The rationale, evolution, and future of arms control

Abstract

Arms control is a sophisticated, technical tool of modern diplomacy and national security. As such, it has played a key role since 1897 in maintaining national security, while promoting cooperation on arms control during crucial periods of radical international change and tension. Yet, arms control's success in fostering international acceptance for weapons nonproliferation and deep arms reductions has seen its greatest success only when the pace of international change has led the world not into open warfare (as in World Wars I and II); rather, “thanks” to the nuclear “balance of terror,” into new intermittent periods of detente and mutually acceptable cooperation between traditionally hostile blocks (1956–1958; 1963–1964; 1969–1979; 1985–1992). The 1990–1992 collapse of communism and the end of the cold war on Mestern terms, as well as the parallel boost in arms control accords to codify this new politico‐military balance, have made certain that this latest phase of detente will last indefinitely while the East struggles to merge with the West.