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Introduction: Arms Control and International Security
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13438 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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9 / 1987 |
576 Words |
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Historian Bernard Brodie points out that arms control can be traced back to the early twelfth century when Pope Innocent II tried to ban the crossbow. The pope's edict failed to prevent the use of the deadly new weapon, but men and governments have never stopped trying to control the latest weapons' threat to peace and security. Their efforts have taken on new intensity since World War II with the development of the nuclear bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that travel more than 5,000 miles in half an hour and strike with deadly accuracy.
For the past several years, the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, have held a series of meetings to discuss almost the entire range of weapon - ICBMs, INF (intermediate nuclear forces), and the most famous acronym of all, SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative). Even before President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met at Reykjavik in October 1986, citizens of every nation, not just the United States and the Soviet Union, were asking: Will there be deep reductions in strategic arms? Will medium-range missiles be eliminated in Europe? What will happen to SDI?
In this month's Special report, THE WORLD & I offers answers to these and other question related to arms control and international security in the last decade and a half of the twentieth century. Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyoming) and Paul Warnke, former director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, debate the role of SDI in the arms control process. Wallop argues that the U.S. military should be given the specific mission to defend the nation against Soviet nuclear missiles, including the speedy production of suitable weapons, like SDI. Warnke warns that deployment of SDI would force the Soviets to deploy thousands of additional warheads and to acquire a sophisticated antisatellite capacity.
Kenneth Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, reveals that verification is more difficult today than it was 10 years ago because of advances in technology (systems today are smaller, more mobile, and therefore harder to find and track) and a Soviet disposition toward noncompliance with arms treaties. Morton Kaplan, editor in chief of THE WORLD & I, examines what the ABM Treaty of 1972 really said and concludes that it allows the testing and development of systems like SDI that are based on other physical principles.
The challenge of the next decade, according to national defense analyst James T. Hackett, is not the fate of the ABM Treaty or theater nuclear weapons in Europe, but how to engage the Soviets in discussions on the "transition from offensive nuclear forces to strategic defenses." Another article is by Lord Chalfont of Great Britain, who provides a European perspective on arms control, stressing that it is dangerous to approach the problems of nuclear weapons and conventional forces separately. "If they are to be eliminated," Lord Chalfont argues, "they must be reduced together, in a phased, controlled process."
There is a central theme in all of these articles: Disarmament should be an aim, however long term, of all nations, for the pursuit of peace has a moderating influence on all peoples. But that pursuit must be a realistic one for, in the words of Lord Chalfont, "agreements that do not enhance the security of the West are worse than no agreements at all."
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