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Demilitarisation or demilitarization may mean the reduction of state armed forces; it is the opposite of militarisation in many respects. [1] For instance, the demilitarisation of Northern Ireland entailed the reduction of British security and military apparatuses. [2] Demilitarisation in this sense is usually the result of a peace treaty ending a war or a major conflict. The principle is distinguished from demobilisation, which refers to the drastic voluntary reduction in the size of a victorious army.
Demilitarisation was a policy in a number of countries after both world wars. In the aftermath of World War I, the United Kingdom greatly reduced its military strength, which is also referred to as disarmament. The resulting position of British military weakness during the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany was among the causes that led to the policy of appeasement. [3]
The conversion of a military or paramilitary force into a civilian one is also called demilitarisation. For example, the Italian Polizia di Stato demilitarised in 1981, and the Austrian Gendarmerie merged with the national police, making up a new civilian body. Demilitarisation can also refer to the policies employed by Allied forces during the occupation of Japan and Germany after World War II. [4] The Japanese and German militaries were re-badged to disassociate them from their recent war history, but were kept active and reinforced to help the allies face the new Soviet threat, which had become evident as World War II ended and the Cold War began.
Demilitarisation can also refer to the reduction of one or more types of weapons or weapons systems (See Arms Control) or the removal of combat equipment from a warship (See Japanese battleship Hiei).
A demilitarised zone is a specific area, such as a buffer zone between nations previously engaged in armed conflict, where military persons, equipment or activities are forbidden. This can also include areas designated during conflicts in which nations, military powers or contending groups forbid military installations, activities or personnel. The demilitarised zone is also free from all activities that assist the war efforts of any of the belligerents. [5] Generally, this zone is protected from attack and many countries forbid their troops from targeting because it would constitute a grave breach or a serious war crime that would likely warrant the institution of criminal proceedings. [6] In the case, however, of the Korean Demilitarised Zone, of the areas beyond the demilitarized strip that separates both sides, are heavily militarized.
Examples of demilitarisation include:
Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term denuclearization is also used to describe the process leading to complete nuclear disarmament.
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.
Arms control is a term for international restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of small arms, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. Historically, arms control may apply to melee weapons before the invention of firearm. Arms control is typically exercised through the use of diplomacy which seeks to impose such limitations upon consenting participants through international treaties and agreements, although it may also comprise efforts by a nation or group of nations to enforce limitations upon a non-consenting country.
The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, usually called the Geneva Protocol, is a treaty prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in international armed conflicts. It was signed at Geneva on 17 June 1925 and entered into force on 8 February 1928. It was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 7 September 1929. The Geneva Protocol is a protocol to the Convention for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War signed on the same date, and followed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.
Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear arms. General and Complete Disarmament was defined by the United Nations General Assembly as the elimination of all WMD, coupled with the “balanced reduction of armed forces and conventional armaments, based on the principle of undiminished security of the parties with a view to promoting or enhancing stability at a lower military level, taking into account the need of all States to protect their security.”
The law of war is the component of international law that regulates the conditions for initiating war and the conduct of warring parties. Laws of war define sovereignty and nationhood, states and territories, occupation, and other critical terms of law.
A demilitarized zone is an area in which treaties or agreements between nations, military powers or contending groups forbid military installations, activities, or personnel. A DZ often lies along an established frontier or boundary between two or more military powers or alliances. A DZ may sometimes form a de facto international border, such as the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Other examples of demilitarized zones are a 9-mile wide area between Iraq and Kuwait; Antarctica ; and outer space.
The causes of World War II have been given considerable attention by historians. The immediate precipitating event was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, and the subsequent declarations of war on Germany made by Britain and France, but many other prior events have been suggested as ultimate causes. Primary themes in historical analysis of the war's origins include the political takeover of Germany in 1933 by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party; Japanese militarism against China, which led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Second Sino-Japanese War; Italian aggression against Ethiopia, which led to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the consent of Western countries to Germany's actions on the annexation of Austria and the partition of Czechoslovakia and Germany's initial success in negotiating the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union to divide the territorial control of Eastern Europe between them.
Demobilization or demobilisation is the process of standing down a nation's armed forces from combat-ready status. This may be as a result of victory in war, or because a crisis has been peacefully resolved and military force is no longer necessary. The opposite of demobilization is mobilization, which is the act of calling up forces for active military service. Forceful demobilization of a defeated enemy is called demilitarization.
An international zone is any area not fully subject to the border control policies of the state in which it is located. There are several types of international zones ranging from special economic zones and sterile zones at ports of entry exempt from customs rules to concessions over which administration is ceded to one or more foreign states. International zones may also maintain distinct visa policies from the rest of the surrounding state.
The Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty is a 1951 non-binding collective security agreement initially formed as a trilateral agreement between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States; and from 1986 an agreement between New Zealand and Australia, and separately, Australia and the United States, to co-operate on military matters in the Pacific Ocean region, although today the treaty is taken to relate to conflicts worldwide. It provides that an armed attack on any of the three parties would be dangerous to the others, and that each should act to meet the common threat. It set up a committee of foreign ministers that can meet for consultation.
Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR), or disarmament, demobilisation, repatriation, reintegration and resettlement (DDRRR) are strategies used as a component of peace processes, and is generally the strategy employed by all UN Peacekeeping Operations following civil wars.
The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, generally known as the Geneva Conference or World Disarmament Conference, was an international conference of states held in Geneva, Switzerland, between February 1932 and November 1934 to accomplish disarmament in accordance with the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was attended by 61 states, most of which were members of the League of Nations, but the USSR and the United States also attended.
Air warfare must comply with laws and customs of war, including international humanitarian law by protecting the victims of the conflict and refraining from attacks on protected persons.
German rearmament was a policy and practice of rearmament carried out by Germany from 1918 to 1939, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles which required German disarmament after WWI to prevent it starting another war. It began on a small, secret, and informal basis shortly after the treaty was signed, but was openly and massively expanded after the Nazi Party came to power in 1933.
Study of the environmental impact of war focuses on the modernization of warfare and its increasing effects on the environment. Scorched earth methods have been used for much of recorded history. However, the methods of modern warfare cause far greater devastation on the environment. The progression of warfare from chemical weapons to nuclear weapons has increasingly created stress on ecosystems and the environment. Specific examples of the environmental impact of war include World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Rwandan Civil War, the Kosovo War and the Gulf War.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1296, adopted unanimously on 19 April 2000, after recalling Resolution 1265 (1999), the Council discussed steps to enhance the protection of civilians during armed conflict.
Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act of 1991, 22 U.S.C. § 2551, was chartered to amend the Arms Export Control Act enacting the transfer of Soviet military armaments and ordnances to NATO marking the conclusion of the Cold War. The Act sanctions the Soviet nuclear arsenal displacement shall be in conjunction with the implementation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. It funds the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program.
International relations (1919–1939) covers the main interactions shaping world history in this era, known as the interwar period, with emphasis on diplomacy and economic relations. The coverage here follows the diplomatic history of World War I and precedes the diplomatic history of World War II. The important stages of interwar diplomacy and international relations included resolutions of wartime issues, such as reparations owed by Germany and boundaries; American involvement in European finances and disarmament projects; the expectations and failures of the League of Nations; the relationships of the new countries to the old; the distrustful relations between the Soviet Union and the capitalist world; peace and disarmament efforts; responses to the Great Depression starting in 1929; the collapse of world trade; the collapse of democratic regimes one by one; the growth of economic autarky; Japanese aggressiveness toward China; fascist diplomacy, including the aggressive moves by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; the Spanish Civil War; the appeasement of Germany's expansionist moves toward the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and the last, desperate stages of rearmament as another world war increasingly loomed.
The Murmansk Initiative was a series of wide-range foreign policy proposals concerning the Arctic region made in a speech by the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - Mikhail Gorbachev - on October 1, 1987 in Murmansk, Soviet Union, considered to be a trademark of his foreign policy.