Ten years in disarmament and security: a mixed legacy

A retrospective of the developments in arms control and international security over last decade is necessarily a dialectic, a chronicle of points and counterpoints. The transformations in the international system that have results from the demise of bipolarity and the rise of trans nationalism have opened new opportunities for positive global engagement through international finance, production, trade, communications and by implication, conflict prevention and non-proliferation. The vastly increased pace and commercialisation of technological innovation also portend growing economic interdependence and higher transparency in the international system. Trans nationalism also implies shared risks posed by cross-border conflicts, sudden migrations, organized crime, ecological destruction and more rapid diffusion of technologies to build weapons of mass destruction. How these developments will translate into more cooperative security policies remains hard to predict and widely disputed