The Future of Arms Control

Arms control, once a keystone of American foreign policy, has fallenout of favor with many U.S. Policymakers.  Yet it is needed more thanever, although in a different form. Dangerous technologies aboutthroughout the world and cannot be controlled exclusively throughmilitary action or other unilateral means.  A successful strategy alsonecessitates coordinated international initiatives to regulate thedevelopment, production, and use of such technologies and weapons-inother words, arms control.

When Morton Halperin and Thomas Schelling laid out their widely adoptedprinciples for arms control during the cold war, they attempted to bringarms control and defense policy into alignment;  they thus emphasizedthe need to reduce the chances of war, the damage from any war thatnonetheless occurred, and the cost of preparing for war.  Here, MichaelA. Levi and Michael E. O’Hanlon apply a similar logic to arms controlin the modern age of terrorism, leading to a new set of coreprinciples.

The authors underscore that arms control must have clear priorities andfocus on preventing proliferation to the most dangerous actors of themost dangerous technologies-notably those related to nuclear andbiological weaponry, as well as the small arms that contribute to somany civil conflicts.  It must also provide early warning of violations,thereby helping establish the predicate for international coerciveaction (even use of military force) when violations occur.  They suggestthat to snatch proliferation, the United States and its allies mustcontinue to expand the group of democratic, peaceful countries that areunited in a security community.  This vision of collective security is amuch more promising nonproliferation incentive than the unrealisticpromise of nuclear abolition.

In addition, Levi and O’Hanlon offer analyses of space weaponry,cybersecurity, nanotechnology, and possible arms control arrangements inkey regional hotspots to complete, cogently and decisively, theirproposal for a new arms control framework for a new world.

"Lays out the framework of an enduring and effective arms control strategy that is explicitly linked to broader U.S. security policy, focusing on preventing the spread of nuclear and biological arms to extremist states and terrorist organizations"--Provided by publisher.

The necessity of preventing the proliferation of nuclear and other dangerous weapons remains as great as during the Cold War. However, according to Levi and O'Hanlon (both of the Brookings Institution), the goals and methods of arms control must change in order to face new geostrategic realities. They believe that arms control must now aim to prevent the spread of dangerous technologies to terrorists and states that might aid them, "create political predicates" for the use of force to contain or reverse proliferation, and improve security for those not actively hostile to the US. These goals mean that the United States should worry more about "weak states and dangerous nonstate actors than by competition among the great powers" and that American military power should be used as a "force for good" not constrained by treaty. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Michael A. Levi is a nonresident science fellow at the Brookings Institution and a doctoral candidate in War Studies at King's College (London). He was previously a science and technology fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.

Michael E. O'Hanlon is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. His recent books include Neither Star Wars nor Sanctuary: Constraining the Military Uses of Space and Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal with a Nuclear North Korea.