A Demand-Side Strategy for Regional Security and Nonproliferation in the Persian Gulf (original) (raw)

Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East, 2006

Abstract

The spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) technologies, materials, and manufacturing processes to the developing world has overtaken many issues on the U.S. national security agenda, at least as measured in human resources (intelligence, diplomatic, and military), technological innovations, military procurements, and the formal statements of U.S. strategy documents. Globally, it has become the central focus of heated debates about international stability, security, and prosperity in the post-Cold War world, both in United Nations circles and in European and Asian capitals. Since Saddam Hussein made the fateful decision to expand the Iraqi state via aggressive military means in 1990–1991—backed up by committed WMD programs that were either weaponized or very near to producing a working weapon—the “WMD proliferation threat” has replaced the nuclear balance between the United States and the Soviet Union as the central planning concern of the U.S. national security community. The subject also dominates many meetings and debates within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, and it has led to the creation of a new European Union WMD nonproliferation strategy with the imprimatur of European Union President Javier Solana.1

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