to North Korea, Congressional Research Service R40095, April

2, 2014, p. 6.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, Joint

Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks, Beijing, 19 September

2005, available at www.fmprc.gov.cn.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 32

October 2006 saw the first North Korea nuclear test, and

a UNSCR with substantially stronger sanctions. Still, the

United States and its partners chose to put new emphasis on

negotiations and concessions. In February 2007, the Six-

Party Talks agreed on initial steps to implement the Joint

Statement, including a North Korean commitment to

declare all of its nuclear programs and disable its nuclear

facilities in return for an additional 950,000 tons of HFO or

its equivalent. The United States would then help provide

the energy aid, begin the process of removing North Korea

from the state sponsors of terrorism list, and end the

application of the Trading with the Enemy Act toward

North Korea.

However, North Korea still did not comply with the

Six-Party agreements. In January 2008, it finally submitted

a declaration on its nuclear activities, but it was very

incomplete. In response, the United States made more

concessions. In June 2008, the United States agreed that

North Korea could delay declaring uranium enrichment

activities.

Further, even though the DPRK had not

complied with its February 2007 commitments, the United

States removed North Korea from the Trading with the

Enemy Act, informed Congress it would do the same with

the state sponsors of terrorism list, and signed into law an

ability to waive Glenn Amendment sanctions on North

Korea.

The revised declaration that North Korea submitted in

June 2008 was much fuller than its predecessor regarding

plutonium production, although silent on uranium

enrichment. Still, North Korea steadfastly refused the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, Initial

Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement, Beijing, February 13,

2007, available at www.fmprc.gov.cn.

Christopher R. Hill, Outpost, Life on the Frontlines of American

Diplomacy: A Memoir (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014), Chapter

19.

33 Occasional Paper

verification protocol that the United States deemed

necessary. The Six-Party Talks collapsed over the issue,

convening for the last time in November 2008.

On April 5, 2009, North Korea conducted a failed

satellite launch, which the UNSC condemned a week later.

One day after the UNSC action, on April 14, North Korea

declared that it would no longer participate in the Six-Party

Talks or be bound by any of its agreements, and expelled

IAEA and U.S. inspectors from the Yongbyon nuclear

complex. In May 2009, Pyongyang conducted its second

nuclear test.

Bilateral talks by the Obama Administration in 2009

aimed at restarting the Six-Party process came to nothing.

Nuclear-related international obligations on North Korea

were thereafter imposed by successive, increasingly strong,

UNSC sanctions resolutions, in response to both long-range

missile launches and to the third, fourth and fifth nuclear

tests in February 2013, January 2016 and September 2016.

International compliance with those resolutions severed

most North Korean external economic dealings; the most

important exceptions were those with China.

Supported

by China and the black market, and willing to subject its

population to severe hardship, North Korea consistently

violated all provisions of the UNSCRs.

New, far more troubling developments occurred in

Summer 2017. In July, North Korea tested two ICBMs; in

September, its sixth nuclear test was the most powerful

ever. The UNSC imposed additional, stronger sanctions,

See Scott Snyder, “U.S. Policy toward North Korea,” SERI Quarterly,

January 2013.

See Anthony Ruggiero, “Severing China-North Korea Financial Links,

April 2017,” Foundation for Defense of Democracy Analysis and

Commentary, available at www.defenddemocracy.org; and Victor Cha,

The Impossible State: North Korea Past and Future (New York: Harper

Collins, 2013), pp. 315-345.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 34

but failed to adopt the even stricter ones proposed by the

United States.

Early in President Trump’s Administration, the United

States announced a policy toward North Korea of

“maximum pressure and engagement,” under which it

increased sanctions but also expressed openness to

negotiations if Pyongyang would take concrete steps

toward reducing its weapons programs. In August 2017,

President Trump shifted to military threats, saying that

“’North Korea will be met with fire and fury like the world

has never seen,” should it make more threats against the

United States. A few days later, the President tweeted that

“’military solutions are now fully in place, locked and

loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.’”

On September

3, North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test, which its

claimed was of a thermonuclear weapon. That cannot be

confirmed, but experts assessed that the yield was over 100

kt., significantly higher than that of any previous North

Korean test and consistent with the thermonuclear claim. In

late 2017, the bellicose US and North Korean rhetoric

continued unabated, and the United States returned

Pyongyang to the State Sponsor of Terrorism list.

US-North Korean relations changed dramatically in the

next year, with the June 2018 meeting between the President

and Kim Jong-Un in Singapore. All previous US Presidents

had refused to meet with Kim Jong-Un, his father or

grandfather, absent significant change in North Korea’s

political and military behavior. The mere fact of the meeting

was a major concession by the United States. The Summit

Joint Statement repeated familiar themes:

1. The United States and the DPRK commit to

establish new US-DPRK relations;

Arms Control Association, Chronology of US-North Korean Nuclear and

Missile Diplomacy, July 2020, available at https://www.armscontrol.org.

35 Occasional Paper

2. The United States and the DPRK will join their

efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime

on the Korean Peninsula;

3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom

Declaration [with the South Korean President], the

DPRK commits to work toward complete

denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula;

4. The United States and the DPRK commit to

recovering POW/MIA remains, including the

immediate repatriation of those already

identified.

In a press conference after the Summit, the President

announced an end to joint military exercises with South

Korea, which he denounced as “provocative.”

President Trump and Kim Jong-Un met twice more over

the next year, in Hanoi (February 2019) and the Korean

Demilitarized Zone (June 2019). The latter visit was the first

time that a sitting US President stepped foot on North

Korean soil. The US cancelled a planned military exercise

with South Korea in October 2018 and indefinitely

postponed another in November 2019. Nevertheless, there

was no progress on denuclearization. Beginning in late

2019, North Korea refused further negotiations until the

United States ended its sanctions. It has conducted several

tests of missiles which can reach our East Asian allies, but

has not tested a nuclear warhead or ICBM since 2017. Its

reasons for not doing so are unknown, at least publicly.

“Joint Statement of President Donald J. Trump of the United States of

America and Chairman Kim Jong-Un of the Democratic People’s

Republic of Korea at the Singapore Summit,” June 12, 2018, available at

https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov.

US Embassy and Consulate in the Republic of Korea, “Press

Conference by President Trump,” June 12, 2018, available at

https://kr.usembassy.gov.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 36

Lessons Learned and

Strategies for the Future

This section provides answers to the questions introduced

at the start of this paper, identifies recurrent patterns in

noncompliance and response, and recommends strategies

for the future.

Questions

Did the character of the government committing the violation

incline it toward breaching the agreement?

The four case studies clearly demonstrate that authoritarian

regimes are more prone to noncompliance than others.

Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-Il and Hitler were completely

unaccountable domestically and determined to terminate—

or simply ignore—all external constraints on their

ambitions. While their aims were similar, their success

varied. Hitler was able to act as he wished until September

1939, especially because of British and French reluctance to

confront him militarily. Until 2009, Kim Jong-Il

occasionally chose to appear to cooperate—while violating

agreements clandestinely—in order to win as many

concessions as possible. From time to time, Saddam

Hussein was forced to come into compliance with some

obligations. In those instances, he seemed to do the

minimum possible in order to achieve an end to sanctions

and a subsequent reemergence of his WMD and longer-

range missile programs. A great irony is that the secretive,

authoritarian nature of the regime enabled Saddam Hussein

to keep the secret—the paucity of his WMD holdings by

2003—whose nondisclosure brought about his downfall.

The Weimar Republic was democratic, but its military

leaders retained the authoritarian characteristics of their

imperial predecessors and were determined to evade the

37 Occasional Paper

Versailles constraints. While it is unclear how much

Weimar political leaders knew about the military’s

noncompliance, they shared a common nationalism and

opposition to the Treaty. At the same time, the relative

weakness of the Weimar Government forced it to comply at

least to some extent when the Allies discovered violations

and took strong stands against them.

The Soviet governments responsible for the

Krasnoyarsk radar differed among themselves. The

traditional apparatchik regimes of Brezhnev, Andropov and

Chernenko were definitely authoritarian, and tended to

defer to the military’s stated requirements. Gorbachev’s

approach was quite different, wanting improved relations

with the United States more than it wanted to retain the

Krasnoyarsk radar. Gorbachev also aimed to curb military

spending, and his glasnost policy made it increasingly

difficult to pursue clandestine arms control violations.

Authoritarian regimes have little patience with arms

control constraints on their preferred actions, and do not

face an unruly democratic process in pursuit of violations.

That does not mean that democratic regimes assuredly will

comply with arms control agreements. As the Versailles

case study demonstrates, respect for the rule of law is more

important than democracy per se in inclining a government

to comply with arms control agreements. Although

democratic governments tend to have respect for the rule of

law, that is not inevitable—with consequent potentially

adverse results for compliance.

What did the violator hope to gain? What consequences did

it anticipate?

In at least three, and perhaps all, of the four cases, the

violator sought to create a basis for eventual freedom from

arms control constraints—whether through breakout,

withdrawal or mutual agreement of the parties. Thus, the

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 38

Weimar Republic military (and perhaps political)

leadership, and Hitler during his first two years in power,

worked to provide a foundation for a resurgent military

once the Versailles provisions were lifted. In 1935, Hitler

simply disavowed those provisions unilaterally.

Saddam Hussein also hoped to revive his WMD and

longer-range missile programs once the Gulf War sanctions

ended. Lifting sanctions would require only simple

changes to UNSCRs. By the late 1990s, Russia and China

showed considerable sympathy for doing so. The UNSC did

not go nearly that far, but agreed to progressive weakening

of sanctions through the Oil-for-Food program.

Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il and Km Jong-Un continued

their nuclear and ballistic missile programs throughout the

period of this report’s case study, little constrained by the

arms control agreements they concluded. The Agreed

Framework provided significant economic benefits even as

the North Koreans pursued their clandestine violations.

They almost certainly expected the same from the 2005 Joint

Statement, but were stymied by the other parties’ demands

for at least some verification. As a result, they ultimately

chose their nuclear and ballistic missile programs over the

political and economic benefits of the agreement. After the

collapse of the Six-Party Joint Statement, Pyongyang ceased

using arms control as a cover for its nuclear and missile

programs. North Korea has not even pretended to comply

with any of the UNSCRs against it – instead flaunting its

increasing, and increasingly threatening, violations.

The Krasnoyarsk radar case might, or might not, differ

from the other three regarding the fundamental aim(s) of

the violation. It would differ if the Soviet/Russian

explanation—that the location was chosen for financial and

convenience reasons—is true. But it would resemble the

other three if the underlying aim was to enable a territorial

defense. The actual motives may have been a combination

of the two. If the government wanted the Krasnoyarsk

39 Occasional Paper

radar to provide a critical element for a nationwide defense,

it would be very convenient if it saved time and money—

providing a comparatively benign alternative explanation

for the violation into the bargain.

The Weimar Republic and Saddam Hussein sought to

satisfy enforcers’ demands to the minimum extent

necessary when violations were detected. Both became

more cooperative when faced with the threat or reality of

military action, but neither completely came into

compliance. In contrast, North Korea responded to

detection with defiance, and was rewarded with new

concessions by the United States and its partners.

Particularly as “enforcement fatigue” grew through the

1920s and early 1930s, the Weimar Republic and then the

Nazi regime could expect that discovered violations would

not be severely punished. Saddam Hussein may have made

a similar gamble in the period leading up to the Second Gulf

War; that gamble did not pay off. Germany’s gamble did

pay off, until September 1939. We do not yet know the

eventual outcome for North Korea.

Here as well, the Krasnoyarsk case differs from the

others. The Soviets assumed the United States would

quickly discover the early stages of the radar’s construction,

but also wrongly expected that the United States would

consider it a minor technical violation, and accede to it.

Had the violator accepted the agreement willingly or under

duress? Was acceptance of the agreement the result of a

strategic decision or was it a tactical expedient?

The Weimar Republic and Iraq were forced to accept the

relevant agreements. Neither government ever considered

its disarmament obligations to be legitimate, and focused on

creating the basis for their termination.

In contrast, the Soviet Union was a full, willing

participant in the ABM Treaty. It appears to have done so

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 40

both as a tactical expedient and as a strategic decision,

seeing it as a means to constrain the U.S. Safeguard program

and to free resources for its offensive missile program.

There is no evidence that it considered construction of the

LPAR at Krasnoyarsk until some years after Treaty

signature.

North Korea was pressured by the Soviet Union to join

the NPT, but willingly agreed over time to the IAEA

Safeguards Agreement, the North-South Denuclearization

Agreement, the Agreed Framework and the 2005 Joint

Statement. In all of those instances, it did so strictly as a

tactical expedient—a convenient means to stave off

political, economic and even military costs, while gaining

economic and political benefits, all while maintaining

clandestine nuclear programs. The UNSCRs between 2006

and 2017 all were imposed on Pyongyang, and all have been

ignored.

Were there aspects of the agreement that increased the

likelihood of violations? Were there deficiencies in verification

capabilities that the violator could exploit?

The likelihood of violations was extremely high in three of

the four cases, above all because the violators never

accepted the agreements except on paper. The Versailles

Treaty and the UNSCRs were imposed on Germany and

Iraq, respectively. North Korea entered freely into its

denuclearization agreements, but had no intention of

complying with them. Here too the Krasnoyarsk case was

an exception. The Soviet Union was a willing party to the

ABM Treaty and saw much to gain from it. However, it

readily violated the Treaty when it found its provisions

inconvenient and/or it chose to create the basis for a

territorial defense.

Some features of agreements studied here also

contributed to violations. The depth and breadth of the

41 Occasional Paper

Versailles disarmament provisions made them impossible

to monitor fully. The absence of constraints on missiles

under 150 km range helped Iraq to maintain capabilities

that could be used later to develop and produce longer-

range missiles. The lack of ABM Treaty restrictions on

LPARs for purposes other than early warning or ABM led

at least some Russians to believe that they might succeed in

convincing the United States that the Krasnoyarsk radar

was for space track.

The four cases vary regarding verification capabilities.

The inspection teams of the Versailles IACCs were too small

to monitor compliance thoroughly and were hampered by

the German liaison committee. After the last occupying

troops were withdrawn in 1926, and the IACCs dissolved a

year later, Allies were left only with their rather limited

national intelligence capabilities.

The ABM Treaty provided for no verification other than

National Technical Means (NTM.) Yet on-site measures

would not have helped to find the Krasnoyarsk radar; only

NTM could do that. On-site inspections would have helped

to judge any internal conversion progress, but NTM were

adequate to confirm that the site was essentially destroyed.

On paper, UNSCOM and the IAEA had unlimited

power to monitor Iraq’s WMD and prohibited missile

programs and ensure their termination. In practice,

however, they were continually hampered by Iraqi

obstructionism, by their inability to threaten military action,

and over time, by differences among the UNSC members.

Iraq did not significantly increase its openness and

cooperation until the threat of military invasion loomed in

November 2002; even then, it was far from fully

transparent.

Finally, North Korea systematically refused to accept

effective verification of its nuclear program. While a few

facilities were subject to IAEA and/or U.S. monitoring from

time to time, those did not cover all of Pyongyang’s nuclear

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 42

facilities or activities. Most overt North Korean violations

of its nuclear agreements concerned monitoring measures.

The UNSCRs against North Korea do not include any

verification measures.

Were the proscribed capabilities easy or hard to conceal?

Could they be clandestinely obtained from third parties?

In three of the four cases, many violations were relatively

easy to conceal, although for different reasons. The extent

of the Versailles provisions and German obstructionism

made it virtually impossible to gather complete, accurate

information on Treaty implementation. Further, many

proscribed capabilities could be developed under civilian

cover. Finally, the Treaty did not prohibit German arms

development and production abroad.

In Iraq, it was ironically not so much the proscribed

chemical, biological and missile capabilities that were easy

to conceal, as the fact that most had been destroyed. Nuclear

was different. After the Kemal defection in 1995, Iraq was

largely forthcoming about its nuclear programs, leaving the

IAEA with only a few outstanding questions by early 2003.

A “foreign national”—identified unofficially as A.Q.

Khan—offered nuclear assistance to Iraq in October 1990,

but there is no evidence that Iraq accepted the offer. The ISG

found considerably more evidence of clandestine Iraqi

procurement and technical assistance for its missile

programs, especially from North Korea, Russia and Syria.

The uniquely closed nature of the North Korean regime

and nation, combined with its mountainous topography

and the weaknesses of the verification measures to which it

was subject, made it easy to conceal its nuclear holdings,

facilities and activities. North Korea also worked closely

with A.Q. Khan, and some observers believe that its ballistic

missile cooperation with Iran extended to nuclear issues,

especially after its first nuclear test in 2006.

43 Occasional Paper

Once again, the Krasnoyarsk case was different. NTM

should have quickly detected the huge radar complex. The

United States has never explained why it failed to do so.

When detected, was the violation blatant or plausibly

ambiguous? Were its consequences seen as serious or

relatively unimportant?

The Weimar Republic violations were often ambiguous, and

viewed by the British as unimportant. The French, on the

other hand, saw every shortcoming as serious. Few

observers understood the strategic purpose behind the

Weimar violations and circumventions of the Treaty. In

contrast, Hitler’s 1935 disavowal of the Versailles

disarmament provisions was as blatant as possible. The

Allies agreed that his action was very serious, but

responded with appeasement—setting in motion a cycle

that was not broken until September 1939.

The Krasnoyarsk violation was blatant, in its illegal

location and orientation for an early-warning radar. The

Reagan and Bush Administrations also found it

unambiguous that the radar had a battle management

purpose, and that it violated the Treaty as soon as

construction started. Many Congressional and outside

observers disagreed with those two findings, and tended to

view the violation as less serious than the Executive Branch

did.

Some Iraqi violations were blatant, including those

concerning its obligations to provide “full, final and

complete” declarations of its prohibited programs, and to

allow unrestricted access to inspectors. The most important

question, however, remained unanswered until after the

Second Gulf War: whether Iraq retained significant

quantities of, and capabilities for, WMD and prohibited

missiles. Well before that war, UNSC permanent members

disagreed on the significance of Iraq’s violations and

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 44

outstanding issues. Russia, China and France were ready to

lift many or all sanctions. For the United States and United

Kingdom, in contrast, the belief that Iraq retained

substantial quantities of WMD and related programs was

reason to go to war.

North Korea’s verification violations were

unambiguous, but many interlocutors did not consider

them to be very serious. In contrast, North Korea’s pursuit

of nuclear weapons and fissile material production was

always extremely serious and became more blatant over

time. Still, many aspects of it remained—and still remain—

unknown.

Was the response to the violation undertaken by one or

multiple parties? Were there differences within the

government, or within and among the governments,

responding to the violation? Were there differing assessments

of the violation and possible responses?

Of the four case studies, only the ABM Treaty was bilateral.

The United States Government remained firm and united in

demanding dismantlement of the Krasnoyarsk radar.

Nevertheless, U.S. agencies differed on how to respond to

the violation. The Defense Department favored an end to

the interim restraint policy; the State Department, opposed

that action. State and Defense also differed on whether to

declare the Soviet Union in material breach of the Treaty

and on the emphasis to put on the territorial defense issue.

The final White House responses tended to be compromises

between State and Defense.

Although there were many parties to the Versailles

Treaty, monitoring and enforcement of disarmament were

left to the United Kingdom and France. During the Weimar

Republic, they were most effective in inducing compliance

on the few occasions when they acted together, especially

by threatening new or continued military occupation. After

1935, Britain and France more often took a common

45 Occasional Paper

approach to German violations, but it was one of

appeasement.

The response to Iraq’s violations was centered in the

UNSC, composed of five permanent members and 10 for

two-year terms. Over the period of this case study, 64 states

held UNSC seats. The large number of participants meant

that unity of purpose was very difficult to sustain. The

United States and United Kingdom insisted on complete

Iraqi compliance with UNSCR 687 before sanctions could be

lifted, although they accepted the Oil-for-Food program.

France and Russia, in contrast, wanted sanctions to be lifted

gradually, in exchange for what they saw as significant, if

incomplete, compliance with its disarmament obligations.

International responses to North Korea’s nuclear

violations were undertaken first by the IAEA and

eventually the UNSC. UNSC sanctions strengthened over

time, as North Korea repeatedly violated the resolutions.

International compliance with the resolutions also

strengthened; China was an important exception. For much

of the period of this case study, United States Government

agencies differed within and among themselves on whether

to emphasize sanctions or concessions vis-à-vis North

Korea. That dynamic was observed in the run-up to the

Agreed Framework, and especially between the 2005 Joint

Statement and the end of the George W. Bush

Administration. The Bush Administration multilateral

approach was a response to the failure of the Agreed

Framework, but the Six-Party Talks were no more

successful in inducing North Korea compliance than were

the Agreed Framework or the later UNSCRs.

What types of responses to the violation were considered or

adopted? How effective were those that were pursued?

The main responses to the Weimar Republic violations of

the Versailles Treaty disarmament provisions were either

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 46

inaction or actual or threatened military occupation.

Economic sanctions were not seriously considered. In the

1930s, inaction and accommodation became the primary

responses. In 1935, the British and French proposed to

Germany a new treaty providing for equal force limits,

which would have totally overturned the Versailles

disarmament provisions. Hitler did not respond to the

proposal.

The principal Reagan Administration responses to

Soviet arms control noncompliance (including, but not

limited to, the Krasnoyarsk radar) were abandonment of the

interim restraint policy, and maintenance of the strategic

modernization and SDI programs. Economic sanctions

were apparently not considered. Diplomatically, the

Reagan Administration linked the completion of new arms

control agreements to resolution of compliance concerns,

but relaxed that policy when convenient. The most effective

response may simply have been the constant diplomatic

pressure at the highest levels.

The main responses to Iraq’s violations included

economic sanctions, strengthening of inspections, and the

threat to use military force. Although the use of military

force in 1998 proved counterproductive, the threat in

November 2002 of much greater military force inspired Iraq

to increased—if still incomplete—compliance.

For most of the period of the North Korea case study,

the United States and its partners adopted a range of

responses to Pyongyang’s violations. A combination of

diplomatic pressure, the threat of military action, and

political and economic inducements led to the Agreed

Framework. After the collapse of that agreement and North

Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT, the United States

imposed some sanctions, but also resumed negotiations in

the Six-Party Talks. When North Korea balked at required

monitoring, the United States offered repeated political and

economic inducements and verification compromises—to

47 Occasional Paper

no avail. From 2009 through 2017, the only significant

responses to North Korea’s nuclear and missile

provocations came from the UNSC, which imposed

progressively stricter economic and financial sanctions on

the country. The Trump Administration adopted a very

different approach in 2018, granting Kim Jong-Un the long-

sought meetings with the President that the United States

had always refused. Whatever the response, there was no

change to North Korea’s consistent pattern of

noncompliance.

If the response involved inducements as well as penalties, was

the combination was more effective than either alternative

alone?

All four case studies involved some inducements as well as

penalties. However, in the only successful case—the

Krasnoyarsk radar—the United States response lacked

tailored inducements or penalties. The most important

factor was probably the general promise of a more

productive relationship with the West if the issue was

resolved.

In the Versailles case, the most effective penalty was the

threat to maintain or undertake military occupation, but it

was used sparingly. The first noticeable inducement was

the Locarno Treaty, but the Allies never sought to link it to

German compliance. The British and French response to

violations in the 1930s consisted of accommodations and

inducements, without any penalties.

In the Iraq case, UNSC economic sanctions were the core

penalty; the promise to lift them in exchange for full

compliance was the intended inducement. As years passed,

Russia, China and France became increasingly supportive

of lifting sanctions. While most sanctions still were

retained, some were eased in the Oil-for-Food program. In

1998, the United States and United Kingdom turned to

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 48

military action to punish Iraqi noncompliance, but it was

ineffective. Iraq reacted more cooperatively to the threat of

much greater military force in November 2002, but its

reaction was too little, too late.

The United States and (beginning in 2006) the UNSC

levied progressively stronger economic, financial and

political sanctions against North Korea. The United States

also promised or provided inducements aimed at North

Korean acceptance of verifiable denuclearization.

Inducements ceased for several years after the collapse of

the Six-Party Talks. In 2018, President Trump made an

unprecedented political concession to North Korea, treating

Kim Jong-Un as his equal. Despite all of those different

approaches, the outcome remained the same: continued

North Korean defiance of its disarmament obligations and

major progress in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

10.

What tools and tactics were available to the violator to inhibit,

fend off, or withstand a response? Which were chosen and

why?

The Weimar Republic used a combination of secrecy,

circumvention, evasion and obstruction of inspections to

fend off a response. When the government felt forced, it

complied to the minimum necessary to avoid or curtail

military occupation. Hitler also relied on secrecy to inhibit

Allied response, but for a contrary purpose; instead of

understating his military power, he overstated it. The bluff

worked, until 1939.

Because the Krasnoyarsk radar could not be hidden, the

Soviets at first lied about its purpose. When that failed, they

tried a series of negotiated fallbacks. Ultimately, they

admitted the violation and effectively destroyed the radar.

Iraq extensively used secrecy and obstruction to avoid

compliance, while still hoping for relief from penalties.

Initially the penalties were economic sanctions; in 2002, the

49 Occasional Paper

greatest threat was military force. Saddam Hussein’s

secrecy gave the impression that he had more military

capabilities than was the case. Iraq also offered economic

incentives to Russia, France and China to encourage them

to lift economic sanctions.

The authoritarian nature of the Nazi and Iraqi made it

easier for them to maintain secrecy about their

noncompliance. The extreme totalitarianism of North Korea

enabled it to go much further, ignoring its arms control

obligations despite devastating economic damage. The

closed nature of the regime, and the weakness of

monitoring made it difficult for other states to confirm

violations until Pyongyang revealed them. A final critical

factor was China’s unwillingness to enforce sanctions

strictly, lest the regime collapse.

11.

Were there important asymmetries in the stakes and resolve

between the violator and the enforcer(s) that had a significant

influence on the outcome of the case?

In the Versailles case, Germany had a powerful stake in

restoring what it saw as its rightful status as a great power.

Until the mid-1920s, France had at least as strong a stake in

preventing Germany from achieving its ambitions. Great

Britain’s main aim at that time was to restore stability in

Europe, making it sympathetic to some of the German

goals. After Locarno, France grew closer to the more relaxed

British attitude toward compliance. That developed into

appeasement after Hitler’s disavowal of the Versailles

disarmament provisions.

The stakes and resolve of the Soviet Union and the

United States for much of the Krasnoyarsk case were

strikingly symmetrical: one was determined to retain the

radar, and the other to see it dismantled. The violation

ended when the United States’ resolve proved longer-

lasting than that of the Soviets. The change in Soviet policy

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 50

might not have happened if the Gorbachev Government

had not come to power.

Saddam Hussein had an overriding stake in the survival

of his regime and ability to deter regional adversaries,

especially Iran. Few UNSC members had equally strong

stakes in Iraqi compliance with the UNSC arms control

obligations. The exceptions were the United States and

United Kingdom, which were willing to go to war at least

in part because of Iraq’s apparent retention of chemical and

biological weapons and missiles of 150 km range or greater.

Saddam Hussein almost certainly miscalculated the

strength of the two countries’ resolve.

It is difficult to imagine more determination than that of

the Kims in their pursuit of nuclear weapons and delivery

capabilities. No price thus far has deterred them from these

programs, which they view as essential to the regime’s

survival. While the United States, Japan, South Korea, and

the international community have a strong stake in an end

to the North’s nuclear threat, they have yet to define

effective and acceptable options to achieve that outcome.

Much may depend on China. Thus far, it has demonstrated

an overriding stake in avoiding regime collapse in

Pyongyang and peninsula reunification under a

government allied with the United States. North Korea’s

ability to retain and advance its nuclear and missile

capabilities might wane if China decided that nuclear North

Korea posed a greater threat – at least in part because it

might induce Japan and South Korea to acquire nuclear

weapons.

12.

Why did deterrence of the violation fail? Why did efforts to

restore compliance succeed or fail?

In none of the four cases were the violations deterred. All

of the violators expected, at least initially, that the benefits

would outweigh the costs. Germany, Iraq and North Korea

51 Occasional Paper

all believed that they could avoid detection, and that the

responses would not be unduly severe if the violations were

discovered. North Korea has yet to change that view.

Germany was ultimately severely punished, but for its

territorial aggression rather than Versailles violations. Only

Iraq paid a severe price for its violations, even though those

ironically did not include retention of large WMD

capabilities. Unlike the other three, the Soviet Union

expected that its violation would be quickly discovered, but

that the United States would view it as a technical issue and

allow it to continue.

The Krasnoyarsk case is also the only one of the four

where efforts to restore compliance – or at least efforts short

of war – succeeded. Two factors were primarily responsible

for that positive, and rare, outcome. Most important was

the firmness with which the United States held, year after

year, to its position that the radar must be dismantled. The

second factor was the coming to power of Mikhail

Gorbachev.

The difference in stakes among the main states

concerned appears to have been the primary reason that

compliance enforcement failed in Germany. During the

Weimar period, only the threat of military occupation had

much effect in inducing compliance. Yet neither Britain nor

France had an interest in continuing occupation past 1926.

After Hitler came to power, early military action might have

been effective, at least in demilitarizing the Rhineland. Still,

subsequent history suggests that nothing short of all-out

conflict could thwart Hitler’s territorial ambitions over the

long term—if he remained in power.

In Iraq, differences in stakes also were major factors in

the failure of compliance enforcement. As time passed,

Russia, China and France encouraged Saddam Hussein to

believe that sanctions might be lifted—or at least

substantially weakened—despite continued non-

compliance. These same states argued that false

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 52

declarations, obstruction of inspections, and occasional

discovery of small amounts of WMD and other prohibited

items were not major violations requiring retention of full

sanctions—let alone enforcement by military force.

Another essential factor was that Iraq largely met the central

obligation of the UNSCRs in secret. The outcome probably

would have been substantially different if Iraq had

disclosed, and opened to inspection, its chemical, biological

and missile activities, including unilateral destruction, to

the same extent as it disclosed its nuclear program. Finally,

the strange history of Iraq’s deceptions and obstruction

from 1991 to 2003 would not have been possible without the

authoritarian regime and nature of Saddam Hussein.

North Korea’s regime was even more authoritarian, able

to continue its violations despite the severe economic

impact on the population. It also was free from outside

inspections, except for the limited, on-and-off IAEA

presence until April 2009. Asymmetries in the parties’

resolve were also critical. The Kims saw their nuclear

weapons program as critical to their regime’s survival. Only

one or both of two developments – each posing greater risks

to their survival—might have persuaded them to come into

compliance: a credible, major U.S. military threat, and/or a

withdrawal of Chinese support. As of this writing, North

Korea has not had to confront that choice.

Patterns of Noncompliance and Response

Each of the four case studies was unique. At the same time,

they have enough commonalities to allow us to identify

patterns of noncompliance and response.

First, authoritarian regimes are more prone to

noncompliance than democratic governments. They have

little if any respect for the rule of law, are secretive, and

unaccountable to anyone but themselves. They have

53 Occasional Paper

absolute power over the government and population, and

brook no dissent.

Next, governments are more likely to violate

agreements that they are forced to accept. The Weimar

Republic was democratic, but never accepted the legitimacy

of the Versailles Treaty. Political leaders were either

sympathetic to the military’s determination to evade Treaty

constraints, or too weak to resist in the light of popular

support for the military.

Difficult though it may be to admit, countries that are

thoroughly defeated in war may be more prepared to accept

victors’ demands than others. The likelihood of Iraqi

compliance with UNSCR transparency obligations after the

First Gulf War was low from the start, when Saddam

Hussein remained in power. While Germany had a new,

democratic government after World War I, the country had

not been invaded, its infrastructure was intact, and many

military leaders were still in place. As a result, the military

leadership and a large part of the population refused to

admit that Germany had been defeated or that the Versailles

Treaty was legitimate. Contrast West Germany after World

War II, which readily accepted disarmament, Allied

occupation, and the 1948 Basic Law (essentially the

constitution), drafted at Allied insistence and heavily

influenced by U.S. officials.

Asymmetries in stakes and resolve among the parties

may be the most critical determinants of noncompliance. In

the Versailles Treaty and North Korea cases, the violators’

stake in noncompliance generally was far greater than the

enforcers’ stake in compliance. In the Iraq case, the same

was true for many years, until the United States and United

Kingdom—but not most other members of the First Gulf

War coalition—chose to go to war. Germany in the 1920s

wanted to restore national greatness. Saddam Hussein and

Kim Jong-Il believed their regimes were at stake, and sought

(temporary) compromise only when they were threatened

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 54

militarily. On the other hand, Britain and France were

simply tired of Versailles compliance enforcement by 1927,

several UNSC members wanted after a few years to return

to normal (and economically beneficial) relations with Iraq,

and the United States moved from threats to inducements

after the signature of the Agreed Framework.

In the fourth case, the dynamics were quite different.

The Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administration’s stake

in demanding compliance with arms control agreements

was initially just as strong as the Soviet Union’s stake in

retaining the Krasnoyarsk radar. Ultimately, U.S. resolve

proved longer-lasting—although the Soviet Union might

have remained more resistant if it were not for the change

to the Gorbachev Government.

Three of the four cases demonstrate that where

compliance is elusive—as with authoritarian regimes or

those who accepted the agreement under duress – the most

effective inducement may be the threat of military action,

whether occupation or attack. Only in the Iraqi case,

however, did two of the main parties, the United States and

United Kingdom, follow through with actual invasion.

While that certainly resolved the compliance issues, the

price was enormous.

It may be stating the obvious, but compliance is

generally easier to enforce for bilateral than multilateral

agreements. The only successful case studied in this report

is also the only purely bilateral one. U.S. Allies were

skeptical about the seriousness of the Krasnoyarsk

violation. If they had been parties to the ABM Treaty, it is

questionable whether they would have demanded for over

six years that the radar be dismantled.

While the Versailles Treaty had many parties, only the

United Kingdom and France were important to

enforcement of the disarmament provisions. They were

allies, and few in number, yet in the 1920s, they disagreed

more often than not on compliance issues – differences that

55 Occasional Paper

the Weimar Government was able to exploit. During the

next decade, they tended more to be in agreement, but in

favor of inaction and appeasement.

The UNSCRs on Iraq involved many states. Of the

permanent UNSC members, only the United States and

United Kingdom remained firm in demanding complete

Iraqi compliance.

North Korea’s nuclear obligations were a hybrid, but

primarily multilateral. The NPT, IAEA Safeguards

Agreement and UNSCs involve most states in the world.

The Agreed Framework was bilateral, but South Korea and

Japan were critical to its implementation. The Six-Party

Talks were obviously multilateral, but the United States led

in both demands and concessions. The North Korean case

fully demonstrates that a bilateral, or clearly U.S.-led,

agreement by no means guarantees either compliance or a

firm response to noncompliance.

Finally, violations of arms control agreements are

difficult—and perhaps nearly impossible—to deter. One

might argue that the case studies in this report are a skewed

sample, because they all involve noncompliance. However,

arms control agreements over the past 100-plus years that

were never violated are rare indeed. The demilitarization

of Germany and Japan were exceptions, but in both cases,

the leadership and the population embraced that outcome

only after the devastation of the Second World War.

Fear of detection and response had some deterrent effect

in the Weimar and Iraqi cases, but that was by no means

complete. When discovered, the violators sought to

appease the enforcers through partial compliance. The

same was true of North Korea, although its compliance

concessions were even more limited than those of Iraq or

Weimar Germany. Finally, expectation of detection did not

deter the Soviets from building the Krasnoyarsk radar; they

simply assumed an acceptable response.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 56

Colin Gray’s “arms control paradox” may well be at

work: “Arms control regimes worthy of the name are

achievable only between states who do not need them.

…The motive to cooperate is overridden by the motive to

compete. The arms control paradox argues that the reasons

why states may require the moderating influence of an arms

control regime are the very reasons why such a regime will

be unattainable.”

Strategies for the Future

The patterns of noncompliance and response in the four

case studies of this report amply underscore the difficulty

of securing compliance with arms control agreements. In

no case were violations prevented. In only one was the

violation resolved peacefully. In a second case, violations

were resolved—and full information discovered—only as a

result of war. In a third, they have yet to be resolved. And

in the fourth, the continuing violations significantly

contributed to the growth of German power and ambition,

and therefore to the outbreak of World War II.

No foolproof strategy seems likely to deter, or to

respond effectively to, all arms control cheating. However,

we can seek better to secure compliance. Following are

recommendations for approaches to future arms control

agreements, based on the patterns of noncompliance and

response found in this study:

• Determine the national interest to be served by the

proposed agreement.

It is tempting to conclude that the best way to avoid

noncompliance with arms control agreements or with

obligations imposed by UNSCRs is not to enter into them.

Sometimes that will be an option. For example, it is

Colin S. Gray, House of Cards: Why Arms Control Must Fail (Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 27.

57 Occasional Paper

questionable whether the United States derived significant

national security benefits from the Interim Agreement,

SALT II or the ABM Treaty. The military benefits, if any,

were small; the political benefits of detente were

dramatically reduced after the invasion of Afghanistan and

Soviet violations of the agreements. In other instances, the

agreement is in the national interest. In still other cases, the

agreement may be necessary, especially to resolve or end a

conflict peacefully.

Therefore, the first element of a strategy to secure

compliance with arms control agreements must be a clear-

headed analysis of whether the agreement serves the

national interest. If it does not, the effort should not be

pursued, no matter how politically popular it might be.

• Develop effective monitoring and verification

provisions.

If a potential agreement passes the first test, the next task

would be to prepare for noncompliance. Some agreements

may not lend themselves to verification and will inevitably

be violated, but might still be valuable for setting

international norms. The Biological Weapons Convention

is a good example. For most agreements, however, the

Reagan Administration maxim of “trust but verify” should

be amended, in light of the case studies covered here, to

“verify but still don’t trust.” The party entering the

agreement should carefully develop the monitoring and

verification measures required to deter and detect any

cheating, no matter how unlikely it might appear at the

time. As an example, the INF Treaty was of indefinite

duration. All U.S. and Soviet ground-based INF missiles

were to be destroyed within three years of Treaty entry into

force, and verification provisions were to continue for

another ten years. At the time, ten years seemed adequate

or better. That was shown not to be the case when the

Russian violation was announced 15 years after INF

verification ended.

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 58

In devising verification measures, a party should not

assume that weaker provisions are acceptable because of

improved relations with the other party. The dramatic

changes in U.S. relations with Russia since the fall of the

Soviet Union demonstrate how foolhardy that can be.

On-site monitoring may not be possible for some arms

control instruments, such as the UNSCRs on North Korea.

In those cases, every effort should be made to ensure that

the resolution empowers member states to enforce its

provisions, consistent with international law. For example,

the September 2017 resolution passed after the sixth North

Korean nuclear test strengthens earlier UNSC provisions

encouraging all states to interdict ships carrying cargo

suspected of violating the resolution.

• Understand the motives of the potential violator

The experiences with the Versailles Treaty and the Iraq

cease-fire resolution demonstrate that it is particularly

difficult to ensure compliance by a party that is forced to

accept a post-war agreement, but has not been destroyed in

the war. This is not to argue that war aims should always

include destruction and regime overthrow, but that the

compliance implications should be carefully considered – at

a minimum before concluding the conflict, and in devising

the peace settlement or armistice arrangements. The threat

of military occupation was the most effective sanction in

Germany for the short term, but may have fueled anti-

Versailles resentment over the longer term. Former deputy

head of UNSCOM Charles Duelfer argues that the UNSC’s

inability to make military threats against Iraq seriously

weakened the inspection system. Yet Operation Desert

Fox, the 1998 military operation by the United States and

United Kingdom in response to Iraqi obstructionism, was

counterproductive. Perhaps the most effective approach

would be to require armed military escorts for post-conflict

inspectors, with authorization to use force if necessary. As

59 Occasional Paper

a last resort, national rights to use force to compel

compliance should be recognized.

• Understand the costs and benefits of multilateral

versus bilateral agreements.

The case studies in this report also demonstrate that it is

more difficult to secure compliance with multilateral

agreements than with bilateral. In some instances, such as

the UNSCRs on Iraq and North Korea, there is no

alternative to multilateral approaches. In others such as the

Six-Party Talks, a multilateral agreement might be

preferable, in order to involve all of the states required to

enforce compliance. If a multilateral agreement is either

preferable or necessary, compliance enforcement might be

improved with carefully-developed rules for inspectors’

rights, responsibilities and decision procedures. If

international commissions analogous to UNSCOM and

UNMOVIC are created to carry out monitoring, their

leadership should be chosen carefully for expertise and

dedication, not to satisfy political desiderata such as national

representation.

• Identify in advance likely violations and potential

responses

Further, the United States must consider what violations

might be most likely and what it would do if they occur. An

important vehicle to assist that would be an arms control

“Red Team” to anticipate potential noncompliance and

propose responses. Such a Red Team would be most useful

if it was involved from the start, with critical input into the

decision whether to pursue negotiations in the first place.

Anticipation of potential violations and responses

would be both technically and politically difficult. For

example, when the ABM Treaty was signed, an illegal LPAR

was thought to be very unlikely because of the expected

ease of detection. Politically, a government might be

reluctant to let it be known that it is preparing to respond to

Securing Compliance with Arms Control Agreements 60

arms control cheating. Yet that would send an essential

deterrent message to a potential violator. Moreover, given

the noncompliance record so far, the United States

Executive Branch might be compelled to undertake such

advance planning before the Senate would give advice and

consent to ratification of a new arms control agreement.

Identification of likely violations and preferred responses

would be especially difficult for multilateral agreements.

Still, the UNSC provisions on interdiction are a start.

Moreover, the United States must make clear that it will

respond decisively to arms control violations. In doing so,

it must not establish red lines that it is not prepared to

honor. Messages of intent to respond must be clear and

credible to be effective.

Conclusion

No foolproof strategy is available to deter or otherwise

prevent future violations of arms control agreements, or to

ensure effective responses to cheating. However, we can

seek to improve our ability to prevent violations and restore

compliance.

An important lesson from the cases studied in this paper

is that the single most important factor behind peaceful

resolution of noncompliance issues may be that the enforcer

feels as great a stake in compliance as the violator in

noncompliance. It is ironic that some of the most vocal

proponents of arms control are often eager to excuse

violations, or to dismiss them as unimportant, with the goal

of sustaining the agreement. But the agreement may be

meaningless or actually damaging to national security if it

is violated.

Calling for a vigorous, consistent response to

compliance does not mean that enforcers should always be

ready to withdraw from the Treaty or to go to war to end

the violation(s). However, a consistent, unwavering

61 Occasional Paper

insistence on compliance, with an accompanying promise

of improved relations if the issue is resolved satisfactorily,

may have a real positive impact. Contrast the outcome in

the case of the Krasnoyarsk radar with that achieved in the

repeated agreement-violation-concessions cycle observed

over many years in United States arms control relations

with North Korea.

In addition, the recommendations presented here might

strengthen parties’ ability to prevent violations and restore

compliance. It may seem unduly simplistic and obvious to

argue that we should enter into arms control negotiations

only if those are clearly in the national interest. However, a

careful examination and analysis of that question could well

help to give the parties a greater stake in compliance with

any resultant agreement. Implementation of the

recommendations here would take considerable effort, but

would be well worth it if they enhanced the chances of

securing compliance.

About the Author

Dr. Susan Koch is a National Institute Senior Scholar

specializing in weapons of mass destruction arms control

and proliferation issues. She is a Distinguished Research

Fellow at the National Defense University Center for the

Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction and an associate

faculty member in the Department of Defense and Strategic

Studies at Missouri State University. From 1982 until 2007,

Dr. Koch held a series of senior positions in the White

House National Security Council Staff, the Office of the

Secretary of Defense, the Department of State and the U.S.

Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, focused on

nonproliferation and arms reduction policy. Dr. Koch

began her government career in the Directorate of

Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency, analyzing

West European political issues. Dr. Koch has received the

Presidential Distinguished Executive Award, the

Presidential Meritorious Executive Award, the Department

of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Medal five times,

the Department of Defense Nunn-Lugar Trailblazer Award,

and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

Distinguished Honor Award. Dr. Koch received a B.A.

from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in

political science from Harvard University.

Recently published by the National Institute Press:

Books

Michaela Dodge, U.S.-Czech Missile Defense Cooperation: Alliance Politics

in Action, 2020

Keith B. Payne, Shadows on the Wall: Deterrence and Disarmament, 2020

David J. Trachtenberg, The Lawgivers’ Struggle: How Congress Wields

Power in National Security Decision Making, 2020

Occasional Papers

Keith B. Payne and Michaela Dodge, Stable Deterrence and Arms Control

in a New Era, Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2021

Steve Lambakis, Space as a Warfighting Domain: Reshaping Policy to

Execute 21

Century Spacepower, Vol. 1, No. 8, August 2021

Matthew Costlow, A Net Assessment of “No First Use” and “Sole Purpose”

Nuclear Policies, Vol. 1, No. 7, July 2021

David J. Trachtenberg, Michaela Dodge and Keith B. Payne, The

“Action-Reaction” Arms Race Narrative vs. Historical Realities, Vol. 1, No.

6, June 2021

Matthew Costlow, Safety in Diversity: The Strategic Value of ICBMs and

the GBSD in the Nuclear Triad, Vol. 1, No. 5, May 2021

David J. Trachtenberg, Congress’ Role in National Security Decision

Making and the Executive-Legislative Dynamic, Vol. 1, No. 4, April 2021

Bradley A. Thayer, The PRC’s New Strategic Narrative as Political

Warfare: Causes and Implications for the United States, Vol. 1, No. 3,

March 2021

Michaela Dodge, Russia’s Influence Operations in the Czech Republic

During the Radar Debate and Beyond, Vol. 1, No. 2, February 2021

Keith B. Payne, Redefining Stability for the New Post-Cold War Era, Vol. 1,

No. 1, January 2021

Information Series

Keith B. Payne, “Cultivating Intellectual Capital – Linking Deterrence

Practitioner to Academician,” No. 506, October 2021

Matthew R. Costlow, “The Folly of Limiting U.S. Missile Defenses for

Nuclear Arms Control,” No. 505, October 2021

Steven Lambakis, “Missile Defense and the Space Arena,” No. 504,

October 2021

David J. Trachtenberg, “Clarifying the Issue of Nuclear Weapons

Release Authority,” No. 503, September 2021

David J. Trachtenberg, “Deterrence Implications of the U.S.

Withdrawal from Afghanistan,” No. 502, September 2021