Disarmament and International Security: Where Do We Stand and Ways to Move Forward?

Overview of the Event

This event is an “anniversary edition” of an International Security Dialogue, held after the UN’s Week of Disarmament (the last week of October). Organizers frame disarmament as a pressing humanitarian and security issue amid a deteriorating international environment, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key context points include:

• Conflicts increasingly occur within states rather than between states.
• Civilian harm remains high.
• Military spending is at historically high levels.
• The non-proliferation regime is under threat.

Core UN Theme: “Our Common Future”

A key theme is the UN Secretary-General’s disarmament agenda, “Our Common Future” (disarmament action for sustainable peace), presented through four pillars:

1. Disarmament that saves humanity
2. Disarmament that saves lives
3. Disarmament that protects future generations
4. Disarmament that strengthens partnerships

What Keeps Experts “Awake at Night” (Disarmament Challenges)

Professor Marcus Conrads: Disarmament failures across weapon categories

Professor Marcus Conrads argues that while nuclear weapons are the most visible concern, disarmament failures span all weapon categories:

• Small arms and light weapons

  • Account for a large share of violent deaths.
  • Are globally widespread and difficult to control, with large numbers in civilian hands.
  • Progress toward disarmament is limited.

• Conventional weapons

  • Treaties exist for certain highly harmful weapons (e.g., landmines and cluster munitions).
  • However, verification and enforcement gaps and incomplete effectiveness reduce impact.

• Biological and chemical weapons

  • Prohibition norms exist via:
    • the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)
    • the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)
  • Yet there are implementation “holes,” including examples where chemical attacks, according to investigations cited, are attributed to different actors.

• Nuclear weapons

  • Nuclear disarmament is described as paradoxically less straightforward than other categories.
  • The NPT reflects competing priorities:
    • a non-proliferation focus for nuclear-armed states
    • arms control / Article 6 expectations for others
  • There is no consensus on priority-setting.
  • The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is described as a humanitarian success, but none of the nuclear-weapon states participate.

Rejecting fatalism and reframing security

Conrads rejects fatalism—i.e., “it’s just great-power politics”—and points to a more hopeful trend: civil society and humanitarian-law-oriented advocacy. This includes:

• the humanitarian approach that supported landmine/cluster munitions efforts
• the pathway that culminated in the nuclear prohibition treaty

He also highlights emerging attention to autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons, arguing that security should be reframed as:

security for humanity and human beings, not only national deterrence calculations

Multilateralism and the Erosion of Arms Control

Professor Haines Gärtner: Polarization without multilateralism

Professor Haines Gärtner links disarmament to the broader collapse of multilateral trust. She characterizes today’s environment as “polarization without multilateralism”, likening it to a “new Cold War” dynamic—while emphasizing a three-pole/polarity complexity involving the U.S., China, and Russia.

Additional concerns include:

• The concept of an “alliance of democracies” is portrayed as exclusive rather than truly multilateral, and potentially hypocritical if partners do not consistently share the same values.

Arms control weakening within polarization

Within this polarization, multilateral arms control is weakening:

• Many relevant treaties are unratified or effectively sidelined by major players, limiting momentum.
• Nuclear arms control is largely absent in practice.
  • The discussion references the SORT / Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty as a remaining significant constraint (warhead limits), framed more as a freeze than deep reductions.
• ABM Treaty withdrawal (U.S.) is described as undermining deterrence stability by enabling first-strike incentives.
• The INF Treaty eliminated an entire class of intermediate-range nuclear weapons, but it has been abrogated.
  • New deployments are discussed as likely fueling an arms race, especially in Asia, with potential spillover to Europe.
• Hypersonic weapons are described as especially destabilizing:
  • they blur nuclear vs. conventional roles
  • they are difficult to categorize/verify using traditional arms-control mechanisms
  • this increases risks of accelerating reactions and automatic arms races

Gärtner’s overall warning is that arms-race logic has shifted from responding to what the other side has to responding to what the other side might have in the future, making restraint harder.

Final Framing and Implied Direction Forward

Across both interventions, the discussion suggests that the most viable pathway for renewed momentum is humanitarian framing and civil society-driven norms, particularly when state-to-state arms control is stalled.

Implied “ways forward” include:

• Re-center disarmament around human security and catastrophic risk reduction (humanitarian lens)
• Rebuild or broaden meaningful multilateral cooperation, not exclusive “clubs”
• Address enforcement and verification gaps and the destabilizing effects of emerging technologies
• Counter political incentives created by polarization and modernization

Presenters / Contributors

• Foreign Zarayani — presenter/organizer; President of the Society of International Security (Vienna School of International Studies); strategic program coordinator at ISCAN
• Billy Batwari — UNODC program officer; founder/presenter; moderator; organizer
• Antonina Canegeva — ISCAN International Security Dialogue coordinator; organizer/speaker
• Professor Marcus Conrads — Vienna School of International Studies; Head of the Department of International Relations and Political Science
• Professor Haines Gärtner — University of Vienna / University of Graz; Head of the advisory board, International Institute for Peace
• Vasil Ki — mentioned as part of the Society of International Security board
• Salome — mentioned as part of the Society of International Security board
• International Institute for Peace / OSCE / UN Disarmament Week — referenced, but not as individual contributors