The United Nations Conventional Arms Register (UNCAR): Present Challenges, New Directions
III. Factors Influencing Register Implementation to Date
It is clear that despite the significant progress made to date, many of the original objectives of the Register have gone unfulfilled. Further, it appears that stagnation has begun to set in and states have begun to lose enthusiasm for this important instrument of cooperative security. For the first time in the history of the Register, there has been a decline in the number of states reporting to the Register at the requisite time. As of November 14 1999, only 77 states have sent in replies, compared to 90 in 1997 and 95 in 1998 at this same time period. Even if this number rises, and it has slightly, it would not be an exaggeration to say that states are placing less importance on the Register.
The current UN approach to developing the Register and enhancing its role in cooperative security is to continue to urge states to participate and hold a review every 2-3 years. This is not working. The 1994 and 1997 report of a group of governmental experts on the continuing operation of the Register and its further development demonstrated that merely putting together a group of experts and hoping that the accumulated experience of the Register would provide the impetus for expansion and further development is unrealistic. If anything, the longer the Register continues in the status quo, the more likely that inertia will set in and no further development will occur. Such evaluation must be done more critically, with an eye toward identifying those factors which are responsible for the stagnation of the Register.
In order for the Register to move forward and accomplish the original goals established in 1992, the causes for the incomplete implementation of the Register must be identified. States contemplating unilateral, bilateral, or multilateral action to enhance the operation of the Register, further its development, and most importantly begin to use it more effectively for confidence-building and conflict prevention efforts, must first investigate why the Register has performed as it has to date, and support a more thorough evaluation of the root causes of the current level of performance. Some of these causal factors may not prove to be useful, since they are situational variables that states can do little about (e.g., sovereignty). Other factors may reveal a plan of action that can improve the Register (e.g., organization and behavior of UN Secretariat). The development of a plan of action must be based on a more pragmatic conceptual basis. It is to such an evaluation that we now turn, by examining those factors that have influenced the implementation of the Register.
Source of Register Process
Often the explanation for the level of implementation of a policy lies with the origination of the policy itself. In the case of the Register there are several aspects of the origin and mandate of the Register that bear on the current level of participation, use and lack of development of the Register.
The Register was created at a very unique moment in history, when the states which had supplied Iraq with its arsenal had to admit that the aggression on Kuwait could not have occurred without this modern arsenal, most of it supplied by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. This "guilty conscience" rationale was short-lived. Almost all of the group of experts who met in 1994 to review the Register agreed that if it were suggested in 1994, no consensus would have existed for its creation.
It must be remembered that the Register was the only multilateral effort to survive among many other efforts to deal with the reality of arms transfers and the Gulf War. In this context, the Register was seen by many states as a glass half-empty, i.e., the most acceptable among a host of unacceptable efforts to restrain arms transfers. Historically the internationally community has been unable to create multilateral mechanisms to deal with the negative effects of arms transfers and buildups. The Gulf War provided a momentary burst of activity which soon reverted to the status quo. The sovereign right of states to acquire weapons, and the difficulty in firmly establishing a link between arms buildups per se and conflict reasserted themselves as primary factors governing how states dealt with the arms trade.
The Register was always an idea promoted by the northern states. In general, at this time and throughout the Cold War, the resistance to multilateral mechanisms that would restrain arms transfers was felt more by the southern states than other states. Southern states tended to view these efforts as yet another way that the north exploited the south, except that this time it hit at the major national interest of these states, their national security. The arm twisting that occurred at the creation of the Register (see the case of Egypt below) meant that participation from the south would lag behind that of the north. That has proven to be the case.
The major arms producing and exporting country in the world, the United States, came in only at the very last minute. A decision had been taken to work against the idea of a Register in the First Committee in the fall of 1991. Only when it appeared that a resolution establishing a Register would have overwhelming support did the U.S. decide to go along with the idea. U.S. opposition to the Register surfaced throughout the first two review sessions in 1992 and 1994, as the U.S. sought to minimize the level of transparency, and opposed the Register developing into a full-blown cooperative security regime. Many states have pointed to this minimalist effort as hypocritical, providing them with a major excuse for masking the real reasons for their non-participation. This resulted in a lack of candor that has prevented states from directly confronting the real dilemmas involved in dealing with arms transfers and buildups.
The enabling TIA resolution pushed the difficult question of defining "excessive and destabilizing" off onto the Conference on Disarmament. They did not reach any consensus conclusions in this regard, leaving it up to an undefined consultative process to determine "excessive and destabilizing" in a specific case. However, the Register has no provisions for a consultative mechanism. Developing such a mechanism, especially after the original enthusiasm for the Register had waned, has proven to be an insurmountable obstacle to date.
Clarity of Register Procedures
Public policies can succeed or fail based on their clarity: how easy is it for states to understand what is expected of them? Are they made aware of deadlines and the importance of submitting data? On this factor, the Register gets mixed reviews.
Like any consensus document, there are some aspects of the operation of the Register that require interpretation. In the beginning, the UN office responsible for receiving and publicizing the data, at that time the Centre for Disarmament Affairs (CDA), was reluctant to act as anything other than a post office. The Cold War dictum against the UN producing any independent information on security matters still held sway. By 1994 this had loosened a bit and the group reviewing the Register stated that if states needed assistance to CDA was authorized to " advise Member States on technical aspects of participation in the Register." (1994 Group of Experts Report, A/49/316, p. 22). The UN CDA has also published a manual on submitting data to the Register. In the 1997 review of the Register the UN DDA received an excellent evaluation of its work in this regard. "The Group expressed satisfaction at the manner in which the Centre for Disarmament Affairs had carried out the mandate entrusted to the Secretariat. The Group noted the importance of the role of the Secretariat in giving advice to Member states, when requested, on technical aspects of completing reports to the Register and in clarifying technical ambiguities in reports submitted."4
In the early days of the Register, the concept of transparency met resistance from some states and for others it seemed irrelevant, since many states do not either import or export weapons in the seven categories of the Register. Given the initial reluctance of the UN CDA to proactively encourage and enhance participation in the Register, the gap was filled by the OECD states which supported the Register process. As the Register became more regularized, one would have expected the Secretariat to play more of a role in reminding states of deadlines and the importance of submitting data. Despite the formal acknowledgement that the UN secretariat can play a vital role in this regard (see above), it has to date not met these expectations to the fullest.
Capacity of states to participate in Register
One measure of participation is the submitting of relevant data in accordance with the procedures of the Register. In the early days of the Register, many states struggling with the past Cold War transition period found it difficult to establish information systems that would allow them to know what was being exported and imported. This is much less the case today, and very few states can now make this claim. Even independent arms brokers are being subjected to the attention of the international community. Given the nature of communications capacity now shared by all states, and the mandate given the UN DDA to provide technical assistance, few states can cite a lack of capacity as the reason for non-participation.
Some cooperative security regimes fail due to a lack of resources. For example, in the case of the CFE Treaty, some states were delayed in meeting their destruction goals because they did not have the funds to complete the tasks. This is clearly not the case with the Register. All costs of collecting and publishing data are borne by the UN.
Support for the Register from States
The implementation of any public policy initiative, such as the Register, will depend in part on which states are likely to support or oppose the policy. What resources do they bring to bear on insuring the success, or failure, of the Register? What is the intensity and duration of either their commitment or opposition? Several examples serve as guides to the further development of the Register.
In the first few years of the Register, regional organizations such as the European Union, and the OSCE, as well as OECD supporter states of the Register systematically reminded and encouraged states, especially those from the south, of the importance of participation in the Register. In the period 1996-97, the UN Department of Disarmament Affairs did issue informal reminders to submit, as has been the case in the past. The enthusiasm for the Register has waned, perhaps due to the leveling off or stagnation of the Register, as well as the rise of other issues, such that of light weapons. Chalmers and Greene point to this as one explanation for the drop in participation in the last round of submissions.5
The current absence of China from participation in the Register can be explained in part by its lukewarm support for the Register from its inception. China did not participate in the 150-0 vote creating the Register. In several informal conversations with the author, the Chinese representatives to the first two panels made it clear that transparency ran counter to a basic tenet of Chinese security policy. They suggested that, secrecy and misperception represented a very cost-effective mean by which to defend one's country. This was one of the main principles espoused by the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu and has an understandably major impact on Chinese thinking (and on many other countries as well!) The United States has done little to convince Chinese authotities that the norm of transparency hold any benefit to China. In both of the first two panels (1992 and 1994) the hostility between the two countries was undisguised. The publication of the first-ever Chinese White Paper on defense and security received little positive reaction from the United States. Finally, conversations with Chinese officials in the past year make it clear that they felt that the failure of the Register to stem the flow of arms trade represented another reason why they questioned the need to participate. In this regard, the listing in the Register by the United States of its sales to Taiwan and the subsequent withdrawal of China for "political" reasons, fits a pattern: a combination of weak support from the beginning by China and the United States, and hostile relations between China and the United States. Getting China back to participating in the Register must be based on these deep-seated realities and not some gimmick.
The case of Egypt's failure to participate, and the active opposition they encountered regarding the registration of nuclear weapons, can also be related to a lack of support for the Register. The eventual chair of the first Panel of Governmental Experts in 1992, and floor leader within the General Assembly that created the Register in the fall of 1991, Dutch Ambassador Hendrik Wagenmakers, wacked vigourously with the Egyptian delegation in order to get them on board for the vote of approval for the TIA resolution. He assured them that the Register "will, in due course, contain data and information on military outlays as well as aggregate military force structure and figures, and will include weapons of mass destruction."6 Within months Egyptian officials were reporting to this author and others that it was clear that despite Wagenmaker's assurances, there existed little support for their goal of making weapons of mass destruction transparent. The shallow base of support to this idea was insufficient to encourage Egypt participating after the first year.
Many other examples could be given. The point is that when fashioning a set of policies designed to move the Register forward from its current impasse, one would do well to consider the level of initial support on the part of key players, supporters and opponents alike.
Incentives for states to participate
The Register is an instrument of cooperative security which must provide incentives for states to participate. The most effective incentive would be that it is in the national interest of states to provide data. The leading supporters of the Register initially participated because they were seeking to prevent a re-run of the Gulf War, which they viewed as a disaster caused in part because of excessive and destabilizing transfers of arms to Iraq. Other states have participated because they felt that it was in their national interest to be seen as a cooperative state in an emerging post-Cold War system that was becoming more like a cooperative security regime. Once the Register became a regular occurrence, the incentives shifted to one of inertia, with states not willing to be seen as "defectors" from an emerging cooperative security system. Some states began to participate because they thought that the Register would restrain arms flows and/or assist in the prevention of armed conflicts. To the extent that these latter goals have not been achieved, states have less incentive to participate. The "inertia" incentive is still a powerful one but as other promised developments fail to occur, it is an incentive that can sustain only a certain and perhaps reduced level of participation.
Time
As the Register got underway, the disappointing level of participation in the first few years could always be blamed on the need for more time. The phrase "these are early days" rolled off the lips of many a supporter of the Register. Eight years later these are not "early days," at least in terms of states overcoming domestic opposition and lack of capacity to submit the requested data. It has become clear that more time, in and of itself, will not see growth in either the level of submission or the use of the data submitted. This can be seen in the fact that the enabling General Assembly resolution in 1991 called for a 1992 group of experts to expand the scope of the Register. Two groups later (1994 and 1997), no such movement has occurred. To complicate matters, the passage of time has seen an increase in arms transfers. The fact that these transfers are now public information is not enough for many states.
Change in social condition
It is ironic that the type of situation that prompted the creation of the Register, i.e., excessive and destabilizing accumulations of major weapons systems leading to an interstate war, has declined in frequency to the point where such counts viewed by many as an aberration when they occur. Several interstate wars fought with weapons covered by the Register have occurred (e.g., Ethiopia-Eritrea and Ecuador-Peru), but in general the conflicts raging throughout the world are being fought with small arms and light weapons. This class of weapon was not seriously considered by the creators of the Register, since they only played a minor role in the Gulf War. Also, there was an emphasis on those weapons that could be considered "offensive" when designing the initial categories. Furthermore, the characteristics of weapons in this class mitigate against their inclusion in the Register. They are inexpensive, small and often transferred without the knowledge of governments. The world is awash in surplus weapons held and transferred by non-state actors.
4 United Nations. Report on the continuing operation of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms and its further development. A/52/316. 29 August 1997, p.23.
5 Malcolm Chalmers and Owen Greene, In Need of Attention: The UN Register in Its Seventh Year. Bradford University: BARS Working Paper 7, February 2000.
6 Hendrik Wagenmakers, "The UN Register of Conventional Arms: A New Instrument for Cooperative Security." Arms Control Today, (April 1993), pp. 16-21.
