This article deals with the third milestone on the way towards the incremental realization of a regional Missile Free Zone (MFZ): the limitation, reduction, and eventual elimination of missiles and missile defence (MD). An adequate concept of effective control1 has to cope with with the number and quality of the arsenals themselves. As a result, this milestone transcends both confidence-and security-building measures (CSBMs) as well as export controls and test bans, which were discussed in the two preceding articles. To be sure, the examples of the Near East Arms Coordinating Committee (1952), the Interim Agreements between Israel and Egypt (1974 and 1975), the Golan Heights Agreement (1974), and the working group on Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS, 1992-95) show that confidence-building and arms control are not alien to at least parts of the Middle East (see the chapters of Emily B. Landau and Dalia Dassa Kaye as well as of Jürgen Scheffran et al.). More importantly, the Interim Agreements are ample proof that those confidence-building measures contributed to enhancing stability and to relaxing the specifically pronounced security dilemma in the region. And yet, the idea that the reduction (not just the relocation) of existing arsenals may increase security, has only marginally entered the thinking of political and military elites in the region, not to mention the military postures of the respective countries. The overall Middle Eastern arms control experience has therefore rightly been characterized as being “rich in terms of initiatives, and largely barren with respect to results” (Steinberg 2005: 487). Countries in the Middle East/Gulf (and their external suppliers) have so far remained on the troublesome path of increasing their offensive weaponry in quest of greater security (Said 2002: 43). Moreover, the current build-up of missile defence capabilities by the United States and its allies has been uncritically portrayed as having a purely stabilizing effect on the regional arms dynamic.2 However, because of their potentially destabilizing character – MD systems may for instance
intensify the arms race – we take the ambivalent role of missile defence into account; this explains why we propose (selective) prohibitions in this area as well. In this article, which explores possibilities for arms control in the Middle East, we use the achievements and deficits of trans-regional approaches developed in the East-West context as the conceptual background for envisioning successive phases of arms reductions in the Middle East/Gulf. In accordance with the emphasis on regional specifics, we also draw on the programmatic “Statement on Arms Control and Regional Security”.3 This document is the Magna Charta for any viable weapon reduction design in the Middle East; it was formulated in the context of ACRS and still represents the gold standard for contemporary and future discussions, such as for the proposed 2012 Conference on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear and all other weapons of mass destruction (Review Conference 2010: 30); this includes delivery systems which are explicitly mentioned in the mandate of the last Review Conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty with reference to the 1995 Resolution on the Middle East (ibid.). Our proposals for missile (defence) limitations and reductions are also informed by the analysis of military asymmetries in the region (see the chapter of Bernd W. Kubbig et al.). While we do not claim to provide a blueprint for official negotiators, it is the aim of this article to propose an arms control process, which first stabilizes (Phase I), then reverses the regional arms dynamic (Phase II), and finally establishes a Missile Free Zone (Phase III). These phases consist of various building blocks such as CSBMs, limitations, reductions, and prohibitions; they should be embedded in the appropriate organizational setting and consist of measures that ensure the sustainability of the overall process. In addition, major external powers, above all the United States, will have to play a key role in this process due to their ambivalent role as friends of some regional states and foes of others, weapon suppliers, and – hopefully – as sponsors of a series of to-be-convened conferences which would be a core element of a regional peace strategy (Schimmelfennig 1991). The George H.W. Bush administration rightly assumed that “[o]nly a broad framework involving all the major supplier states can serve as a potential basis for conventional arms control” (Steinberg 1991: 65). In accordance with the contribution on military asymmetries in the Middle East, we shall primarily focus on states possessing missiles with ranges beyond 70 km that can be equipped with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and are, at least in principle, adequately verifiable. Eventually, however, agreements on limitations, reductions, and (selective) prohibitions on missiles and missile defence systems between states would have to be supplemented by informal agreements with actors like Hamas or Hezbollah, if they posed a threat to the regional arms control process.