INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM ON NEW CHALLENGES IN WEAPONS INSPECTION

The difficult though often productive negotiations that had characterized the Cold War era metamorphized into seized opportunities, including the signing and entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention. [...]almost thirty years since the Cold War ended, the risks from conventional, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons remain terrifyingly high, yet the international energy and ability to address them is not always evident. Jennie Gromoll, a senior advisor in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, considers the challenge of building future expertise with respect to weapons inspection.3 The negotiation of arms control treaties had once been a pipeline for future inspectors—as well as a forum for building cross-national personal relationships—but the Conference on Disarmament is no longer the active space for negotiation that it used to be.