Negotiating Arms Control

Abstract

'Patience is the art of hoping/ it has been said. Nothing requires more patience or practice in the art of hoping than disarmament. For the ideal negotiator in theory, one might well turn to St Paul and accept his advice to the apostle Timothy, when he said: 'And the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves/ In practice, disarmament negotiations are orchestrated and conducted by the most heavily armed powers, in the interests of the most heavily armed powers, and have more to do with horse trading than with St Paul. Even the most powerful, however, cannot be heedless of the requirements of survival, and the necessity of avoiding the appalling destructiveness of resort to nuclear war. The realization of the growing unacceptability of the risks involved in the use of the ultimate force provided by modern technology, together with the serious risks of unfettered proliferation of nuclear weapons, has resulted in a great deal of activity in negotiations on disarmament, even though the extent of achievement in reducing the risks of nuclear war is still clearly inadequate. In fact, in the whole postwar period, only one disarmament measure (ie, the abolition or reduction of armaments or armed forces) has been agreed to by the principal military powers the prohibition of the development, production, and stockpiling of bacteriological and toxin weapons in 1972, a form of warfare regarded as particularly impracticable because of its uncontrollable boomerang effects.