To reflect generally on arms control after nearly five years as director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency is welcome. As Gen. Bernard Rogers demonstrated of late--and so many before him--nothing concentrates the mind and loosens the tongue like leaving office. I need no longer heed the wise counsel a British diplomat gave his boss, Lord Harrowby, in 1804, namely, to respond to a pleading foreign official in "neutral, unmeaning civilities."
Arms control's impact on Western security has been hashed and rehashed unmercifully over the years. I believe now, as I believed coming into the post, that arms control is vastly overvalued in public discussions. Our average citizen has been led to believe that someday, somehow, arms control will deliver us from danger. It has often been equated with "peace" by officials who know better and is now so assumed by publics who should be told better.
The most prevailing and perverse myth equates an arms control agreement with a "peace" agreement. This assumes that any such agreement would bring lasting peace to our turbulent world. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Arms control has a ring of finality about it that is clearly unwarranted. "When is it going to end?" people ask of the "arms race." "When can we do without the unclear weaponry, the soldiers, the big arsenals accumulated over all these years?" The answer is: just about when we can dismiss the police or the FBI or the other domestic security apparatus we've built up all these years.
Parchment can't bring peace. Arms control can't bring peace. Maybe it can help improve the political climate, but probably not, for that depends upon whether Soviet behavior allows the climate to improve.
If the political climate improves while the Soviets continue fueling and fostering revolutionary movements around the world, it clearly would be harmful. The situation would resemble a physician's pumping up a sick patient with cortisone to eliminate skin sensations. Such a treatment might make the patient feel better for a moment, but would endanger the body by shutting down its natural warning system to major problems.
Arms control can never substitute for Western security, determination, and cohesion. At best, it can contribute something small. At worst, it can harm something large. In essence, arms control can do modest good if handled well and enormous harm if handled poorly.
In the past, however, neither really has come about. Despite all the hopes of liberals and all the fears of conservatives, despite thousands of articles like this one, arms control has had little bearing on security. When all is said and done, so much more has been said about arms control than ever done by it. Now, however, we stand on the verge of ratification of an INF agreement. It is one of those rare, indeed sole, "good" agreements in nuclear arms control.
Why? Because INF solves the problem it set out to solve. That's not bad in any endeavor in life, let alone in arms control. It solves the problems that virtually every European government identified in the mid-1970s as a real and grave problem, namely the advent of the SS-20--a triple warheaded, mobile
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