SIPRI YEARBOOK 1999
Armaments, Disarmament and International Security

REMINDER: A press conference will be held at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on 16 June at10 a.m., local time.

EMBARGO: Not for release until 16 June 1999, 1000 CET

-From the Introduction

• Of the 27 major armed conflicts in 1998, only two—between India and Pakistan and between Eritrea and Ethiopia—were interstate. All the others were internal conflicts.
  
• The Serb oppression of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo (Yugoslavia) and the failure of peace efforts brought in 1999 the first NATO out-of-area military intervention and increased tensions in the Balkan region.
• Continued conflict over Kashmir and the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan heightened the risk of war and the nuclear risk in South Asia.
• The proliferation of conflict complexes in Africa highlights the need for peace processes to include a regional perspective, as in Central Africa, the most conflict-dense region in the world.
  
• In 50 years of UN peacekeeping, over 750 000 military and civilian police personnel from 118 countries have served in 49 operations. Despite continuing retrenchment, two new missions were established in 1998—in the Central African Republic and in Sierra Leone.
  
• The Good Friday Agreement created a framework for resolution of the conflict in Northern Ireland, in which over 3250 people have died since 1969. The Basque separatist movement ETA announced ‘a total and indefinite’ truce in its 30-year terrorist campaign for independence.
  
• The security situation in the Caspian Sea Basin has the potential to become another ‘hot spot’ in world politics because of the competition over vast oil and gas reserves, the involvement of other countries in Caspian regional affairs, and the local conflicts in areas around the oil and gas transportation routes.
  
• After eight years of the Middle East peace process, the new Israeli Government elected in May 1999 is confronted with a need to reopen the peace process with both the Palestinians and Syria to find solutions to the unresolved problems left by Netanyahu’s government.
  
• The British-French Joint Declaration on European Defence issued in Saint-Malo in December 1998 presented ‘fresh thinking’ on the future of European common defence within the European Union and the new dimension of its relation with the United States. The debate about a non-hegemonic US posture in Europe has been revitalized.

• World military expenditure in 1998 amounted to roughly $700 billion, at constant (1995) prices and exchange rates, corresponding to $745 billion in current prices. The long-term decline in world military expenditure since 1987 was interrupted by an increase in 1997 but again declined in 1998—by 3.5% in real terms. This reduction was due mainly to the sharp cut in Russian military expenditure (by 55% in 1998) and the reduction in US military expenditure (by 4% in 1998).
  
• Chinese military expenditure is roughly 75% higher than the official defence budget and amounted to 156 billion yuan in 1998, corresponding to 1.9% of GDP rather than the official figure of 1.1%.
  
• World arms production is highly concentrated to a few industrial countries. Rough estimates for 1996 show that the USA accounted for almost one-half and the 10 largest arms-producing countries for around 90% of the world total.
  
• The top 100 arms-producing companies in the OECD and developing countries (excluding China) had combined arms sales of $156 billion in 1997 (three-quarters of estimated world arms production). The military production of the Russian defence industry continued to decline until 1998, when this trend changed into growth (by 5% in real terms) according to official statistics, but it is still less than one-tenth of what it was in 1991.
  
• From 1995 to 1998 the level of major conventional arms transfers was fairly stable and much lower than in the late 1980s. The SIPRI trend-indicator value for 1998—$21.9 billion, at constant 1990 prices—was not much higher than that for 1994 ($20 billion), the lowest value since 1970. The major suppliers for the period 1994-98 were the USA, Russia, France, the UK and Germany. Taiwan passed Saudi Arabia to become the number one recipient for this five-year period.
  

• The nuclear non-proliferation regime was under siege by a series of challenges - the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan and renewed suspicions about North Korean and Iraqi nuclear weapon programmes.
  
• The controversy over a US national ballistic missile defence system and the future of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty jeopardized support for deeper cuts in strategic nuclear forces and threatened to reverse the progress made in recent years in reducing those forces.
  
• At the end of 1998, the Chemical Weapons Convention had 121 states parties and 48 signatories; 90 states parties submitted their initial declarations to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and 85 states parties notified the OPCW of their National Authority. A total of 384 inspections in 28 countries were carried out by OPCW inspectors.
  
• The work of UNSCOM experienced serious setbacks during 1998, culminating in the air strikes against Iraq by the UK and the USA. The obstruction of the work of the inspectors by Iraq and the resulting inability of UNSCOM to declare Iraq free from non-conventional weapons meant that sanctions against Iraq would continue, despite the opposition to such measures by China, France and Russia.
  
• Concern about the proliferation and possible use of biological weapons increased. Both national and international medical associations have warned that future scientific and technological advances could be misused.
  
• Despite the deadlock in the Vienna talks on conventional arms control in Europe in 1998, in early 1999 headway was made towards drafting an adapted Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.
  
• Progress towards a total ban on landmines was made in 1998. Although none of its major opponents had signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction (the APM Convention), with the required 40 ratifications achieved in September, the convention entered into force on 1 March 1999.
  

Introduction: Rethinking the contemporary security system

Part I. Security and conflicts, 1998

• Chapter 1. Major armed conflicts
• Chapter 2. Armed conflict prevention, management and resolution
• Chapter 3. The Middle East
• Chapter 4. Russia: military reform
• Chapter 5. The Caspian Sea Basin: the security dimensions
• Chapter 6. Europe: the institutionalized security process

Part II. Military spending and armaments, 1998

• Chapter 7. Military expenditure
• Chapter 8. Military research and development
• Chapter 9. Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan
• Chapter 10. Arms production
• Chapter 11. Transfers of major conventional weapons

Part III. Non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament, 1998

• Chapter 12. Nuclear arms control and non-proliferation
• Chapter 13. Chemical and biological weapon developments and arms control
• Chapter 14. Conventional arms control
• Chapter 15. Non-cooperative responses to proliferation: multilateral dimensions

Annexes

• Annexe A. Arms control and disarmament agreements
• Annexe B. Chronology 1998

Plus a glossary of terms and membership of multilateral organizations, tables, figures, maps, data appendices and extensive documentation as well as detailed accounts of some of the conflicts in 1998

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