Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Arms Control And Disarmament: Legitimacy, War, And Peace, Milo R. Ventura

International Studies Honors Projects

The 2013 Noble Peace Prize was awarded to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the same year that events in the Syrian Civil War made clear the difficulties of implementing global disarmament and the imperative for doing so. In relation to this situation, my thesis asks if arms control and disarmament reduce conflict and tensions between states. Attempts at chemical weapons disarmament have been relatively successful but global disarmament faces major obstacles that will be difficult to overcome. To be sure, arms control and disarmament can be beneficial to peace: they are not a cause of war, can …