Foreword

This is the fifth edition of a publication originally issued in 1972. It contains the texts of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 and, in chronological order, all major arms control agreements concluded after World War II in which the United States has been a participant. The text of each agreement is preceded by a brief narrative discussion prepared by the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and is followed by a list of signatories and parties.

Introduction

Efforts to prevent or limit war have a long history and have taken many forms. Men have tried to erect religious and ethical barriers against war, to outlaw it, to create codes and tribunals for peaceful arbitration and settlement of disputes. Nations have tried to avert war by withdrawing into isolation or neutrality, or by joining with others in leagues and alliances for the collective defense of peace and security. In past eras efforts to control weapons of war were seldom successful or lasting. The coming of the nuclear era, however, brought such vast new dimensions of potential destructiveness that concepts of waging war and keeping the peace were transformed. Until comparatively recent times, disarmament and arms control were chiefly measures imposed by the victors on the vanquished. Only rarely was arms limitation the result of freely negotiated agreement.

A notable example of freely negotiated and successful arms control in "modern" times was the Rush-Bagot agreement of 1817 between the United States and Great Britain, limiting naval forces on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain to a few vessels on each side.

In the late 19th century the control of armaments took on new importance. The techniques of industrialization applied to the manufacture of weapons, mounting imperialist rivalries, nationalism, competing alliance systems-all contributed to an increasingly dangerous and costly arms race.

At the invitation of Tsar Nicholas II, International Peace Conferences met at The Hague in 1899 and 1907. The Hague Conferences brought advances in codifying the rules of war and in establishing institutions and procedures for settling international disputes-notably the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, antecedent of the Permanent Court of International Justice and of the present International Court of Justice.

Declarations signed at the 1899 conference prohibited the use of dum-dum bullets, asphyxiating gases, and the launching of projectiles and explosives from balloons or by other new methods of similar nature. The use of poison or poisoned weapons was forbidden by regulations annexed to both the 1899 and 1907 conventions; and a convention prohibiting or restricting the use of specific automatic contact mines and torpedoes was adopted in 1907.

The Hague Conferences were the first attempts at a worldwide approach to the problems of war and peace. They were the outgrowth

of recognition that the control of modern weapons and the effects of modern warfare concerned the interests of all nations and required their collective action. Plans for a third conference, however, fell victim to the antagonisms and military competition that preceded World War I, as did many of the arms control declarations.

World War I was fought on a scale previously unknown and new weapons-tanks, submarines, aircraft, poison gas-increased its deadliness. The war gave fresh momentum to the creation of international peacekeeping institutions and to negotiations for disarmament. Following the cessation of hostilities, the Covenant of the League of Nations declared that "the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations." The Treaty of Versailles imposed drastic limitations on Germany's armament and demilitarized the Rhineland. And in a series of postwar negotiations the Allied powers sought to impose agreed restrictions on certain weapons.

In 1921, on American initiative, a conference was convened at Washington to discuss arms limitations, one of its purposes being to curb an emerging naval race among the victorious allies. The resulting agreement established fixed ratios and tonnage limits for the capital ships of the leading naval powers, and a freeze on naval fortifications and bases in the western Pacific. In 1930 a subsequent treaty signed in London limited other classes of warships and provided for a third naval conference in 1935. That conference was unable to reach any effective agreement, and the naval treaties expired in 1936, following Japanese refusal to continue the arrangements.

The use of poison gas in the battles of World War I had evoked especially strong condemnation. In 1925, as the result of a U.S. initiative, a protocol was signed at Geneva prohibiting the use in war of poison gas and bacteriological weapons. By World War II most countries had ratified it, including all the great powers except the United States and Japan. The protocol was generally observed during that war, although Italy used poison gas in the Ethiopian war. Japan ratified the protocol in 1970; U.S. ratification took place in 1975. When the protocol was originally submitted to the U.S. Senate in 1926, there was strong lobbying against it, and Senate action was not completed. It was resubmitted by President Nixon in 1970, but disagreement about the protocol's application to riot-control agents and herbicides delayed Senate consent to ratification. (The administration took the position that the protocol did not apply to these.) In 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Pact, initiated by the United States and France and signed by 63 nations, renounced war as an instrument of