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Nuclear proliferation has become a global phenomenon since 1945. A debate has emerged about whether the nuclear nonproliferation regime is sufficient to contain nuclear proliferation. Nuclear proliferation regime has confronted new challenges in recent times. Developments stemming from the demise of the former USSR have raised few serious problems: a previously acknowledged nuclear weapon state had been subjected to political disintegration. This was a period of nuclear transformation which required long-term cooperation between Russia and the United States. This period of transition was facilitated by the foresight of policymakers from both sides of the former cold war divide and by the frameworks of arms control and disarmament agreements then in place. Ensuring nuclear stability during this period was possible because of agreements like the NPT and START.

However, the other side of the story is that in January 2000, the Russian Government released its new nuclear policy in a document entitled: “Concept of National Security” which was ratified by Presidential decree on April 21, 2000. The document was updated version of policy statements made in 1993 and 1997, and indicated a heightened sense of conflict with NATO and the United States on nuclear issues, and an increased reliance on nuclear weapons. Russia rejected to adhere to the “no-first-use” of nuclear weapons policy.

Russia’s nuclear policy under Putin entered a period of new realism. Russia was presented as an alternative pole to the West which gave way to new arms race. Therefore the initiative toward nuclear disarmament would most likely be largely cosmetic in nature. This chapter attempts to present a theoretical framework on Russia’s nuclear disarmament policy since early 1990s.

Each of the four objectives can be applied within the military training environment. Military training often requires that soldiers achieve specific levels of performance or proficiency in each phase of training. For example, training courses impose entrance and graduation criteria, and awards are given for excellence in military performance. Frequently, training devices, training media, and training evaluators or observers also directly support the need to diagnose performance strengths and weaknesses. Training measures may be used as indices of performance, and to indicate the need for additional or remedial training.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

The threat posed by nuclear weapons to world peace need not be exaggerated. Advancement in science and technology has enabled us to go for a complete annihilation of not only the Homo sapiens but all the species on earth. Should we permit our idiocy entangled with the nuclear weapons to destroy us or should we, the thinking animals, permit our wisdom to outlive the demonic nuclear weapons, is a question that is being asked by sensible people all over the world today. Just public denouncement of weapons of mass destruction is un-utilitarian. Mankind has been hearing such hollow, absurd words ever since the first atomic test. We have been feeding ourselves on a diet of hypocrisy. If it is not that what else is CTBT? Should the world permit demons to chant mantra? Isn’t it time to recognize that the world is governed not by saints but by Satans? (This is because rise and fall of civilizations has taught us that might is still right.) Isn’t it time to understand that only a metamorphosis of the Satans into saints can save the world? If we know that well, we should start thinking how the nuclear Satans could be transformed into nuclear saints and it is only logical that the nuke Satans should take initiative in transforming themselves, which alone would salvage the world. The present study is premised on these assumptions.

International humanitarian law (IHL) is struggling to catch up with military technological development. The international community is increasingly alarmed at the prospect of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) operating without a human interface. The international community’s concern with autonomous enabling technology in weapon systems is whether weapon systems with the ability to identify, select, and attack military targets with little to no human control can comply with existing IHL rules and be morally and ethically acceptable.

This chapter explores an expanded concept of social licence to operate (SLO) to regulate the development of LAWS. The authors believe that it is more efficacious to take a preventative and precautious approach by holding the developers accountable to IHL during the gestation period instead of following a post facto approach. The authors argue that the process involved in issuing or revoking an SLO for the developers of LAWS is already beginning to emerge in IHL. The SLO is only effective during the developmental cycle and would continue as soft law form in regulating the use of LAWS until a more concrete, treaty-based response emerges. In this sense, the SLO can be seen as a catalyst towards a concerted international response to regulate the development, deployment, and use of LAWS.

This chapter is in two parts. Part I is an analysis of the efforts made by India to promote Nuclear Disarmament. Part II discussse the recent global efforts towards Nuclear Disarmament and India’s evolving stand towards it along with a note on what could be done in coming years to make Nuclear Disarmament a reality.

The following article looks at the biological weapons problem from different perspectives to evaluate the international threat of biological weapons from both a legal perspective and a regulatory perspective. Biological weapons fall into a category all their own with unique characteristics as weapons of mass destruction in which suggestions for new directions should be explored with respect to historical failures. Biological weapons regulation is currently predicated on a certain legal framework, and through that a presentation is shown by a synthesized approach to biological weapons control.

By the end of World War II, the world witnessed both military and peaceful uses of nuclear science. A number of countries and different sections of the international community strongly urged to avoid repetition of the devastation witnessed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A world without nuclear weapons was a subject matter of not only pacifists but also of a large section of the world. The 2010 RevCon was held from 3 to 28 May 2010. The final document noted: ‘… the reaffirmation by the nuclear-weapon states of their unequivocal undertaking to accomplish, in accordance with the principle of irreversibility, the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament, to which all States parties are committed under article VI of the Treaty’. The 2010 RevCon also welcomed ‘the new proposals and initiatives from Governments and civil society related to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons’. Indeed, Obama, during his election campaign, spoke on the need for nuclear disarmament. So, should we conclude that global nuclear disarmament would materialize soon? What is the reality? If we take into account signals emitting from the postures and pronouncements of the nuclear weapons countries of the NPT and the influential section of the global civil society, we may find that global nuclear disarmament is somewhere between myth and super myth. A reality check would indicate that global nuclear disarmament would continue to elude us.

On December 24, 1989, an armed insurrection began in Liberia. Charles Taylor, a former government official, led a rebel force, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), into the north-eastern Nimba County. A breakaway faction, the Independent National Patriotic Front (INPFL), led by Prince Yormie Johnson gained control of central Monrovia – the capital – and killed the President Samuel Doe. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) intervened in August 1990, sending monitoring troops (the ECOWAS Military Observer Group, ECOMOG), and convened a national conference which elected an Interim Government of National Unity. In October 1990, ECOMOG established a neutral zone in Monrovia where Dr. Amos Sawyer was installed as Interim President in November. Various different factions and opposition groups were formed and clashes between the rebel groups and the Liberian army continued.

Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the international community took vigorous, unprecedented steps to curb Saddam Hussein's military ambitions. The central component of these actions was a set of comprehensive arms, aviation, maritime, and economic sanctions, each imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). When the multinational coalition forces ousted Iraq from Kuwait the following year, the UNSC made these sanctions and embargoes a component of the armistice agreement. Over time, these sanctions were subsequently used as leverage to press for Iraqi compliance with relevant UNSC resolutions calling for Iraqi disarmament.¹