Arms Control in the 1980s

Despite the reversal of detente, and perhaps even because of it, negotiated arms control agreements will continue in the 1980s to offer solutions to security and related problems that cannot be adequately managed in the absence of mutual restraint. To the existing motives for arms limitation—coping with the existential dilemma of nuclear weapons in a conflictual world and avoiding the worst costs of an unbridled strategic competition—will be added the requirement for greater predictability and calculability in the strategic environment than emerging weapons and surveillance technologies will provide. At the same time, the difficulties of conceiving, achieving, and sustaining support for arms limitation agreements will be greater than in the past, owing both to technological and political developments. Those who endorse arms control as an approach to security problems must find solutions to the many vexing problems this enterprise faces. There are, first, the technical challenges: innovation, verification, and the prevention of costly and provocative deployments. In addition, there are institutional and political challenges. Answers to some of these problems can be found by examining the record of negotiated security in the nuclear age and by making the lessons of this record available both to the policy makers and the public.