Disposal, Destruction and Disarmament: Comparative Analysis of US Chemical Weapon and Weapons Plutonium Stockpile Reductions

The elimination of stockpiled weaponry constitutes a key step in arms control and disarmament processes, lending permanence and irreversibility to arms reductions. Yet it has proven challenging in practice. The destruction of advanced weapon components, like lethal chemical agents and the fissile materials from which nuclear weapons are constructed, is often technically complex and costly. To elucidate the dynamics of this back-end of arms control and disarmament processes, this article compares two representative cases involving analogous challenges but divergent outcomes: the nearly complete elimination of the US chemical weapon stockpile and stalled efforts to shrink the US weapons plutonium stockpile. Drawing from both engineering and organisation theory, technical and social distinctions between these efforts are assessed to identify key factors governing their outcomes. This analysis shows that the technical bases for stockpile reductions were broadly analogous between the two cases, and thus fail to explain their divergence. Rather, differing organisational characteristics among the responsible institutions proved decisive. These fostered either adaptive (in the chemical weapon case) or path-dependent (in the weapons plutonium case) organisational planning, influencing the ability of the responsible entities to pivot from stockpile maintenance to an unfamiliar reductions mission.