WMD and Nuclear Proliferation Questions and Answers

Answer: B

In nuclear weapon states the IAEA applies Voluntary-Offer Agreement (VOA) safeguards.

The five NPT nuclear weapon states are not required to accept safeguards on all their nuclear material. Instead each has concluded a voluntary offer agreement, under which it offers some civilian facilities or material for safeguards, and the IAEA selects which ones to inspect.

Comprehensive safeguards apply to all nuclear material in non-nuclear-weapon states party to the NPT. Item-specific safeguards under INFCIRC/66-type agreements apply to particular facilities in states outside the NPT, such as India, Pakistan and Israel, so 'Type-66' and 'facility-specific' describe that regime, not the one for nuclear weapon states.

Answer: D

The IAEA reports such cases to the United Nations Security Council.

Under Article XII.C of the IAEA Statute, when the Board of Governors finds a state in non-compliance with its safeguards agreement, it reports the non-compliance to all members and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations. The Security Council is the body that can act, as it did with Iraq, North Korea and Iran, because it alone can impose binding measures under Chapter VII of the Charter.

The General Assembly receives the report but cannot enforce anything, the Secretary-General is not the body named for action, and the Conference on Disarmament is a negotiating forum with no compliance role.

Answer: B

The Treaty of Rarotonga is a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty.

Signed at Rarotonga in the Cook Islands in 1985, the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty bans the manufacture, possession, stationing and testing of nuclear explosive devices in the South Pacific, and the dumping of radioactive waste at sea there. It was a response to French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

It does not reduce existing nuclear arsenals, as the US-Soviet START treaties did, and it does not deal with chemical weapons, which are covered worldwide by the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Answer: D

The implementing body is the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The OPCW, based at The Hague, was set up when the Chemical Weapons Convention came into force in 1997. It verifies the destruction of declared chemical weapons stockpiles, inspects chemical industry sites, and investigates alleged use. It received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013.

The other names in the options are invented variants; no 'International Chemical Weapons Agency' or 'Organisation for Implementing Chemical Weapons' exists.

Answer: D

The speech was made by Dwight Eisenhower.

On 8 December 1953, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the UN General Assembly and proposed that nuclear powers contribute fissile material to an international agency that would put it to peaceful uses in agriculture, medicine and power generation. The 'Atoms for Peace' proposal led to the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957.

Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt died before the nuclear age reached the UN, and John F. Kennedy is associated with the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

Answer: C

The organisation is the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Under Article III of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, each non-nuclear-weapon state must accept IAEA safeguards on all its nuclear material, so that the Agency can verify that none is diverted to weapons. The IAEA, set up in 1957, carries out these inspections and reports violations.

The OPCW verifies the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Implementation Support Unit serves the Biological Weapons Convention, and the International Monitoring System stations belong to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.

Answer: C

MAD means retaliation and destruction of enemy after attack with nuclear weapons.

Mutually Assured Destruction is the nuclear deterrence doctrine of the Cold War: each superpower kept a secure second-strike capability, enough nuclear weapons to survive a first strike and destroy the attacker in return. Since any nuclear attack would lead to the destruction of both sides, neither had a reason to strike first, and deterrence held.

The doctrine depends on the unique destructiveness of nuclear weapons. Retaliation with conventional or chemical weapons cannot assure the destruction of a whole society, so those options do not describe MAD.

Answer: D

It is called arms control.

Arms control places agreed limits or restrictions on the research, development, production, testing, deployment or numbers of weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction, to make war less likely or less destructive. Examples include the SALT and START agreements and the test ban treaties.

Disarmament goes further, aiming at the reduction or complete elimination of weapons. An arms race is the opposite, a competitive build-up, and sanctions are economic or political penalties on a state. Restriction rather than elimination is what defines arms control.

Answer: A

The common control lists are issued by the Australia group.

The Australia Group, an informal forum of countries formed in 1985 after Iraq's use of chemical weapons, harmonises export controls so that exports do not contribute to chemical or biological weapons. It maintains Common Control Lists of dual-use chemicals, biological agents and equipment for which members require export licences. India joined in 2018.

The Nuclear Suppliers Group has its own guidelines and trigger list for nuclear items, the Wassenaar Arrangement keeps a Munitions List and a List of Dual-Use Goods for conventional arms, and the WHO is not an export control body.

Answer: B

The use of anthrax began in the First World War.

During the First World War, German agents tried to infect horses, mules and cattle bound for the Allies with anthrax and glanders, in the United States, Romania, Norway and elsewhere, to disrupt Allied transport and supplies. This sabotage campaign is the first recorded military use of anthrax.

Later programmes came after it: Japan's Unit 731 used biological agents in China in the Second World War, and anthrax was a concern for troops in the Gulf War of 1991, but neither was the beginning. The Korean War saw only unproven allegations.