Barry M. Blechman

Once again there has been a long and bitter fight in the Senate over the President's nominee for Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Like Paul Warnke in 1977, Kenneth Adelman has now been confirmed, but by such a narrow margin--and with such substantial political baggage--as to cripple his ability to manage the agency and promote its objectives.

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.