The UN Security Council Resolution 1540, passed on April 28, requires all member states to institute laws to keep weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems out of the hands of non-state actors, the new euphemism for terrorists. By passing it, the Security Council has signalled that punitive measures could follow non-compliance. Only time will tell whether the measure helps in controlling the spread of WMDs. The first hurdle may be the issues related to the sovereign rights of member states enshrined in the UN Charter. Another would be the problem of the perceived interests of dominant powers coming in the way of action in genuine cases.For instance, an enormous amount of credible evidence of nuclear proliferation from Pakistan to a number of countries carried out through numerous non-state and state actors, has emerged in the public domain. And we are not certain that what has been known so far includes the full account of this proliferation. But the five permanent members of the UN Security Council do not seem to have been overly concerned by this nuclear bazaar. In a way, the test of the credibility of the resolution has come even before it was being passed. At the same time, the international community would have to take due care that the provisions of the resolution are not employed as a tool of foreign and trade policy by any particular state.It is not certain how many member states would finally act according to the provisions of the resolution and it may be difficult to arrive at credible evidence that a particular state was guilty of non-compliance. Chances, in fact, are that such deviations would get noticed only after it is too late to do anything about it. Also, the Security Council — while concerned with proliferation to terrorist groups — seems to have given little thought to curbing proliferation by and from member states. The contradiction of the powerful states leaning much more toward nuclear weapons and the efforts to control their proliferation to others does not seem to attract attention. What is needed at this stage is a comprehensive approach to future non-proliferation challenges in the context of the erosion of the arms control paradigm of earlier decades.
