Arms agreement: a model of stalemate

Abstract

In reviewing the efforts of the past decade and a half to limit by international agreement the numbers and uses of military weapons, one theme dominates all othersthat of failure. Over the entire period, little progress has been made toward any agreement which would limit any significant aspect of armaments. This paper is an enquiry into the underlying causes of this stalemate, in the hope that analysis of these causes may assist in finding paths along which it is possible to move forward. It may well be that the basis for the failures lies in viewpoints and interests of the world's two major military power blocs which are so divergent that they are and will remain impossible of reconciliation, but the hypothesis here is that while these interests may indeed be irreconcilable today, this is not necessarily the case for all time. It should be made clear at the outset, however, that to investigate the causes for the failure of arms negotiations is not to