This book addresses the issue of the legality of the use of nuclear weapons under international law. It includes forwarding remarks by Robert S. McNamara, David W. Leebron, and Kosta Tsipis. Moxley analyzes the question in light of the July 1996 advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice, the law as articulated by the United States, and generally recognized facts as to the characteristics and effects of nuclear weapons. He concludes that the use of nuclear weapons is per se unlawful under the rules of international law and facts recognized by the United States. Nuclear Weapons and International Law in the Post Cold War World is an unprecedented exploration of the application of the necessity, proportionality and discrimination of principles of international law to nuclear weapons.

This is the first book to examine in detail the relationship between the Cold War and International Law.

When German physicists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman first split the uranium atom in 1938, they might have little imagined the potential power their experiments had unleashed. Since the United States successfully detonated the first atomic weapons in 1945, the entire world has lived in fear of annihilation. Technological advances in weaponry and, importantly, their delivery systems have only heightened the sense of dread. Yet, since the end of World War II, world governments have been unable to agree on a strategy for nuclear disarmament. This led first to the Cold War and ultimately to the proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the world. This work examines the nuclear question within the framework of international law. The advent of the nuclear age and its impact on postwar peace and law is first covered. This is followed by analyses of the initial United Nations disarmament initiatives and the reasons they were doomed from the start. The globalization of the Cold War, the expansion of the nuclear arms race, and the START treaties and the legacy of 1970s-era detente efforts in the years leading up to the end of the Cold War are then detailed. How the United Nations reacted to the end of the Cold War and the prospects for disarmament in the 21st century are the subjects of the concluding section.

With the end of the Cold War, the subject of weapons proliferation has acquired new interest and prominence. So too have questions about the nature of the world order that will succeed the structure of the last fifty years. This study explores the connections among these topics. It describes the prevailing conceptual model of nuclear proliferation, evaluates proliferation's changing technical features, considers economic and political factors bearing on its future rate and character, and speculates about proliferation's implications on the post-cold-war world order. It also considers the role of international public policy in meeting proliferation's challenges. Arguing that updated approaches are needed, the analysis emphasizes cooperative over coercive approaches to order. It concludes with an assessment of progress to date in meeting these new challenges, arguing that the new agenda is only slowly coming into focus.

In four short years the international landscape has been completely reorganized. The major political fault line of the Cold War has been for the most part erased, and the foundations have been laid for an entirely new era in international relations. Serious focused analysis is urgently needed to help facilitate the process of ending the Cold War'. This volume, the product of a Canada-Soviet bilateral conference of jurists and other scholars, specialized in International Law and International Organizatin, and International Conflicts-Resolution, held at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver in June 1990, attempts to provide such analysis. Written by a professionally and scientifically distinguished team of Canadian and Soviet experts, it deals with such issues as the winding up of the Nuclear and General Disarment process, the current main proposals on strengtening the United Nations and on reforming and modernizing its main arenas and institutions, new approaches to International Trade and Commerce on a multilateral basis, developing new norms of International Environmental Protection Law, and the Intrnational protection of Human Rights. It is characterized above all by a common emphasis, Soviet and Canadian, on pragmatism, and on a rigorously empirical, problem-oriented approach and offers not merely a description of international Law as it might now happen to exist. The result is a suprisingly far-ranging consensus, not merely on the major World Community problems that should be deemed ripe for present study, but also on their most desirable, practical and realizable solutions.

This two-volume book provides a comprehensive analysis of the lawfulness of the use of nuclear weapons, based on existing international law, established facts as to nuclear weapons and their effects, and nuclear weapons policies and plans of the United States. Based on detailed analysis of the facts and law, Professor Moxley shows that the United States’ arguments that uses of nuclear weapons, including low-yield nuclear weapons, could be lawful do not withstand analysis. Moxley opens by examining established rules of international law governing the use of nuclear weapons, first analyzing this body of law based on the United States’ own statements of the matter and then extending the analysis to include requirements of international law that the United States overlooks in its assessment of the lawfulness of potential nuclear weapons uses. He then develops in detail the known facts as to nuclear weapons and their consequences and U.S. policies and plans concerning such matters. He describes the risks of deterrence and the existential nature of the effects of nuclear war on human life and civilization. He proceeds to pull it all together, applying the law to the facts and demonstrating that known nuclear weapons effects cannot comply with such legal requirements as those of distinction, proportionality, necessity, precaution, the corollary requirement of controllability, and the law of reprisal. Moxley shows that, when the United States goes to apply international law to potential nuclear weapons uses, it distorts the law as it has itself articulated it, overlooks law in such areas as causation, risk analysis, mens rea, and per se rules, and disregards known risks as to nuclear weapons effects, including radioactive fallout, nuclear winter, electromagnetic pulses, and potential escalation. He then shows that the policy of deterrence is unlawful because the use of such weapons would be unlawful. Moxley urges that the United States and other nuclear weapons States take heed of the requirements of international law as to nuclear weapons threat and use. He argues that law can be a positive force in society’s addressing existential risks posed by nuclear weapons and the policy of nuclear deterrence.