Do Negotiated Arms Limitations Have a Future?

As we enter the fall of 1980, the future of efforts to limit armaments through international negotiations is very much in doubt. President Carter's decision in January to defer Senate debate on the SALT II treaty only recognized formally what had long been apparent: in many ways the troubled history of SALT II already had represented a significant, perhaps fatal, defeat for negotiated arms limitations-regardless of the specific fate of the treaty itself. Even before the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, enthusiasm for arms limitations had become increasingly restrained within the Administration (to put it mildly) as the SALT agreement's political problems had become increasingly evident. Moreover, the national SALT debate and related developments had occasioned perceptions in the Congress and among the public at large of political and substantive liabilities of negotiated arms limitations that seemed likely to give pause to any President in 1981.

Few would have predicted such a state of affairs. Upon taking office, President Carter set ambitious objectives for, and assigned unprecedented priority to, arms limitations. The design of the MX missile system, for example, the most expensive weapons program backed by the Carter Administration, was strongly influenced by projected requirements for verifying future negotiated limitations on strategic weapons. Similarly, early in 1977 the President established tough unilateral policies aimed at reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation and restraining sales of conventional weapons. Most important, in March 1977, U.S. objectives in the ongoing SALT negotiations were reevaluated and a more ambitious negotiating position adopted. At the same time, then, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance proposed the creation of new U.S.-Soviet arms limitation working groups. Eight such groups were agreed upon: antisatellite weapons, chemical weapons, civil defense, comprehensive nuclear test ban, conventional arms transfers, demilitarization of the Indian Ocean, prior notification of missile tests, and radiological weapons and new types of mass destruction weapons.

The results of this ambitious program have been modest. Indeed, in the closing months of the present Administration, efforts to place limitations on armaments have been at a standstill, their prognosis bleak.