JOZEF GOLDBLAT

At the beginning of 1969 I received an invitation from Alva Myrdal, the Swedish Minister for Disarmament, to join a team of researchers at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It was explained to me that the main task of this newly established institute was to provide facts and figures, as well as comments and political or legal analyses regarding ongoing arms races, to small countries of the Third World. Many of these countries were eager to participate in disarmament negotiations, formally or informally, but lacked or could not afford to acquire adequate expertise.

Alva's offer was tempting. I accepted it because I saw an opportunity to engage in some interesting topical projects in the field of arms control-the preferred domain of my diplomatic activities during the preceding 15 years- and thereby better serve the cause of disarmament than by drafting official statements to be delivered by others.

Relatively soon, however, I started being disappointed. SIPRI was becoming a sort of an ivory tower. While SIPRI statistics on military expenditures or the arms trade were from time to time referred to, especially in the press, SIPRI studies describing the state of armaments, both conventional and non-conventional, reviews of negotiations and critical surveys of arms control treaties-all subjects for which I was directly responsible-were practically ignored by the outside world. I felt as if I was writing only to fill the empty bookshelves of the Institute and of those who were receiving SIPRI publications free of charge.

Jozef Goldblat at a chemical and biological weapons conference in 1979

However, a day came when I was forced to revise my doubts about the usefulness of my research. This happened a few months before a review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Hundreds of NGO activists, peace researchers and government delegates convened in one of the largest conference halls in Geneva to exchange views about how to proceed to ensure the success of the review conference. There were only two speakers. One of them (nomina sunt odiosa) was an ambassador or deputy foreign minister of an African country. I listened to his speech with undivided attention and suddenly realized that the text he was reading was familiar to me. Indeed, it turned out to be, word for word, my own analysis of the problems expected to be resolved, as well as my recommendation for action. This material was contained in a brochure published a few weeks earlier by SIPRI. That was very pleasing to me. But when the speaker ended his long statement by saying: ‘This is the position of the non-aligned states and, I hope, of many other states’, without mentioning SIPRI (or myself), and when one of the participants proposed to consider the statement as a basis for discussion, my happiness knew no limits.

I stayed at SIPRI until retirement.