Perspectives on Arms Control 

Michael O. Wheeler 

James M. Smith 

Glen M. Segell 

INSS Occasional Paper 55 

July 2004 

USAF Institute for National Security Studies 

USAF Academy, Colorado 
ii
iii

The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not 

necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of 

the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the US Government. The 

paper is approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. Glen 

Segell holds copyright to his paper that is included in this collection. 

The paper is published here with Dr. Segell’s permission. 

******* 

ABOUT THE AUTHORS: 

Dr. Michael O. Wheeler is a Senior Analyst in the Strategies Group, 

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). He recently 

served as staff director of the Commission on Maintaining US Nuclear 

Weapons Expertise (the Chiles Commission). During his Air Force 

career he served as Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff, US Air 

Force; Special Assistant to a Commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission; Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State (White 

House Fellow); Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff; Staff Secretary, National Security Council; Chief, Nuclear 

Negotiations Division, Joint Staff (J-5); and Arms Control Advisor to 

the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Air Force Member of the 

Chairman’s Staff Group. His recent publications include “The United 

States Air Force and Arms Control: The Early Years,” in James M. 

Smith and Gwendolyn M. Hall, ed. Milestones in Strategic Arms 

Control 1945-2000: United States Air Force Roles and Outcomes 

(2002); “A History of Arms Control” in Jeffrey A. Larsen, ed. Arms 

Control: Cooperative Security in a Changing Environment (2002); 

“Analytical Case Study on US-Russian Nuclear Arms Control” in An 

Assessment of Preventive Threat Reduction (2001); and Contributions 

of Nuclear Weapons to American Security During the Cold War

(1999). Dr. Wheeler is a graduate of the Air Force Academy, and he 

holds an MA in Political Science from Georgetown University and a 

PhD in Philosophy from the University of Arizona. 

Dr. James M. Smith is Director, USAF Institute for National Security 

Studies (INSS) and Professor, Military Strategic Studies at the USAF 

Academy. Relevant to this publication, he is coauthor (with Jeffrey A. 

Larsen) of The Historical Dictionary of Arms Control and 

Disarmament (forthcoming 2004); coeditor (with Gwendolyn M. Hall) 

of Milestones in Strategic Arms Control, 1945-2000: United States Air 

Force Roles and Outcomes (2002); author of “Non-Strategic Nuclear 

Weapons and Arms Control: Implications for the US Air Force” in 

Jeffrey A. Larsen and Kurt J. Klingenberger, eds. Controlling NonStrategic Nuclear Weapons: Obstacles and Opportunities (2001); 
iv

editor of Nuclear Deterrence and Defense: Strategic Considerations

(2001); and editor of Searching for National Security in an NBC World

(2000). Dr. Smith is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and a 

retired USAF officer. He holds an MS from the University of Southern 

California and a Doctorate in Public Administration (Public Policy) 

from the University of Alabama. 

Dr. Glen M. Segell, the Lord of Deadington, is Director of the Institute 

of Security Policy, London. His recent related publications include 

Disarming Iraq (2004); seven entries in the Encyclopedia of Weapons 

of Mass Destruction (forthcoming 2004); “The Middle East” in Jeffrey 

A. Larsen, ed. Arms Control: Cooperative Security in a Changing 

Environment (2002); “The Core and the Periphery,” in Howard 

Hensel, ed. The United States and Europe: Policy Imperatives in a 

Globalizing World (2002); and “French Cryptography Policy: The 

Turnabout of 1999,” International Journal of Intelligence and 

Counterintelligence (13:3, 2000). He holds a PhD from the University 

of London. Dr. Segell holds copyright to his contribution to this 

Occasional Paper, and it is printed here with his permission. 

Comments pertaining to this paper are invited; please forward to: 

 Director, USAF Institute for National Security Studies 

 HQ USAFA/DFES 

 2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 5L27 

 USAF Academy, CO 80840 

 phone: 719-333-2717 

 fax: 719-333-2716 

 email: inss@usafa.af.mil 

Visit the Institute for National Security Studies home page at 

http://www.usafa.af.mil/inss
v

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Foreword vii 

Executive Summary ix 

The American Approach to Arms Control: What We Can Expect 

from American Diplomacy for the Next 20 Years 

Michael O. Wheeler 

Introduction 1 

The American Foreign Policy Experience: Some 

 Perspectives 7 

The American Arms Control Experience 9 

 The Rush-Bagot Treaty 10 

 The Lieber Code and the Codification of 

 Laws of War 12 

 From the Hague Peace Conferences to the 

 United Nations Charter 13 

 Nuclear Arms Control during the Cold War 20 

 Nuclear Arms Control after the Cold War 23 

 The George W. Bush Administration and 

 Arms Control 24 

The American Practice of Arms Control: 

 The Next Twenty Years 32 

Conclusions 43 

Notes 44 

A Tale of Two Countries: Russia, North Korea, and the Present 

and Future of Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and 

Counterproliferation in United States Policy 

James M. Smith 

Introduction 53 

Evolution of the Concepts 54 

 Traditional Disarmament 54 

 Cold War: Arms Control and Efforts to 

 Block Proliferation 55 

Arms Control as a Process 58 
vi

 Phase I: Bounds and Limits 59 

 Phase II: Reductions and Elimination 60 

 SORT as Phase II Endgame: North Korea 

 Points the Way into Phase III 64 

Transition as Reflected in United States Policy 67 

 George H. W. Bush 67 

 William J. Clinton I 68 

 William J. Clinton II 70 

 George W. Bush 71 

 Election 2004 75 

Trend Line Projection and Implications 78 

 Implementation Issues 80 

Conclusion 84 

Notes 86 

The EU Approach to Arms Control: 

Does It Differ from the American Approach? 

©Glen M. Segell 

Introduction 89 

The Nature of Arms Control 92 

American Arms Control Diplomacy 94 

What is War? 96 

War as a Political Act of Arms Control 99 

Military Means to Affect Arms Control 100 

European Arms Control Diplomacy 110 

21st Century War Nonproliferation 112 

The CFE Treaty 115 

CSFP/ESDP 118 

Rogue States 121 

Conclusion 128 

Notes 130 
vii

FOREWORD 

We are pleased to publish this fifty-fifth volume in the 

Occasional Paper series of the United States Air Force Institute for 

National Security Studies (INSS). For the past three years INSS 

has organized, sponsored, and/or participated in panels addressing 

arms control and strategic security issues at annual meetings of the 

International Studies Association and its subordinate International 

Security Studies Section. The purpose of this effort is to keep the 

study and analysis of strategic-level issues visible to the broader 

government and academic communities at a time when few 

members of the academic community are undertaking research on 

these topics, and to perhaps spark interest in some of the graduate 

students and junior university faculty members to undertaking study 

and research in these areas. The three papers in this Occasional 

Paper were presented on a panel, ”Diplomacy and Arms Control,” 

organized in this case by Glen Segell and presented at the 45th 

Annual Convention of the International Studies Association held at 

Montreal, Quebec in March 2004. 

Michael Wheeler sets arms control within a focused diplomatic 

and historical perspective. He traces the important and integral 

place of arms control diplomacy to United States traditions, and 

projects continuing relevance for arms control within that context 

well into the future. James Smith then approaches the topic from a 

process and policy perspective. He suggests that strategic arms 

control, nonproliferation, and counterproliferation have developed 

and continue as parallel tracks in United States policy, and proposes 

a combined policy construct for future policy effectiveness and 

efficiency. Glen Segell completes this set of lenses by addressing 

the European perspective on arms control, including the important 

comparative views of United States arms control policy and practice 

as seen through European eyes. He sees general harmony in United 

States and European efforts and interests, but also highlights areas 

of divergence and policy concern. Together the three papers 

present a broad and complementary package that reinforces a 

continuing and important role for “arms control” into the near- and 

mid-term future. 

About the Institute
viii

INSS is primarily sponsored by the National Security Policy 

Division of the Nuclear and Counterproliferation Directorate, 

Headquarters US Air Force (HQ USAF/XONP), and the Dean of 

the Faculty, USAF Academy. Other sponsors include the Secretary 

of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment (OSD/NA); the Defense 

Threat Reduction Agency; the Air Force Information Warfare 

Center; the Army Environmental Policy Institute; the United States 

Northern Command/North American Aerospace Defense 

Command; and the United States Military Academy Combating 

Terrorism Center. The mission of the Institute is “to promote 

national security research for the Department of Defense within the 

military academic community, to foster the development of 

strategic perspective within the United States Armed Forces, and to 

support national security discourse through outreach and 

education.” Its research focuses on the areas of greatest interest to 

our organizational sponsors: arms control and strategic security; 

counterproliferation and force protection; homeland defense, 

military assistance to civil authorities, and combating terrorism; air 

and space issues and planning; information operations and warfare; 

and regional and emerging national security issues. 

INSS coordinates and focuses outside thinking in various 

disciplines and across the military services to develop new ideas for 

defense policy making. To that end, the Institute develops topics, 

selects researchers from within the military academic community, 

and administers sponsored research. It reaches out to and partners 

with education and research organizations across and beyond the 

military academic community to bring broad focus to issues of 

national security interest. And it hosts conferences and workshops 

and facilitates the dissemination of information to a wide range of 

private and government organizations. In these ways, INSS 

facilitates valuable, cost-effective research to meet the needs of our 

sponsors. We appreciate your continued interest in INSS and our 

research products. 

JAMES M. SMITH 

 Director 
ix

EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES 

The American Approach to Arms Control: What Can We Expect 

from American Diplomacy for the Next Twenty Years? 

Michael O. Wheeler 

America is widely recognized to be a powerful hegemon today. 

It is important to understand what the American approach to arms 

control might be like over the next twenty years. Will it mirror the 

departures of the current Bush administration, or will it go off on 

different trajectories? Using the broad definition of arms control 

that is found in the official US State Department arms control and 

disarmament glossary, this paper offers a historically informed 

discussion of how the United States got to the point it is today in 

arms control and where it may go from here. This is not an attempt 

at prediction or forecasting so much as a discussion of plausible 

possibilities and relevant trends. Focusing on weapons of mass 

destruction, and especially on nuclear weapons, it concludes that 

arms control is not dead in American diplomacy but is evolving. 

The paper describes that evolution. 

A Tale of Two Countries: Russia, North Korea, and the 

Present and Future of Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and 

Counterproliferation in United States Policy 

James M. Smith

This paper seeks to explain and analyze what has become a 

shifting, melding United States policy approach to more 

traditionally distinct forms of diplomatic-centric arms control and 

nonproliferation with the addition of military-centric counterproliferation constructs and postures. It briefly develops a process 

view of “arms control” (as the umbrella under which all efforts to 

manage military force and arms reside) from its pre-nuclear roots 

and across its nuclear focus during the Cold War to today. It 

presents the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT, or 

Moscow Treaty 2003) and the United States-Russia relationship as 

representative of the continuing end game of arms control as it 

existed during the Cold War, characterizing that context, construct, 

practice, and dynamics as the traditional case and departure point 
x

for today’s US policy. It suggests that arms control is not absent 

from US policy today, but that it is transitioning into a new phase in 

the face of a new set of strategic challenges. It posits the North 

Korea case as representative of a whole new category of 

proliferation-based strategic challenges and of the emerging policy 

framework. It then reviews post-Cold War United States policy 

against that context and projects the threads of continuity and 

elements of change into the near-term future. Finally, from that 

process and policy perspective, it suggests an evolving triangular 

policy construct—incorporating arms control, counterproliferation, 

and homeland defense imperatives—as a logical lens and perhaps 

more effective policy approach to address the challenges and 

promises of the full range of “arms control” efforts today and 

tomorrow. 

The EU Approach to Arms Control: 

Does It Differ from the American Approach 

Glen M. Segell 

The European approach to nonproliferation does not differ from 

the American approach. To be sure, the American approach as a 

hegemonic power at the start of the 21st century resembles the 

European approach of the Great Powers at the start of the 20th

century. There is thus consensus in 2004 on the approach to the 

two big nonproliferation issues for European states. The first of 

these revolves around relations between America and European 

states within NATO over European regional security issues. These 

include the impact of NATO enlargement on Cold War arms 

control arrangements, particularly the adaptation of the CFE treaty; 

the future of the Balkans; and, specific matters in the Baltics such 

as the Russian Kaliningrad base. The second is commonality 

surrounding the ongoing arms control process on nuclear weapons 

and missiles between America and Russia that needs European 

Union (EU) consensus given EU enlargement. Integral to this is 

EURATOM holding jurisdiction to own, monitor, and verify 

nuclear material within the European Union, including the new 

members from Central and Easter Europe. For all of these America 

has a willing partner in EU states to engage in bilateral, small-party 

multilateral, and large-party multilateral nonproliferation efforts. 

Notwithstanding this trans-Atlantic nonproliferation consensus, 
xi

there are fundamental differences on counterproliferation on a 

global scale outside of Europe. Intrinsic differences of approach 

exist on the use of American armed force for counterproliferation, 

especially on the matter of rogue states and non-state entities. In 

this America finds itself having to engage in unilateral counterproliferation. This will continue to be the case, especially if 

America chooses to pursue the doctrine of pre-emptive military 

force for arms control, namely, the Bush Doctrine. Such 

differences are reconcilable through multilateral cooperation such 

as the Proliferation Security Initiative. 
xii
THE AMERICAN APPROACH TO ARMS CONTROL: 

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM AMERICAN 

DIPLOMACY FOR THE NEXT 20 YEARS? 

Michael O. Wheeler 

INTRODUCTION 

Arms control permeated American diplomacy during the Cold 

War. Agendas for US-Soviet summits were built around arms control 

discussions, large delegations met frequently in places like Geneva, and 

even trivial changes in the arms control talks often made the front 

pages of major newspapers around the world. This changed with the 

fall of the Berlin Wall. 

The change was healthy. Nuclear arms control had become so 

important precisely because it was the only hope for stabilizing a 

dangerous nuclear relationship that, if it spun out of control, would lead 

to Armageddon. From America’s earliest postwar studies of the bomb, 

it was clear that there was no possibility of providing a defensive shield 

around the United States so complete that no nuclear weapons could 

penetrate it, that even a few nuclear weapons exploding on American 

cities would be an unprecedented catastrophe, and that deterrence of 

nuclear attack thus was imperative. Preventing another world war also 

was vital as was containing Soviet ambitions in Eurasia, and to achieve 

those ends, the United States had to demonstrate a willingness to be the 

first to use nuclear weapons if absolutely necessary, even if this ran a 

high risk of triggering the nuclear holocaust it otherwise sought to 

deter. NATO accepted this risk. The contradictions inherent in these 

conflicting goals never were absent from nuclear strategy during the 

Cold War. 1
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

2

Arms control became part of a grand strategy of deterrence and 

containment. The basic logic of nuclear arms control from the 1960s 

onward was to stabilize the nuclear relationship while at the same time 

assuring that any arms control proposal or agreement was militarily 

sufficient, that it to say, if adopted would leave the United States 

sufficient nuclear power to support its deterrence plans. Deterrence 

always was a dangerous business. As Lawrence Freedman wrote in 

1998, “Nuclear deterrence worked better in practice than in theory. It 

was barely tolerable as a grand strategy, overhung as it was by the 

nagging question: ‘What happens if deterrence fails?’”2

 Thankfully, 

we never had to give an answer. 

As the United States disengaged from the Cold War, questions 

about the future of its arms control policy inevitably arose. Avis 

Bohlen, a foreign service officer who ended her distinguished 

diplomatic career serving as the assistant secretary of state for arms 

control (1999-2000), used her year as a public policy scholar at the 

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC 

to reflect on the changes. “What currently remains of arms control,” 

she argues, “is a very different animal from the Cold War variant. It is 

unlikely ever again to be so central a preoccupation of US foreign 

policy.” Bohlen concludes: 

The principal contribution of arms control today lies in the 

normative framework it helps to maintain. Defining rules 

about what is broadly acceptable to the international 

community remains essential to defining the kind of 

international order we wish to maintain. Even if the rules on 

their own are insufficient to maintain that order, they remain 

an important tool for combating proliferation.3

 

Rose Gottemoeller, currently a senior associate at the Carnegie 

Endowment for International Peace and formerly an official in the 

Clinton administration responsible for cooperative security programs 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

3

with Russia, offers a different perspective when she writes of the new 

American-Russian arms control relationship: “The particular danger is 

that unilateral measures will be rushed into place to supersede 

negotiated agreements before a high level of trust is established at all 

levels in Moscow and Washington.” In the article cited herein and in 

her other work, Gottemoeller is seeking a reorientation of arms control 

efforts to ease the continuing transition in American relations with 

Russia.4

Brad Roberts, currently a member of the research staff at the 

Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), formerly editor of The 

Washington Quarterly, and a thoughtful arms control expert, on the eve 

of the presidential election in 2000 surveyed the American arms 

agenda. Roberts asked rhetorically whether arms control was 

becoming more or less important to the national security of the United 

States and, while not answering the question directly, sounded a 

cautionary tone. “The broad centrist commitment to arms control so 

evident a decade ago,” he argues, “has been replaced [in Washington] 

by something more familiar: a replay of the old debate between the 

two extremes, between those who believe arms control is not in the 

national interest and those who see it as an unalloyed good, as the right 

and necessary work of any decent nation.”5

 His main thesis was that 

fundamental choices lay ahead. 

Lewis Dunn and Victor Alessi, two highly respected American 

authorities with a rich blend of arms control experiences in government 

and in the private sector, offer another point of view. They argue that 

“the years ahead may be a period in which traditional arms control, as 

practiced since the launch of SALT negotiations over three decades 

ago, will stumble at best and become deadlocked at worst.” Their 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

4

conclusion is that “the US may have to pursue its arms-control 

objectives through less formal, non-treaty-based means.”6

Having been an arms control professional for much of my career,7

 I 

found myself on numerous occasions in the 1990s at conferences and 

workshops where the conversation turned to the question of what was 

happening to arms control. Was the strategic arms control process, 

then in stalemate, essentially over? Was the Nunn-Lugar program 

funded adequately and pursued sufficiently vigorously? Had 

counterproliferation replaced nonproliferation as a national objective? 

Was the disbanding of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency 

(ACDA) and the transfer of its responsibilities to the office of an under 

secretary in the State Department anything but evidence of arms 

control’s decline? Was the Senate’s defeat of the Comprehensive Test 

Ban Treaty (CTBT) a historic occasion, akin to the refusal of an earlier 

Senate to allow America to join the League of Nations? Did the 

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), under stress from a number of 

directions, have a future? The Washington Quarterly in its spring 2000 

edition put the issue nicely: Is arms control dead?8

 

These sorts of questions were asked long before the current 

presidency of George W. Bush but certainly acquired a sharper edge 

when the Bush administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile 

(ABM) Treaty, issued a new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), and—

post 9/11—published a national security strategy that emphasized the 

doctrine of preemption and the objective of keeping “the world’s most 

dangerous weapons” (a phrase often repeated by the President) out of 

the hands of terrorists and dangerous regimes.9

Whether arms control is dead, expiring, being kept alive on life 

support, shedding its old skin, transfiguring, being reborn, or rushing 

off in new directions, one thing is clear—its role in American foreign 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

5

policy certainly is different. But is it truly that different from the past? 

To answer that question, we need to understand what arms control is, 

and how it has evolved in American foreign policy since the birth of the 

republic. 

Throughout the odyssey of the past forty or so years, I have often 

thought that the public discussion of arms control was much too 

narrowly focused. In the first place, it often is unclear what 

interlocutors in the discussion mean by “arms control.” I personally 

prefer the broad definition that was (and still is) to be found in the 

official US State Department Glossary—a definition, I might add, that 

many Americans appear never to have read, which says that arms 

control is: 

Any unilateral or multilateral step taken to reduce or control 

any aspect of either a weapon system or armed forces. Such 

reductions or limitations might affect the size, type, 

configuration, production or performance characteristics of a 

weapon system, or the size, organization, equipment, 

deployment, or employment of armed forces.10 

Under this broad definition, treaty-based arms control of the 

modern variety shades into a much wider diplomatic agenda and, more 

generally, into how one approaches the international law of armed 

conflict and the entire realm of regulating trade in weapons 

technologies and arms. 

Perhaps even more daunting to thoughtful analysis than an 

excessively narrow definition of arms control is the myopic focus one 

often finds in the arms control literature that tends to treat “arms 

control” largely as a post-World War II phenomenon. As Walter 

Russell Mead cogently notes in his recent study of the history of 

American foreign policy, “Even today in the United States, most 

policy-makers and pundits think that foreign policy played only a very 

marginal role in American life before World War II, and that there is 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

6

little to be gained by studying the historical records of our past.”11 

When one examines the role of arms control in American diplomacy in 

earlier periods, a sense of balance and perspective emerges that helps 

us understand the American practice of arms control today and into the 

near term. 

What I intend to do in this paper is to pursue, using the broad 

definition of arms control cited above, a historically informed 

discussion of how the United States got to the point it is at today in 

arms control and where it may go from here. This is not an attempt at 

prediction or forecasting so much as a discussion of plausible 

possibilities and relevant trends. I do not adopt any single 

methodology for peering into the future, although I find the approach of 

the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) in its Project 2020 

endeavor to be clear and appealing.12 I focus on weapons of mass 

destruction (WMD) and especially on nuclear weapons, not to deny the 

relevance of arms control to other areas (e.g., land mines, small arms, 

or conventional forces in Europe) but because now, as was the case 

during the Cold War, the most lethal threats come from WMD. 

Finally by way of introduction, I note my affinity with a thesis 

advanced by my late instructor, Eugene V. Rostow. In his masterful 

study of American foreign policy, Toward Managed Peace, Rostow 

contended that “the supreme security interest of the United States—the 

interest most worth fighting for—is an organized and effectively 

enforced system of general international peace.” This would not be, 

Rostow explained, “a world order of Utopian perfection, but one in 

which the phenomenon of war is kept within tolerable limits by the 

cooperation of the states which constitute the world community, and 

especially of the major powers, or at least a decisive number of 

them.”13 Rostow had a long and distinguished career as a government 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

7

official (serving, among other posts, as Director of the Arms Control 

and Disarmament Agency) and as an academic figure, perhaps best 

known for his tenure as Dean of the Yale Law School. He understood 

and inspired others to appreciate the importance of a long-term 

perspective when studying American foreign policy and its supporting 

diplomacy. It is with that thought in mind that I begin this discussion. 

THE AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY EXPERIENCE: 

SOME PERSPECTIVES 

“In the twentieth century,” writes Henry Kissinger, “no country has 

influenced international relations as decisively and at the same time as 

ambivalently as the United States.” He continues: 

No society has more firmly insisted on the inadmissibility of 

intervention in the domestic affairs of other states, or more 

passionately asserted that its own values were universally 

applicable. No nation has been more pragmatic in the day-today conduct of its diplomacy, or more ideological in the 

pursuit of its historic moral convictions. No country has been 

more reluctant to engage itself abroad even while undertaking 

alliances and commitments of unprecedented reach and 

scope.... Torn between nostalgia for a pristine past and 

yearning for a perfect future, American thought has oscillated 

between isolationism and commitment, though, since the end 

of the Second World War, the realities of interdependence 

have predominated.14

When Kissinger published those words in the early 1990s, he 

argued that “America’s journey through international politics has been 

a triumph of faith over experience.”15 Since then he had not changed 

his views although he has updated his analysis, e.g.: 

Especially in the 1990s, American preeminence evolved less 

from a strategic design than a series of ad hoc decisions 

designed to satisfy domestic constituencies while, in the 

economic field, it was driven by technology and the resulting 

unprecedented gains in American productivity. All this has 

given rise to the temptation of acting as if the United States 

needed no long-range foreign policy at all and could confine 

itself to a case-by-case response to challenges as they arise.16
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

8

Kissinger is not alone in this critique of American foreign policy, 

but is he right? In calling attention to the many contradictions in 

American foreign policy—even on matters of principle—and to its 

frequent shifts, he is on firm ground. But in concluding that there is no 

underlying pattern (“faith over experience”), a number of others would 

disagree with his reading of American diplomatic history. Walter 

Russell Mead, already cited in this paper, contends that America has 

had a remarkably successful foreign policy over the past two hundred 

years—a foreign policy that emerged from a dynamic interaction 

among four opposing orientations which he calls, using as shorthand 

American political figures who reflected the traits: 

• “Hamiltonian”: a preference for strong national 

government, emphasis on America’s commercial interests, and the 

need to integrate America into the global economy on favorable 

terms. 

• “Jeffersonian”: suspicion of strong national government, 

emphasis on safeguarding democracy at home, fear that excessive 

involvement abroad could undermine American values and disturb 

American security. 

• “Wilsonian”: belief that American security lies in exporting 

American democratic and social values throughout the world and 

proactively creating an international community that accepts the 

rule of law. 

• “Jacksonian”: assertive defense of American interests, 

using every means of power available, not seeking foreign quarrels 

but not shrinking from them either: “Don’t tread on Me!” 

“These four schools have shaped the American foreign policy 

debate,” Mead argues, “from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. 

They are as important under George W. Bush as they were under 

George Washington and from everything I can see, American foreign 

policy will continue to emerge from their collisions and debates far into 

the future.”17
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

9

Walter A. McDougall reaches a similar conclusion, albeit with a 

different analysis. “We must begin, he argues, by recognizing that the 

end of the Cold War did not hurl us into a state of confusion over our 

role in world politics. It merely revealed anew the confusion 

Americans have usually displayed about foreign policy except when 

‘clear and present danger’ loomed.” The analytic lenses McDougall 

adopts are explained metaphorically: 

We Americans have such a bible of foreign affairs, canonized 

over the course of two centuries and divided into two 

testaments, each with four books. Our Old Testament 

dominated the rhetoric and, for the most part, the practice of 

U.S. diplomacy from 1776 to the 1890s, and preached the 

doctrine of Liberty at home, Unilateralism abroad, an 

American System of states, and Expansion. These four 

traditions were all about Being and Becoming, and were 

designed by the Founding Fathers to deny the outside world 

the chance to shape America’s future. Our New Testament in 

foreign affairs has likewise dominated the rhetoric and, for the 

most part, the practice of U.S. diplomacy in the twentieth 

century, and preached the doctrines of Progressive 

Imperialism, Wilsonianism, Containment, and Global 

Meliorism, or the belief that America has the responsibility to 

nurther democracy and economic growth around the world. 

These last four traditions are all about Doing and Relating, and 

were designed to give America the chance to shape the outside 

world’s future.18

THE AMERICAN ARMS CONTROL EXPERIENCE 

Arms control, broadly defined, has been pursued by American 

statesmen since the birth of the republic and has helped to shape the 

world order, something for which the United States (like Great Britain) 

has come to feel a special responsibility. What follows is a highly 

selective, much abbreviated overview of the American arms control 

experience over the past two centuries.19
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

10

The Rush-Bagot Treaty

On January 25, 1816, John Quincy Adams (hereafter referred to, as 

was common in his family to distinguish him from his father, as JQA), 

American minister to the Court of St. James, met with Lord 

Castlereagh, British foreign secretary, for one of the periodic 

discussions the two had held since JQA arrived in London the 

preceding May. The American agenda included the continuing 

question of an Anglo-American commercial treaty and issues requiring 

further negotiation consequent to the Peace of Ghent that had ended the 

War of 1812 (Adams had chaired the American delegation that 

negotiated this agreement). Four issues in particular were on JQA’s 

mind: impressment of seamen (“the most important”) and three matters 

related to American-Canadian relations: Indians along the frontier, 

“the temper of British local authorities” in Canada, and “British 

armaments on the Lakes.” JQA recorded in his diary that evening that 

he had informed Castlereagh that “The American Government, anxious 

above all for the preservation of peace, have authorized me to propose a 

reduction of the armaments upon the Lakes on both sides.”20 Thus 

began the dialogue that resulted, in the Rush Bagot Treaty of 1817, an 

agreement that, in the words of the late, distinguished American 

diplomatic historian, Samuel Flagg Bemis, is “the first instance of 

reciprocal naval disarmament in the history of international relations, 

the most successful and lasting precedent, and certainly an 

advantageous arrangement for the largest interests of the United 

States.”21

JQA repeated his offer to Castlereagh in a formal note of March 

21, 1816, and Castlereagh responded positively. The Rush-Bagot 

Treaty is the first instance of a bilateral arms control agreement 

between the United States and a major adversary. It did not arise in a 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

11

vacuum. The question of dealing with fortifications and armed forces 

along the disputed northern frontier was present ever since the Peace of 

Paris (1783) that ended the American revolution. JQA’s father John 

Adams had negotiated on this issue as had JQA himself prior to 1816. 

That the negotiations succeeded after 1816 where they had failed 

earlier—and that the resulting treaty took hold—were due to several 

things: Lord Castelreagh’s personal views that the interests of Great 

Britain could best be secured in the new Concert of Europe by a 

parallel normalization of relations with the United States; broader 

territorial settlements with Britain in 1818; and domestic shifts in the 

United States and Canada, accompanied by the attitudes of successive 

British governments, that put to rest the question of American interests 

in extending its frontiers into Canada. While formal negotiations were 

underway in Washington between the British and the American sides 

(conducted by the British minister to Washington, Charles Bagot, and 

by the American secretary of state, James Monroe), JQA and 

Castlereagh brokered a less formal agreement that so long as talks were 

ongoing, neither side would commence new armament programs on the 

frontier waters. This agreement was honored and the talks succeeded. 

That the treaty was not named the Monroe-Bagot treaty is due to 

one of those coincidences of history. The treaty was concluded one 

month after James Monroe took his oath of office as the fifth president 

of the United States. Richard Rush, acting secretary of state in April 

1817, had nothing to do with the negotiations, but since he signed the 

notes with Charles Bagot, he has his name associated in history with 

this agreement. 

The Rush-Bagot Treaty still is in existence. Today it is one of 

roughly 10,000 extant treaties to which the United States is party. At 

the time it was negotiated and in subsequent years, the treaty was part 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

12

of a wider agenda for normalizing American relations with its northern 

neighbor and with the British government, never the centerpiece of that 

agenda. 

The Lieber Code and the Codification of Laws of War

If one accepts the broad definition of arms control cited earlier, 

then the effort to specify legal rules governing the employment of 

armed forces is closely related to, if not part of, arms control. This 

leads us to explore briefly the American role in creating the modern 

law of war. 

“The roots of the modern law of war,” writes Burrus M. Carnahan, 

“lie in the 1860s.” He continues: 

Developments in this decade began in 1862 when Henry 

Dunant published Un Sovernir de Solferino, which inspired the 

conclusion two years later of the first Geneva Convention on 

treatment of the sick and wounded. Four years later came the 

first multilateral agreement to ban the use of a particular 

weapon in war [explosive projectiles under 400 grams weight]. 

And in 1863, before either of these agreements had been 

concluded, the earliest official government codification of the 

laws of war was promulgated by the United States. This 

codification was issued as General Orders No. 100, 

Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States 

in the Field, more commonly known as the “Lieber Code.”22

Dr. Francis Lieber, a combat veteran from Europe, was then 

professor of law at Columbia College. He had emigrated to the United 

States in 1827 to escape political persecution in Prussia, received his 

teaching appointment at Columbia by 1857, and when the American 

Civil War broke out in 1861, found that his family was divided by the 

war (he had sons fighting on each side). Francis Lieber, himself a 

dedicated abolitionist, was an early supporter of the North and an 

adviser to the U.S. army on treatment of Confederate prisoners and on 

how to handle “irregular” forces (guerrillas). Lieber proposed to the 

commanding general of the army in November 1862 that the President 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

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should issue a codified set of rules and regulations to govern Union 

combat operations. This led to appointment of a board of five (Lieber 

and four general officers) who produced the code that President 

Lincoln approved and issued on April 24, 1863. 

The intent at the time was to govern American operations in the 

field, not to prescribe universal rules, but since Lieber, the chief 

draftsman, began with what he understood to be the uncodified 

international laws and customs of war, it is not surprising that this 

unilateral effort influenced efforts abroad. The St. Petersburg 

declaration of 1868 and the Brussels declaration of 1874 (resulting 

from conferences where the United States only sent observers) were in 

critical ways based on elements of the Lieber code, and through these 

and other channels, the Lieber code became the basis for the 

Conventions on Land Warfare of 1899 and 1907 of the two Hague 

Peace Conferences.23

America’s proactive involvement with adapting the laws of war to 

changing circumstances continues today. The status of foreign 

prisoners detained at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is a 

case in point. It remains unclear whether the Bush administration’s 

efforts to argue that they are, properly speaking, not prisoners of war 

and hence can be treated differently, will over time become a widely 

accepted customary practice that redefines the laws of war. 

From the Hague Peace Conferences to the United Nations Charter

By the time that the government of Tsar Nicholas II took the 

initiative to call for the first Hague Peace Conference, which convened 

in May 1899, the United States was in transition to becoming a world 

power. President William McKinley appointed five American 

delegates to the conference, including two military officers one of 

whom at the time was America’s most respected military intellectual, 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

14

Navy Captain Alfred T. Mahan.24 The 1899 conference adopted a 

broad agenda pursued through a number of subcommittees looking at 

ways to limit the ongoing arms races and to humanize warfare; to deal 

with emerging military technologies such as submarines and aerial 

bombardment; to revise the laws of land warfare and to adapt them to 

war at sea; and to advance the cause of international arbitration of 

disputes. Twenty-six nations attended the conference. 

Secretary of State John Hay instructed the American delegation to 

focus on revising and extending the laws of war and on the issues 

related to arbitration, not on proposals for disarmament or for 

humanizing warfare. “It is doubtful,” he wrote in the instructions, “if 

wars are to diminished by rendering them less destructive, for it is the 

plain lesson of history that the periods of peace have been longer 

protracted as the cost and destructiveness of war have increased.” And 

in a passage reminiscent of later American attitudes toward preserving 

flexibility for exploiting military technologies, he added: “The 

expediency of restraining the inventive genius of our people in the 

direction of devising means of defense is by no means clear....”25 

Notwithstanding these instructions, the US Army member of the 

delegation, ordnance expert Captain William Crozier, took the initiative 

to broker a compromise in the subcommittee considering whether to 

adopt a “perpetual prohibition of the use of balloons or similar new 

machines for throwing projectiles or explosives.” Crozier proposed, on 

the grounds that the technologies then available did not permit 

discriminate use of explosives from balloons, that the prohibition 

should be only of five years’ duration. This limitation, he reported 

back to Hays, “preserves liberty of action under changed circumstances 

which may be produced by the progress of invention.”26 Hays accepted 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

15

this argument as did the other nations at the conference, and the 

American compromise was part of the final settlement. 

The American delegation to the First Hague Conference played a 

modest but constructive role in working groups and in plenary sessions. 

When the plan to convene a Second Hague Conference was delayed, 

the United States took the initiative to communicate with the 

governments represented at the First Hague Conference urging them to 

meet again. The replies to this demarchè were uniformly favorable. 

Once Theodore Roosevelt had brokered the Treaty of Portsmouth that 

ended the Russo-Japanese war (an action which won for him the Nobel 

Peace Price), arrangements were made for the second conference to 

meet in 1907. 

These two Hague Peace Conferences, in the opinion of the 

American legal scholar, Detlev F. Vagts, “opened the doors—just 

barely—to the era of arms control.”27 A third conference was planned 

but was postponed by world crises and then overtaken by the outbreak, 

after a century of relative peace in Europe, of the First World War. It 

never met. 

The United States at first retained a neutral position in the war in 

Europe, then reluctantly sent an expeditionary force abroad. President 

Woodrow Wilson cast America’s involvement in high moral terms, 

fighting for democracy and for a postwar vision of a new world order. 

This vision, articulated in a series of speeches and statements, and 

drawn together in Wilson’s Fourteen Points of January 1918 expressing 

America’s war aims, included elements of postwar disarmament and 

arms control (4th point) and collective security through a new 

association of nations (14th point). Wilson personally went to the 

Versailles peace conference and championed the creation of a League 

of Nations. Wilson sent the Versailles treaty to the Senate in July 1919 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

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and by the time voting began in November, it was clear that the League 

would fail unless Wilson was willing to compromise on a number of 

key points by accepting Senate reservations (he was not). Americans 

withdrew into a new isolationism during the interwar years. 

American isolationism after World War I—refusal to join the new 

multilateral organizations created by the Versailles treaty, reassertion of 

a tradition of neutrality—did not mean withdrawal from arms control 

diplomacy. The United States convened the Washington Conference of 

1922 that established by treaty the principle of limiting specified 

warships of the five leading naval powers. American representatives 

attended other multilateral meetings, including the London Naval 

Conference of 1930 and the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932. 

The experiences of the interwar years—Germany secretly and 

successfully violating the mandated disarmament provisions of the 

Versailles treaty, Germany and Japan joining international 

organizations while they built their strength and withdrawing when 

expedient, Hitler signing pledges and treaties he did not intend to 

honor—would be cited by later generations of American officials as 

reasons to suspect the value of arms control. Robert Gordon Kaufman, 

in his study of interwar naval arms control, arrives at five “findings” 

(his phrase), which I quote below: 

1. The first is how constantly events confounded American 

civilian leaders’ hopes for and their assumptions underpinning 

arms limitation. The treaties failed to achieve their intended 

goal of “positively ending the arms race” and freezing the 

naval balance indefinitely. Nor did the process of naval arms 

limitation even divert or mute the military competition 

symmetrically. To cite the most important asymmetry: Japan 

kept building warships even when the United States slowed its 

building program.... 

2. The second theme is the primacy of politics in naval arms 

limitations. No formula or yardstick sufficed in itself to bring 

about the naval limitation agreements. On the contrary, the 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

17

record of naval limitation suggests strongly that arms 

limitation will fail without corresponding political détente.... 

3. The third theme is the difficulty of meshing with foreign 

policy objectives. American civilian leaders failed utterly to 

reconcile U.S. political commitments in the Far East with 

American naval capabilities.... 

4. The fourth theme is that democracies face major 

disadvantages in negotiating arms limitation agreements with 

more closed societies.... 

5. The fifth theme is the importance of having a vigorous 

building program in being for bargaining leverage.28

Many of these views carried through to later decades and, 

arguably, remain part of the arms control debate today. In 1932, in the 

midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (hereafter 

referred to as FDR) was elected 32nd president of the United States. 

FDR, a sub-cabinet official in the Navy Department during the Wilson 

administration, was a “disenchanted Wilsonian and a believer in 

realpolitik.”29 He presided over an American public that refused to 

extend security assurances to France or to meet Hitler’s violations of 

the Versailles treaty with force. The United States engaged actively but 

unsuccessfully in the Geneva Disarmament Conference. Once the war 

in Europe was underway but before the United States formally was at 

war, FDR took the initiative when first meeting with Churchill off the 

coast of Newfoundland in August 1941 to press for the Atlantic charter. 

The Atlantic charter was a statement of principles to help define a 

new vision for a postwar world. FDR concentrated on disarmament of 

aggressors and a new collective security mechanism designed to avoid 

the mistakes of the League. FDR also was looking ahead to America 

extending security assurances of a sort it was unwilling to entertain in 

the interwar years. FDR “would not,” Townsend Hoopes and Douglas 

Brinkley argue, “favor creating a new League of Nations, or anything 

like it, until the United States and Great Britain had functioned as a 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

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world police force for a number of years after the war and had 

effectively disarmed aggressor nations and established a stable 

international situation.” They continue: 

The President’s requirement for international stability, which 

he had often shared privately with [Under Secretary of State 

Sumner] Wells, in fact went beyond disarming aggressor 

nations. It included the view that even peace-loving small 

nations could play no useful role in the international policing 

function: in time of war, their armies were worthless against 

the larger, more modern forces of the major powers; and in 

peacetime, the cost of such establishments was a crushing 

burden upon their fragile economies. As the maintenance of 

these numerous small establishments was therefore a terrible 

social waste, it would be in the general interest to disarm them 

after the war, “thereby ridding the world of an unnecessary 

burden upon humanity, as well as of a danger to international 

peace.” Only the major powers would be in a position to 

undertake such a task. In their private debates with Wells, the 

President rather impatiently brushed aside all considerations of 

the national pride of small countries, or the fact that age-old 

hatreds between national neighbors (as in the Balkans) created 

an imperative need for the means of self-defense. Nor did 

FDR address the formidable task of actually disarming such 

nations, and then making sure that they stayed disarmed.30

These were FDR’s private thoughts in the autumn of 1941, prior to 

Pearl Harbor, prior to any certainty that Stalin’s Russia could withstand 

Hitler’s armies, prior to development of the atomic bomb. By his death 

in April 1945, FDR’s views on the postwar settlement appear to be 

much more internationalist and less oriented toward the notion that the 

major powers (in FDR’s view, the United States, Great Britain, Russia, 

China) could dictate the peace without taking into account the views of 

the smaller powers. 31 

By early 1945, American hope for the postwar world order was 

centered on the United Nations. When FDR died in April 1945, Harry 

S. Truman’s first policy decision as president was to confirm that the 

San Francisco conference would proceed as scheduled, to draw up the 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

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charter for the United Nations. Arms control was part of this scheme. 

Article 11 of the UN Charter would provide that the General Assembly 

may consider “the principles governing disarmament and the regulation 

of armaments.” Article 26 recognized the Security Council’s 

responsibility for formulating plans “for the establishment of a system 

for the regulation of armaments.” 

Postwar planning began in Washington long before the Japanese 

surrendered in the autumn of 1945 but was hampered by the fact that 

most wartime planning staffs were unaware of the secret nuclear 

program, while for those privy to its secrets there was little time for 

more than perfunctory postwar planning. This also was true of 

international meetings. As John Foster Dulles, himself an American 

delegate to the San Francisco conference, later observed, the United 

Nations was designed without taking into account the revolution in 

world affairs about to be wrought by the atom bomb. 

On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb used in combat was 

exploded at Hiroshima. On August 8, President Truman signed the 

formal document by which the United States ratified the Charter of the 

United Nations, an action to which the United States Senate had given 

its advice and consent on July 28, and on August 9, the second (and, to 

date, the last) atomic bomb used in combat was exploded at Nagasaki. 

Shortly thereafter Japan surrendered unconditionally, and the Second 

World War (or by some accounts, the interrupted world war that began 

in 1914) was over. 

In his report to the nation broadcast on radio on August 9, 1945, 

President Truman said that “the atomic bomb is too dangerous to be 

loose in a lawless world” and proposed that the secret of the bomb 

would not be revealed “until means have been found to control the 

bomb so as to protect ourselves and the rest of the world from the 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

20

danger of total destruction.” In the interim, he asserted, the United 

States and Great Britain “must constitute ourselves trustees of this new 

force—to prevent its misuse and to turn it into the channels of service 

to mankind.”32 But as the United States would soon discover, other 

nations were no more willing then to grant the United States 

“trusteeship” of the bomb, than are today willing to recognize an 

American doctrine of preemptive or preventive war. Thus the world 

entered the nuclear age. 

Nuclear Arms Control during the Cold War33

In 1957 in De la Gurrre, published in English translation the 

following year, the astute French strategic analyst, Raymond Aron, 

devoted his first chapter to the failure of atomic disarmament. He 

somberly concluded that nuclear arms control faced little chance of 

success so long as the practice of states “is always to suspect, often to 

fight, and sometimes to destroy each other. Science helps men to kill 

one another by mass production; it does not teach them wisdom.”34

Whether anything akin to wisdom was achieved by the nuclear 

arms control endeavors of the Cold War is problematic. What was 

achieved is remarkable, however, beginning when the newly created 

United Nations General Assembly in its first resolution in January 1946 

created a commission to negotiate on nuclear arms—an initiative 

championed by the United States. From 1946 extending to the end of 

the Cold War, nuclear diplomacy created a massive edifice of treaties 

and regimes that cast a web of bilateral and multilateral agreements, 

customs, practices, rules, laws, export controls, and expectations that, 

in Eugene Rostow’s colorful phrase, helped smother war with 

diplomacy. This effort was pursued through the administrations of nine 

Cold War American presidents and through countless changes in 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

21

leadership in the American congress. What follows is a brief summary 

of that journey. 

In the summer of 1946, the United States presented the Baruch 

plan to the newly formed UN Atomic Energy Commission. Within 

days it was clear that the Soviets were unwilling to accept this 

initiative, and within months, it equally was clear that the alternatives 

offered by the Soviets were not serious and that the prospects of 

successful conclusion of a treaty were dim. As the Cold War began in 

earnest, arms control negotiations deadlocked in what came to be 

perceived as a public relations battle—something that, in its own right, 

had value. One of the major reasons the United States continued to 

negotiate when the chances of success were so distant was in order to 

legitimize a nuclear modernization effort in which arms programs, 

valuable for their contribution to deterrence and containment, could be 

terminated, reduced and otherwise controlled, if acceptable, properly 

safeguarded arms control agreements were reached. This logic lay 

behind NSC 112, US policy on arms control, discussed in the National 

Security Council (NSC) on July 18, 1951, and approved by President 

Truman the next day.35 Many aspects of NSC 112 (e.g., commitment 

to arms control advancing in stages) would be found in subsequent 

policies throughout the Cold War. 

President Eisenhower took office in January 1953 and, especially 

after the death of Stalin that spring, tried to devise modest steps to 

engage the Soviets in arms control, first with his atoms for peace 

proposal (1953) and later with such initiatives as open skies and the 

expert talks on nuclear testing.36 By 1963, the first agreement on 

nuclear testing was achieved, the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT). A 

number of other testing agreements would follow in subsequent years. 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

22

By the end of the 1950s, the nuclear arms race was well underway 

and the United States and the Soviet Union were acquiring nuclear 

stockpiles of apocalyptic proportions. It was out of this dynamic that 

the Americans developed the view that the primary purpose of nuclear 

arms control was to stabilize the nuclear relationship.37

This did not mean, however, that proliferation was ignored. The 

Baruch plan had been inspired in part by fear that over time and absent 

international control, proliferation was inevitable. Russia detonated its 

first nuclear bomb in 1949 and Britain in 1952. It was a matter of time 

before other nations would follow suit. In the late 1950s, Ireland 

introduced the first of a series of resolutions in the General Assembly, 

calling for a new multilateral convention to control nuclear 

proliferation, but Soviet fears that West Germany, a NATO ally, would 

indirectly acquire access to nuclear weapons via NATO nuclear sharing 

arrangements posed a major stumbling block to progress. After the 

first Chinese nuclear test in October 1964, President Johnson directed a 

major study of American policy in this area, resulting in 1965 in 

Johnson’s decisions to make some of the difficult compromises (e.g., 

giving up support for the Multilateral Nuclear Force in NATO), in 

order to pursue seriously a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). 

This proved to be sufficient to overcome Soviet objections, and with 

the two superpowers seriously engaged, the negotiations at the 

Eighteen Nation Disarmament Conference (a predecessor of today’s 

Conference on Disarmament) proceeded to conclusion.38 

The NPT was completed in 1968, by which time Washington and 

Moscow had agreed to engage in strategic nuclear arms talks. Entry 

into force of the NPT and the formal initiation of strategic arms talks 

were delayed by the Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia. 

The strategic arms talks finally began during the Nixon administration, 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

23

under the supervision of Henry Kissinger. By 1972 the first 

agreements—an interim agreement on strategic offensive arms (SALT 

I) and a treaty on anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) were finished. From 

then until the end of the Cold War, these bilateral talks continued, first 

in the SALT process, then branching into brief talks on theater nuclear 

arms toward the end of the Carter administration, then branching into 

the intermediate nuclear force talks (INF) and the strategic arms 

reductions talks (START) in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush years. 

Along with these cornerstone US-Soviet strategic arms agreements, 

there was a wide variety of other mechanisms—nuclear testing treaties, 

nuclear-weapon-free zones, confidence and security measures, export 

control regimes, conferences and recurring meetings, unilateral 

initiatives, and the like—which together formed the web of Cold War 

nuclear arms control. A broad supporting literature and a generation of 

arms control experts were part of the process. 

Nuclear Arms Control after the Cold War

The Cold War ended somewhere between the fall of the Berlin 

Wall in the autumn of 1989 and Gorbachev’s resignation at the end of 

1991 after an aborted coup failed to remove him from power. George 

H. W. Bush, 41st president of the United States and the father of 

America’s current president, presided with great skill over the 

transition, as did congressional leaders (the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative 

Threat Reduction Program became law in 1991). The last Cold War 

arms control agreement, START II, was signed in January 1993 just 

before George H. W. Bush left office.

Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the United States, pursued an arms 

control agenda that, while still rooted heavily in the Cold War bilateral 

and multilateral arrangements oriented toward the Soviet threats, began 

to grapple with the emerging realities of the post-Cold War world, 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

24

especially the fact that WMD and other advanced military technologies 

(such as modern ballistic missiles) were proliferating widely to problem 

states like Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, and North Korea. These states were 

hostile to American interests, heavily totalitarian in nature, often 

supporters of terrorism, and threatened the American agenda of seeking 

a stable world order of prosperous democracies. It was on Clinton’s 

watch that the counterproliferation initiative was launched, military 

containment of Iraq was sustained largely by American military forces 

assisted by the British, a framework agreement for dealing with North 

Korea was reached, and cooperative threat reduction was 

institutionalized. In 1995 the NPT was extended indefinitely after an 

intense lobbying campaign by the President and his representatives—

perhaps the most important arms control accomplishment during 

Clinton’s years. It also was on Clinton’s watch that India and Pakistan 

conducted a new round of nuclear tests (1998) and that the US Senate 

defeated the CTBT (1999). The 49-page National Security Strategy 

white paper released by the Clinton White House in December 1999—

the last such document of Clinton’s administration—devoted four full 

pages to the topic of arms control and nonproliferation.39

The George W. Bush Administration and Arms Control

Foreign policy was not a major issue in the campaigns preceding 

the presidential elections of 2000, but it was not absent. For instance, 

in his campaign speech at the Citadel on September 23, 1999, Governor 

George W. Bush, candidate for the Republican nomination for 

president, firmly asserted one of the persistent messages of his 

campaign. If elected, he would, at the earliest possible date, deploy 

anti-ballistic missile systems and to make this possible, would offer 

Russia amendments to the ABM treaty. But he left no doubt what he 

would do if the Russians balked at the proposals: “I will have a solemn 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

25

obligation to protect the American people and our allies, not to protect 

arms control agreements signed almost 30 years ago.”40

Governor Bush and his advisers communicated the message that if 

elected, he would reprioritize and reorient arms control away from the 

ABM treaty and the START process, away from the CTBT (although 

he did not indicate an intent to return to nuclear testing), and in the 

direction of giving more flexibility to American military planning. 

Although explicitly critical of the CTBT, Bush was largely silent on the 

NPT. When Condoleeza Rice, Bush’s chief foreign affairs adviser, 

was invited to write a Republican view of foreign policy for the 

January/February 2000 issue of the magazine Foreign Affairs, she too 

aimed explicitly at the CTBT, citing the treaty as a prime example of 

what she called “the Clinton administration’s attachment to largely 

symbolic agreements and its pursuit of, at best, illusory ‘norms’ of 

international behavior.” She asserted that this sort of behavior was 

“epidemic” for Democrats and “is not leadership.” Turning to charges 

against Republicans, she concluded: “Neither is it isolationist to 

suggest that the United States has a special role in the world and should 

not adhere to every international convention and agreement that 

someone thinks to propose.”41 The Kyoto protocol, the International 

Criminal Court convention, and the verification protocol to the 

Biological Weapons convention would become early targets of the new 

Bush administration. 

George W. Bush became 43rd president of the United States after 

one of the closest elections in American history. He appointed a 

controversial figure, widely perceived to be a leading neoconservative 

critic of much of the traditional arms control agenda, to the key position 

of under secretary of state for arms control and international security 

(the successor to the director of ACDA). In May 2001, the Senate 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

26

narrowly confirmed John Bolton for this post by a 57-43 vote split 

along party lines (seven Democrats joined the unanimous Republican 

vote to support his nomination). 

Talks on transition in the strategic nuclear relationship were well 

underway with the Russians prior to 9/11. The new global war on 

terror moved the two sides closer to one another and in a press 

conference in Washington on November 13, 2001, following the 

summit at Crawford, Texas, Presidents Bush and Putin appeared side 

by side in the East Room. Bush informed the world that the two sides 

were making great progress in putting the threats of the 20th century 

behind them as they look to work closer together to meet the new 

threats of the 21st century. 42 President Bush had told Putin that the 

United States would break the logjam on moving to the sorts of force 

levels envisioned in START II and would reduce its operationally 

deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 

over the next decade, with no treaty required—a level, as would be 

subsequently disclosed, that had been validated in the new Nuclear 

Posture Review (NPR). The clear intent of Bush’s message, first 

articulated during the presidential campaign and reflecting similar 

initiatives his father had taken as president, was to get away from the 

long, laborious process of negotiating and ratifying elaborate treaties, 

instead substituting unilateral actions that could lead to quicker, albeit 

informal and not legally binding, results. Putin responded that the 

Russians welcomed this development and would try to reply in kind, 

but as soon became clear, the Russians wanted a formal agreement. 

Bush acquiesced to the Russian wish, and fast-paced negotiations led to 

the treaty of Moscow on Strategic Offensive Reductions, SORT, signed 

in May 2002. 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

27

As Richard A. Davis, current director of the strategic negotiations 

and implementation bureau at the State Department and a 

knowledgeable veteran of Cold War strategic nuclear negotiations, 

wrote in July 2002, “The Moscow Treaty is not just a new treaty, but a 

new kind of treaty. Reflecting mutual trust and cooperation in the new 

U.S.-Russian strategic relationship, the Moscow Treaty affords a great 

deal of flexibility to each Party to meet unforeseen future 

contingencies.”43 It is a short, general treaty and contains no 

verification provisions, leaving that to START. As President Bush said 

in his letter transmitting the Moscow treaty to the Senate: 

It is important for there to be sufficient openness so that the 

United States and Russia can each be confident that the other is 

fulfilling its reductions commitment. The Parties will use the 

comprehensive verification regime of the Treaty on the 

Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (the 

“START Treaty”) to provide the foundation for confidence, 

transparency, and predictability in further strategic offensive 

reductions44

SORT expires at the end of December 2012, unless extended or 

replaced by another treaty. Likewise, and with similar provisos, 

START expires in December 2009. The Bush administration has left to 

its successors the thorny task of whether to extend the START and 

SORT treaties, whether to replace them with other formal documents 

and legal commitments, or whether to let them expire and manage the 

US-Russian strategic nuclear relationship solely through less formal 

means. 

As for missile defenses, Putin also said at the press conference on 

November 13, 2001, that the Russian position remained unchanged. 

Russia wanted to continue a dialogue and consultations. Putin appears 

to have chosen his words carefully, realizing that major factions in 

Russia wanted the ABM treaty to remain in force. Sometime in the 

weeks immediately after the Crawford summit, the Bush White House 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

28

apparently concluded that it could move now to terminate the ABM 

treaty without irreparably undermining Washington’s relations with 

Moscow or Beijing. On December 13, 2001, Bush appeared in the 

Rose Garden to announce that the United States was giving formal 

notice to Russia of its intent to exercise the supreme national interest 

clause and withdraw from the ABM treaty. This withdrawal came six 

months later, without the dire result of a new arms race that many 

critics had predicted, at least not in the near term. 

The strategic nuclear dimension of the Bush arms control game 

plan probably would have been put in play even without 9/11, although 

the politics of managing the transition with Russia and China may not 

have been as smooth absent the new relationships in the war on terror. 

What 9/11 indisputably did, however, was advance fighting the 

proliferation of WMD to the top of America’s foreign policy agenda. 

In the weeks after 9/11, prosecuting the war on terror became 

America’s major national security objective and the lens through which 

all foreign policies were viewed, and stopping terrorists from acquiring 

or using WMD became one of the highest (if not the highest) priorities 

in that war. Where dealing with proliferation once had been one 

priority among many, it now came to dominate policy. 

In September 2002 the Bush White House issued its long delayed, 

first National Security Strategy white paper. It repeated what had by 

then become a mantra for the president, that “The gravest danger our 

Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. Our 

enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass 

destruction, and evidence indicates that they are doing so with 

determination. The United States will not allow these efforts to 

succeed.”45 The National Security Strategy formalized the doctrine of 

preemption that President Bush had been discussing for several months. 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

29

The strategy also called for a comprehensive strategy to combat WMD 

that included proactive counterproliferation efforts, strengthened 

nonproliferation efforts, and effective consequence management to 

respond to the effects of WMD use. As for the second leg of this 

strategy, strengthened nonproliferation, the strategy specified that: 

We will enhance diplomacy, arms control, multilateral export 

controls, and threat reduction assistance that impede states and 

terrorists seeking WMD, and when necessary, interdict 

enabling technologies and materials. We will continue to build 

coalitions to support these efforts, encouraging their increased 

political and financial support for nonproliferation and threat 

reduction programs.46

These points were reinforced toward the end of the year when the 

White House released a supporting, more detailed strategy document 

for combating WMD.47 

At roughly the same time that the national security white papers 

were being published, a worldwide public debate had begun on regime 

change in Iraq. I will not in this paper attempt to discuss the bitter and 

polarizing events of the several months in the late autumn of 2002 and 

the winter of 2002-2003, culminating in the invasion of Iraq in March 

2003. The consequences of that action and the ongoing failure to find 

the suspected major Iraqi WMD programs and stockpiles are a foreign 

policy legacy that haunts America’s relations with almost every nation 

in the world, contributes to a more widespread and emotional 

questioning of the legitimacy of American power, almost led to the 

collapse of the Blair government, is part of the current American 

presidential contest, and has launched new investigations of the 

intelligence communities. Regardless of where one stands on the 

wisdom of invading Iraq (and there are strong arguments on all sides of 

the issue), the aftermath is stark. The shock waves from the recent 

Iraqi war will be felt for years to come. 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

30

Iraq and earlier campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, the Bush 

administration appears to have a strong interest not simply in enforcing 

compliance with the international treaty-based regimes governing 

WMD but also in strengthening their norms. Prior to start of Operation 

Iraqi Freedom, senior American spokesmen were suggesting that the 

use of chemical or biological weapons was not only a treaty violation 

but now should be regarded as a war crime. And the Bush 

administration (as will be discussed later in this paper) is attempting to 

revise the basic contract inherent in the NPT. 

What the Bush administration appears to be seeking is a new and 

lasting global consensus on clarifying, strengthening, regulating, and 

enforcing nonproliferation across the board. Initiatives proposed by the 

Bush administration in recent months include a blend of national and 

international efforts: e.g. 

• the Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict black market 

trade in WMD and supporting technologies;48

• a UN Security Council resolution requiring states to 

criminalize proliferation, enact strict export controls, and 

secure sensitive materials within their borders;49

• further expansion of the G-8 Global Partnership Against the 

Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction;50

• creation of a new global approach to permitted nuclear fuel 

cycle activities for civilian reactors;51

• reform of IAEA practices.52 

The President explained the logic behind his broad strategy, in a 

major policy speech on WMD at National Defense University on 

February 11, 2004, stating inter alia: 

In the past, enemies of America required massed armies, and 

great navies, powerful air forces to put our nation, our people, 

our friends and allies at risk. In the Cold War, Americans 

lived under the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but 

believed that deterrents made those weapons a last resort. 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

31

What has changed in the 21st century is that, in the hands of 

terrorists, weapons of mass destruction would be a first 

resort—the preferred means to further their ideology of suicide 

and random murder. These terrible weapons are becoming 

easier to acquire, build, hide, and transport. Armed with a 

single vial of a biological agent or a single nuclear weapon, 

small groups of fanatics, or failing states, could gain the power 

to threaten great nations, threaten the world peace. 

America, and the entire civilized world, will face this threat for 

decades to come. We must confront the danger with open 

eyes, and unbending purpose. I have made clear to all the 

policy of this nation: America will not permit terrorists and 

dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most deadly 

weapons.... America has consistently brought these threats to 

the attention of international organizations. We’re using every 

means of diplomacy to answer them. As for my part, I will 

continue to speak clearly on these threats. I will continue to 

call upon the world to confront those dangers, and to end 

them.53

Whether the United States can create and sustain the international 

support for carrying through on the Bush administration’s broad vision 

is unclear, given the deep apprehensions worldwide about the exercise 

of American power, the bitter feelings remaining after the bruising Iraq 

experience, and the long-simmering question of whether the United 

States can demand even stricter norms for non-nuclear-weapons states 

party to the NPT, while seeking to preserve maximum flexibility for 

American nuclear activities. 

In the near term, the diplomatic tactics for seeking more 

comprehensive and effective regulation of WMD depends in part on the 

fortunes of George W. Bush in this year’s presidential election. The 

United States is approaching a national election where, for the first time 

in recent memory, foreign policy is playing a major role. Democratic 

candidate Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts already has begun 

deploying a broad critique of the Bush arms control agenda. Kerry is 

critical of Bush’s position on the CTBT, on the lack of verification in 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

32

SORT, on the Bush administration’s decisions to pursue research on a 

new generation of nuclear weapons (which Kerry argues would set 

back American long-standing efforts to lead an international 

nonproliferation regime), on the Bush administration’s handling of the 

North Korean nuclear situation, on early deployment of a national 

missile defense system (although Kerry favors developing “an effective 

defense”), and on the Bush administration’s abrogation of the ABM 

treaty. Kerry is reported to be committed to revitalizing the arms 

control process and to creating a multilateral framework implementing 

a global consensus that WMD under the control of terrorists represents 

the most serious threat to international security today.54 

Also as this paper is being written, American Non-Governmental 

Organizations (NGOs) are mobilizing to develop a coordinated strategy 

for attempting to “revitalize” arms control.55

THE AMERICAN PRACTICE OF ARMS CONTROL: 

THE NEXT TWENTY YEARS 

The role that arms control will play in American foreign policy 

between now and 2024 will arise from a complex interaction among 

personalities, circumstances, and objectives, going well beyond the 

election of 2004. Between January 2005 and December 2024, the 

United States will have another four presidential and another ten 

congressional elections. This offers wide latitude for changes in the 

attitudes, agendas, and priorities of America’s elected officials during 

the timelines of this study. I will not speculate in this paper about 

whether American foreign diplomacy will become more multilateral 

and less unilateral or how priorities will be assigned for using 

counterproliferation as opposed to nonproliferation tools. That will be 

decided, in the round, through the ballot box. 

As for the circumstances over the next twenty years, America’s 

elected officials will encounter a number geopolitical fault lines. It is 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

33

unlikely that long-standing problems like Kashmir, the Gaza Strip and 

the West Bank, the divided Korean peninsula, and Taiwan will be 

resolved in the near term. Global terrorism and the proliferation of 

WMD and advanced technologies to problem states and to non-state 

terrorists—today’s American priorities—are likely to still be major 

concerns, and if the long history of Anglo-British normalization of 

relations from the Peace of Paris (1783) to their close relationship in 

WW II (1939-1945) is any guide, the transition in fully normalizing 

America’s relations with its main adversary during the Cold War, 

Russia, still will be underway. One could cite the other trends in 

today’s world—the rise of China; globalization; fundamentalist Islam 

and the “clash of civilizations”; state failure and civil wars; growing 

populations and diminishing resources; demographics around the 

world; the continuing revolutions in information and bio technology 

and emerging revolution in nanotechnology; and the like—trends that 

will provide the context for the evolution of American policy over the 

next twenty years. And one cannot rule out so-called “wild cards”—

epic events that change the course of history, like another use of a 

nuclear weapon in combat, mass murder from use of biological 

weapons, or some new, unanticipated use of more commonplace 

activities to effect mass destruction, as experienced on 9/11 

Whatever the personalities or circumstances, it is difficult to 

envision a future out through 2024 where the United States is not 

giving an unprecedented level of attention and devoting significant 

resources to trying to keep WMD out of the hands of terrorists. This is 

a national objective, not a politically partisan one. The efforts to enlist 

global support to further criminalize, better regulate, and more 

effectively control trade in WMD and its enabling technologies will 

continue, and will resonate with all of the conflicting camps in the 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

34

American foreign policy tradition. This does not make for the sharp 

drama of Cold War arms control. Where arms control during the EastWest nuclear confrontation was high Wagnerian opera with rising 

crescendos and epic stakes, the arms control of the next twenty years is 

more likely to be a Bach fugue, delicate, infinitely complex, intricate, 

allowing for many variations on a few central themes. 

It also is difficult envisioning a future where the United States does 

not tend to its strategic nuclear relations with other nuclear weapons 

states, and especially with Russia and China to avoid returning to 

Apocalyptic dangers. That will remain part of the American agenda, as 

will efforts to improve the monitoring of arms control activities. 

Monitoring is not unique to arms control and, indeed, as arms control 

takes on more of a regulatory flavor, monitoring should become all the 

more routine. Social regulation schemes almost always require some 

kind of inspections and transparency. Whether it is public health 

inspectors periodically visiting a restaurant’s kitchen, federal regulators 

inspecting the safety of a nuclear power plant, or examiners auditing 

corporate financial records, monitoring is central to enforcement of 

regulatory regimes. It is through such prosaic activities that modern 

democracies work. 

Modern arms control diplomacy also works in cycles. Meetings of 

the Conference of Disarmament may follow much the same schedule 

over the next twenty years, as might those of the United Nations First 

Committee, the IAEA Board of Governors, and the various export 

control regimes already established. There will likely be changes, of 

course, in how these institutions operate and new institutional 

arrangements may appear, but at least for the moment, there is no 

radical change on the horizon of the sort, for instance, that came with 

creating the United Nations and its supporting bodies. 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

35

Some major arms control dates are set on the calendar. The next 

review conference for the NPT convenes in 2005 and there will be 

three other review conferences (2010, 2015, and 2020) in the timeframe 

considering in this paper. And as discussed earlier, the START treaty 

expires in December 2009 unless the sides agree to extend it, while the 

SORT treaty expires at the end of December 2012. 

As Avis Bohlen pointed out in the article cited earlier in this paper, 

arms control increasingly deals with norms. The area I wish to 

highlight in the remainder of this paper involves the international 

norms governing WMD. 

From the 18th century onward, American statesmen have sought to 

influence the evolution of international law and the rules and norms 

governing international relations. At a basic level, transcending 

political parties and cutting across all foreign policy orientations, there 

has been a fundamental acceptance by centrists in America that Jean 

Jacques Rousseau was correct, that might does not make right and that 

even the strongest are never strong enough to prevail unless they 

translate might into right and obedience into duty.56 Americans also 

are, for the most part, uncomfortable with double standards. America’s 

revolt against its colonial master was triggered largely by a conviction 

that American colonials were being treated as second-class British 

citizens and that this was unlikely to change. One of the most 

influential modern American political philosophers, the late John 

Rawls, built his career around a careful explication of the theme of 

justice as fairness.57 The social critique of double standards, wherever 

they are found in society, begins with their inherent unfairness. 

Although in extreme circumstances double standards may be expedient 

and even necessary to attain the general good of society, they should be 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

36

softened and offset wherever possible and seldom should be part of the 

permanent social fabric. 

Legitimacy matters. Fairness matters. These are part of the 

American civic ethic, rooted deeply in American traditions. And they 

have found expression in American foreign policy over the years. 

Whether it was the rights of neutrals at sea, the laws of war, or the 

principles grounded in the League of Nations Covenant and, 

subsequently, in the United Nations Charter, the United States has 

played a leading role in the evolution of international norms expressing 

what is permitted and what is beyond the pale, what is legitimate and 

what is fair. 

Norms are no more static at the international level than they are 

within societies. They evolve and change, through twists and turns. 

Disagreement is inevitable on what their content should be at a 

particular time. The contemporary question whether there is a right 

under the United Nations Charter of humanitarian intervention or 

anticipatory self-defense not sanctioned by the Security Council, for 

instance, illustrates the tensions involved in the changing ad bellum

laws of armed conflict. 

The cornerstone treaties for biological and chemical weapons—the 

BWC and CWC, respectively—today codify fairly sharp norms. The 

development, testing, producing, stockpiling, or use of biological or 

chemical weapons is prohibited. These treaties are so widely accepted 

and derive from an international process stretching over so many years 

that some international legal scholars are ready to argue they have 

become part of customary international law.58 There remain questions 

of interpretation, of course, since research needed to defend oneself 

against chemical or biological attack is permitted, which entails the 

need to understand how offensive agents work and what offensive 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

37

agents are possible. And enforcing the BWC and CWC is extremely 

difficult, given the ease with which legal processes in permitted 

facilities (e.g., fertilizer production facilities, biomedical laboratories) 

may quickly be turned to prohibited uses. But the norms themselves 

are sharp and arguably legitimate. To the extent they are viewed as 

unfair, it is by those who contend that absent similarly sharp and allinclusive norms for nuclear activities, non-nuclear states should be 

allowed to offset nuclear threats with chemical or biological means. 

Nuclear norms are much more ambiguous. Allowing peaceful 

nuclear activities to proceed without fissile materials being diverted 

secretly to military uses is a problem recognized since the Baruch plan. 

Much of the fabric of the nuclear nonproliferation regime has been 

developed with this challenge in mind. This regime is anchored by the 

NPT, one of the most widely accepted international conventions which 

some experts believe to be “at the very center of the existing system of 

international security.” It is,” some argue, “the basis on which all 

subsequent disarmament regimes are built and it is the fundamental 

document of international security after the United Nations Charter.”59 

Senior Bush administration officials have not gone quite this far in 

praising the NPT but leave no doubt that the US Government continues 

to accept the NPT as a keystone treaty. For instance, John S. Wolf, 

assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, has testified to the 

Senate that “The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) remains the 

cornerstone of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policies.”60 And Secretary 

of Energy Spencer Abraham, appearing jointly at the United Nations 

with his Russian counterpart, at a time when the international 

community was celebrating the 50th anniversary of Dwight D. 

Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech to the United Nations, said 

unequivocally, “we believe in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).”61
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

38

What are the norms deriving from the NPT? Leonard Weiss, a 

private consultant who, during his tenure as chief of staff for the US 

Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs from 1977 to 1999, helped 

draft major United States legislation on nuclear nonproliferation, 

argues: 

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) establishes a 

balance of obligations undertaken respectively by nuclearweapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states to ensure 

nonproliferation and move toward a nuclear weapons-free 

world. Often referred to as containing the Grand Bargain, the 

pact calls on the nuclear-weapon states to initiate negotiations 

to eliminate their arsenals (Article VI) and not to assist efforts 

by non-nuclear-weapons states to acquire nuclear weapons 

(Article I). At the same time, the NPT requires the nonnuclear-weapon states to forgo the acquisition of nuclear 

weapons (Article II) and to place all of their nuclear facilities 

under international safeguards (Article III).62

One could add to this that the Grand Bargain includes the right of 

non-nuclear-weapon states to conduct safeguarded research and to use 

nuclear energy under safeguards, both for peaceful purposes, without 

discrimination (Article IV). 

The Bush administration now is proposing changing part of this 

Grand Bargain. In his speech at NDU in February 2004, President 

Bush said inter alia:

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was designed more than 

30 years ago to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons beyond 

those states which already possessed them. Under this treaty, 

nuclear states agreed to help non-nuclear states develop 

peaceful atomic energy if they renounced the pursuit of nuclear 

weapons. But the treaty has a loophole which has been 

exploited by nations such as North Korea and Iran. These 

regimes are allowed to produce nuclear material that could be 

used to build bombs under the cover of civilian nuclear 

programs. 

So today, as a fourth step, I propose a way to close the 

loophole. The world must create a safe, orderly system to field 

civilian nuclear plants without adding to the danger of 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

39

weapons proliferation. The world’s leading nuclear exporters 

should ensure that states have reliable access at reasonable cost 

to fuel for civilian reactors, so long as those states renounce 

enrichment and reprocessing. Enrichment and reprocessing 

are not necessary for nations seeking to harness nuclear energy 

for peaceful purposes. 

The 40 nations of the Nuclear Suppliers Group should refuse 

to sell enrichment and reprocessing equipment and 

technologies to any state that does not already possess fullscale, functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants. This 

step will prevent new states from developing the means to 

produce fissile material for nuclear bombs. Proliferators must 

not be allowed to cynically manipulate the NPT to acquire the 

material and infrastructure necessary for manufacturing illegal 

weapons.

63

Viewed in isolation, this initiative—coming, as it does, after the 

experience of the past two years with North Korea, Iran, Libya, 

Pakistan, and the revelations about the black market in nuclear weapons 

associated with A. Q. Khan—is not surprising. IAEA Director-General 

Mohamed ElBaradei also has called for change, proposing that in the 

future, all enrichment and reprocessing facilities used for civilian 

purposes should be multilaterally owned and controlled, and that each 

country involved should monitor what its partner countries are doing.64 

Similar proposals were made last year in the major study sponsored by 

the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore 

National Laboratory, organized around the theme of “Atoms for Peace 

after 50 Years”65 and at the annual meeting of the American Nuclear 

Society in New Orleans in November 2003. 

Non-nuclear weapons states are reacting with mixed feelings to the 

call for tightening the regime and its norms as they apply to nonnuclear weapons states, at the same time that they see the Bush 

administration backing away from or ignoring many of the 

commitments the United States has made at the NPT in 1995 and in 

2000 regarding what the United States would do to meet its article VI 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

40

obligations—a concern shared in the United States by Bush’s critics. 66 

I will not attempt in this paper to explore the highly nuanced details of 

the article VI debate, other than to observe that at a time when the 

United States is seeking ever greater flexibility for how it manages is 

own nuclear weapons activities, it also is seeking to tighten the norms 

governing trade in nuclear materials. 

In the years ahead, I suspect that both sides of the bargain must be 

readdressed if American nonproliferation objectives are to be attained. 

For the United States, this may require a willingness to adjust policies 

in some or all of the following areas: 

• Nuclear testing. Since the Truman administration, the United 

States has entertained arms control proposals that would 

include an end to nuclear testing. The call for an end to 

nuclear testing also has been one of the longest standing and 

most vocal themes of a number of non-nuclear weapon states 

in the NPT. The Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) that 

restricted nuclear explosive tests to underground testing was 

signed in 1963, and the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT) 

that restricted underground tests to a yield of 150 kilotons, in 

1974. The TTBT and its sister agreement, the 1976 Peaceful 

Nuclear Explosions Treaty (PNET) entered into force in 

December 1990 after completion of verification protocols in 

the 1980s. The long-deferred talks on a CTBT began in 

Geneva in January 1994. When the CTBT was opened for 

signature at the General Assembly in September 1996, the 

United States was the first to sign the treaty. President Clinton 

submitted the CTBT to the Senate one year later where it was 

placed on a slow track. After remaining in committee for over 

two years, on October 13, 1999, the Republican-controlled 

Senate brought the treaty to a vote where the resolution of 

ratification received only 48 yes votes, far short of the 67 votes 

needed to approve the treaty. Even if the United States had 

ratified the treaty, it could not enter into force until all 44 

nations with nuclear reactor capabilities ratified, including 

India, Pakistan, and North Korea. President Clinton appointed 

the former chairman of the JCS, retired Army General John 

Shalikashvili, as special assistant to the president and secretary 

of state with the task of working with legislators to build 

support for eventual Senate consent to ratification. This effort 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

41

ended with the election of George W. Bush. The Bush 

administration has adopted the policy that it will not seek a 

new Senate vote nor will it attempt to broker deals to attach 

conditions and understandings to the treaty in order to get 

Senate approval. At the same time, the administration has 

indicated intent to observe a voluntary nuclear testing 

moratorium. Whether the CTBT will be revisited in 

Washington between now and 2024 is unclear, as is the 

question of whether the United States will at some point 

resume nuclear testing. Even if a president did wish to resume 

testing and the Congress (which could deny appropriations) 

agreed, the United States probably would continue to remain 

party to the LTBT (underground tests only) and to the TTBT 

(150-kiloton threshold).67

• Numbers of weapons in the nuclear stockpile. None of the 

bilateral strategic nuclear arms treaties have dealt directly with 

the total number of weapons in the nuclear stockpile: START 

associates strategic nuclear weapons with delivery systems 

(with limits on numbers of delivery systems); SORT deals with 

“operationally deployed” weapons, leaving open the status of 

weapons that are not operationally deployed. Both START 

and SORT are silent on non-strategic nuclear weapons, and as 

discussed earlier, absent positive action, both expire by the end 

of 2012. This becomes an issue because the United States 

traditionally has used, as partial evidence of its compliance 

with Article VI, the progressive reductions associated with 

START and with SORT. Notwithstanding its distaste for such 

formal treaties, the Bush administration continues to use these 

arguments in the NPT. The fact sheet issued by the US 

Mission in Geneva in May 2003, outlining points the US 

Government would put on the table to demonstrate good-faith 

efforts to support Article VI, begins by citing reductions under 

START and SORT.68

• “New” nuclear weapons. There is no accepted definition of 

what constitutes a “new” nuclear weapon (indeed, there is no 

common definition of a “nuclear weapon”). The United States 

has told the NPT that it is reducing reliance on nuclear 

weapons. Last year the Bush administration was able to 

reverse the so-called PLWYD congressional restriction that 

limited research or development on low-yield nuclear 

weapons.

69 The final vote in conference was split along party 

lines and even Republicans in the House like Curt Weldon (RPa.) and David Hobson (R-Oh.) have criticized the outcome. 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

42

This is a political issue largely because it appears to violate 

commitments the United States earlier made at the NPT. On a 

general level, some argue that modernization is inconsistent 

with a policy of reducing reliance on nuclear weapons. Others 

point to former US statements. In the paper that the American 

secretary of state placed in the record at the NPT review 

conference in 2000 as evidence that the United States was 

meetings its commitment to Article VI, for instance, a central 

passage read: “Conducting no nuclear test explosions will 

effectively constrain the development and qualitative 

improvement of nuclear weapons and end the development of 

advanced new types of nuclear weapons.”70 

• “Negative security assurances.” In the arms control lexicon, a 

negative security assurance is a commitment by a nuclear 

power that it will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons 

against those to whom the negative security assurance is given. 

In essence, this becomes a no-first-use pledge. The United 

States has been reluctant to give legally binding negative 

security assurances except under very limited conditions. 

During the Cold War, dating back to the time of the policy 

debates surrounding NSC 68, the United States refused to 

adopt a no-first-use policy, largely for purposes of supporting 

its defense of NATO. After the Cold War, the issue shifted to 

the question of deterring or responding to massive attacks by 

biological or chemical weapons. When the NPT was being 

negotiated, Washington debated whether it would have to 

formalize negative security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon 

states party to NPT. This turned out not to be necessary, 

although at roughly the same time, Washington indicated 

willingness to enter into such a formal commitment for a 

regional nuclear-weapon-free-zone arrangement in Latin 

America, something it later has repeated for other regions. In 

1978, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, at the UN Special 

Session on Disarmament, extended to non-nuclear weapons 

states party to the NPT a political commitment not to use (or 

threaten to use) nuclear weapons against them except if they 

were involved in aggression in alliance with a nuclear-weapon 

state (a formula devised by the Nixon administration when the 

United States first formalized its commitment for a nuclearweapon-free-zone treaty). This was repeated on subsequent 

occasions, including at the 1995 NPT review and extension 

conference, at which time it was associated with a Security 

Council resolution. A number of non-nuclear-weapon states 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

43

still call on the United States and other nuclear weapon states 

to make their commitments formal through the international 

gold standard, a treaty banning first use of nuclear weapons.

71 

The point in highlighting the above issues is to suggest just how 

fuzzy the norms about what a nuclear-weapon state should do to 

comply with Article VI are, at the same time that the United States is 

seeking to sharpen and extend norms in other parts of the NPT that 

tighten the nonproliferation bargain for non-nuclear weapon states. 

This is a delicate area for policy initiatives, not only because of the 

strategic issues involved for American defense policy, but also because, 

in all cases, the ramifications go beyond the United States to the other 

nuclear-weapon states covered by the P-5, and to the continuing 

question of how to bring Israel, India, Pakistan, and (perhaps) North 

Korea under the norms. 

CONCLUSIONS 

My conclusions are simple. Arms control is not dead in America 

but is evolving. The traditions of arms control lie deep in American 

diplomatic history and cut across all foreign policy orientations that 

have shaped the course of American diplomacy. The continuing need 

for arms control is clear, especially for dealing with proliferation. 

Whether the United States can achieve its nonproliferation goals while 

maintaining today’s flexibility for how it manages its nuclear weapons 

affairs is problematic. Nuclear policy and diplomacy is a delicate 

business and clarifying nuclear norms is a daunting task. But, as the 

history of American arms control reveals, the nation has risen to great 

challenges before. 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

44

NOTES 

 

1

 See Michael O. Wheeler, “NATO Nuclear Strategy, 1949-1990,” in 

Gustav Schmidt, ed., A History of NATO—The First Fifty Years, vol. 3 

(New York: Palgrave, 2001), 121-139. 

2

 Lawrence Freedman, The Revolution in Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 

318 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998), 20. 

3

 Avis Bohlen, “The Rise and Fall of Arms Control,” Survival 45 (Autumn 

2003): 31-32. 

4

 Rose Gottemoeller, “Arms Control in a New Era,” The Washington 

Quarterly 25 (Spring 2002): 45-58. 

5

 Brad Roberts, “The Road Ahead for Arms Control,” The Washington 

Quarterly 23 (Spring 2000): 220. 

6

 Lewis A. Dunn and Victor Alessi, “Arms Control by Other Means,” 

Survival 42 (Winter 2000-01): 129. 

7

 I first became interested in arms control when, as a graduate student at 

Georgetown in 1966, I took the arms control and international law courses 

offered by the late William O’Brien. I first found myself involved in arms 

control as part of my duties as a special assistant to the Chief of Staff of the 

Air Force (1977-78), as a special assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State 

(1979), as special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

(1979-1982), as Executive Secretary (then called Staff Secretary) of the 

National Security Council (1982-83), as a senior research fellow at 

National Defense University (1985-1986), as chief of the Nuclear 

Negotiations Division on the Joint Staff (1986-89), and as the arms control 

advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-90). After 

retiring from the Air Force in January 1991, I was asked to join various 

advisory committees in the Defense and Energy Departments where arms 

control was one of the topics kept under review. 

8

 The section in the spring 2000 issue of The Washington Quarterly 

entitled “Is Arms Control Dead” included articles by Harold Brown, James 

Schlesinger, Thomas Graham, John Steinbruner, Stephen Cambone, and 

Brad Roberts. 

9

 Although President Bush has expressed his policy in many places, 

perhaps the most relevant sources for purposes of this paper are the 

National Security Strategy ( September 2002), the National Strategy to 

Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (December 2002), and the 

President’s remarks on weapons of mass destruction proliferation at the 

National Defense University (February 2004). The Nuclear Posture 

Review (NPR) of 2001 has not been released in declassified form by the 

Bush administration. Although administration officials discussed aspects 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

45

 

of this review in a Pentagon press conference and in open testimony to 

congress, the public understanding of the NPR has been shaped largely by 

what purport to be leaked versions of the classified report. 

10 The US State Department Glossary of Terms (Arms Control and 

Disarmament) can be found at 

http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/arms/stories/pt11.htm#secA, accessed 

February 10, 2004. 

11 Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and 

How It Changed the World, A Century Foundation Book (New York: 

Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), xv. 

12 The papers from the November 2003 inaugural workshop on the NIC 

2020 Project and the December 2003 Commonwealth Conference can be 

found at the NIC website, http://www.cia.gov/nic, accessed December 24, 

2003. 

13 Eugene V. Rostow, Toward Managed Peace: The National Security 

Interests of the United States, 1759 to Present (New Haven, Connecticut: 

Yale University Press, 1993), 4. 

14 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 17-

18. 

15 Ibid., 18. 

16 Henry Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a 

Diplomacy for the 21st Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 18-

19. 

17 Mead, Special Providence, xvii. 

18 Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American 

Encounter with the World Since 1776 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 

Company, 1997), 3-5. 

19 For a broader context, see Michael O. Wheeler, “A History of Arms 

Control,” in Jeffrey A. Larsen, ed., Arms Control: Cooperative Security in 

a Changing Environment (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 19-

39. 

20 Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vol. III 

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J. B. Lippincott, 1878), 287, 

21 Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of 

American Foreign Policy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 231. 

22 Burnus M. Carnahan, “Lincoln, Lieber and the Laws of War: The 

Origins and Limits of the Principle of Military Necessity,” American 

Journal of International Law, 92 (April 1998): 213. 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

46

 

23 Francis Anthony Boyle, Foundations of World Order (Durham, North 

Carolina: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 57. Also see Adams Roberts 

and Richard Guelff, Documents on the Laws of War, Third Edition 

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 12-13. 

24 Mahan’s highly influential book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon 

History, 1660-1783, had been published nine years earlier, in 1890. 

25 “Instructions to the American Delegates to the Hague Conference of 

1899,” in James Brown Scott, ed., Instructions to the American Delegates 

to the Hague Peace Conferences and Their Official Reports (New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1916), 7. 

26 “Report of Captain Crozier to the American Delegation to the First 

Hague Conference Regarding the Work of the First Committee of the 

Conference and Its Subcommittee,” Ibid., 30-31. 

27 Detlev F. Vagts, “The Hague Conventions and Arms Control,” American 

Journal of International Law, 94 (January 2000): 31. 

28 Robert Gordon Kaufman, Arms Control During the Pre-Nuclear Era: 

The United States and Naval Limitation Between the Two World Wars 

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 194-199. 

29 Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, FDR and the Creation of the 

U.N. (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1997), ix. 

30 Ibid., 39. 

31 Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 

1932-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 485-528. 

32 US State Department, The International Control of Atomic Energy: 

Growth of a Policy (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 

1947), 11. 

33 This discussion of Cold War nuclear arms control is highly abbreviated, 

in part because it is an area well known to most modern scholars. There is 

a wealth of literature covering this era. Two especially good overviews are 

George Bunn, Arms Control by Committee: Managing Negotiations with 

the Russians (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992), and 

Thomas Graham, Jr., Disarmament Sketches: Three Decades of Arms 

Control and International Law (Seattle, Washington: University of 

Washington Press, 2002. For the treaties themselves with accompanying 

context and commentary, the reader is invited to consult Thomas Graham, 

Jr., and Damien J. LaVera, Cornerstones of Security: Arms Control 

Treaties in the Nuclear Era (Seattle, Washington: University of 

Washington Press, 2003). 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

47

 

34 Raymond Aron, On War, translated from the French by Terence 

Kilmartin (published in English in 1958 by Martin Secker & Warburg 

Ltd., reprinted by the University Press of America, 1985), 34. 

35 NSC 112, “Formulation of a United States Position With Respect to the 

Regulation, Limitation and Balanced Reduction of Armed Forces and 

Armaments,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, vol. I 

(Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1979), 477-497/ 

36 One of the best accounts of Eisenhower’s views on arms control can be 

found in Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How 

Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 1998). See also Michael O. Wheeler, “The Path to 

Atoms for Peace,” a paper presented on a panel at the 2003 winter meeting 

of an international conference on nuclear technology, sponsored by the 

American Nuclear Society, in New Orleans, Louisiana, November 16-20, 

2003. The paper can be found in the transactions of that conference 

published by the American Nuclear Society. 

37 The Summer Study on Arms Control, developed under the auspices of 

the American Academy of Arts and Sciences with the financial support of 

the Twentieth Century Fund, organized in mid-June, 1960, under the 

general direction of Bernard T. Feld of the Department of Physics, 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a rich and influential source of 

ideas on what the proper functions of arms control should be given the 

realities of the nuclear arms race. Out of this study (which was terminated 

in January 1961) came a number of publications, including Donald G. 

Brennan, ed., Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security (New 

York: George Braziller, 1961), and Thomas C. Schelling and Morton H. 

Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control (New York: The Twentieth Century 

Fund, 1961). Several key members of the study became officials in or 

advisors to the new Kennedy administration. 

38 George Bunn, formerly general counsel at ACDA and one of America’s 

leading experts on the NPT, who was personally involved in its 

negotiation, participated on a panel on the history of the NPT that I chaired 

at the June 1999 annual conference of the Society for Historians of 

American Foreign Relations, held that year at Princeton University. Bunn 

pointed out that the Soviets initially objected not only to the MLF but to 

any mechanism for West German sharing in NATO’s nuclear activities, 

including any sort of dual-key arrangement or any participation in planning 

groups like what became the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG). It still is 

unclear what led the Soviets to fall off their position on dual-key 

arrangements and on the NPG, neither of which the United States was 

willing to compromise. 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

48

 

39 The White House, A National Security Strategy for a New Century

(Washington, DC: December 1999), 7-11. 

40 Governor George W. Bush, “A Period of Consequences,” The Citadel, 

September 23, 1999, 4, 

.http://www.georgewbush.com/speeches/defense/citadel.asp, accessed May 

31, 2000. 

41 Condoleezza Rice, “Promoting the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs, 

79 (January/February 2000): 48-49. 

42White House, Press Conference by President Bush and President 

Vladimir Putin, The East Room, The White House, November 13, 2001. 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/pring/20011113.html, 

accessed January 16, 2002. 

43 Richard A. Davis, “Nuclear Offensive Arms Reductions—Past and 

Present,” U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda: An Electronic Journal of the 

Department of State, vol. 7, Weapons of Mass Destruction: The New 

Strategic Framework (July 2002): 17. 

44 Letter of Transmittal from the President to the Senate of the United 

States, June 20, 2002. http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/18016pf.htm, accessed 

on March 2, 2004. 

45 The White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States

(Washington, DC: September 2002), ii. 

46 Ibid., p. 14. 

47 The White House, National Security Strategy to Combat Weapons of 

Mass Destruction (Washington, DC: December 2002). 

48 On May 31, 2003, in a speech in Krakow, Poland, just prior to the G8 

summit, President Bush announced the Proliferation Security Initiative 

(PSI). He called for a web of international agreements and partnerships to 

allow planes and ships carrying suspect cargo to be searched. This was 

described as a plan to reinforce, not replace nonproliferation regimes 

addressing WMD, ballistic missiles, and related technologies. Eleven 

nations participating in the PSI met in Paris and, on September 4, 2003, 

released a statement of interdiction principles. See White House Fact Sheet 

on Proliferation Security, 

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/usa/2003/usa-030905-u, 

accessed March 5, 2004 

49 In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, 

2003, President Bush announced that he was asking the Security Council to 

adopt a new anti-proliferation resolution that would call on all members of 

the UN to criminalize the proliferation of WMD, to enact strict export 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

49

 

controls consistent with international standards, and to secure any and all 

sensitive materials within their own borders. The text of the speech is 

available at 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/print/20030923-4.html, 

accessed March 5, 2004. 

50 The Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of 

Mass Destruction was launched by the G-8 at the Kananaskis Summit in 

2002. The G-8 partners committed to raising up to $20 billion over ten 

years to help in the objective of preventing terrorists, or those who harbor 

them, from acquiring or developing nuclear, chemical, radiological, and 

biological weapons; missiles; and related materials, equipment, and 

technology. The statement by the G8 leaders on the partnership can be 

found at http://www.g8.ca/2002Kananaskis/globpart-en.asp, accessed 

March 5, 2004. 

51 In his speech at NDU on February 11, 2004, President Bush proposed 

inter alia that the 40 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group should 

ensure that states which renounce enrichment and reprocessing 

technologies have reliable access, at reasonable cost, to fuel for their 

civilian reactors, and that members of the Group should refuse to sell 

uranium enrichment or reprocessing equipment or technology to any state 

that does not already possess full-scale, functioning enrichment or 

reprocessing plants. “Remarks by the President on Weapons of Mass 

Destruction Proliferation,” Fort Lesley J. McNair, National Defense 

University, Washington, DC, February 11, 2004, 5. 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/print/20040211-4.html, 

accessed on February 15, 2004 

52The Bush administration has urged all states to sign the IAEA Additional 

Protocol; proposed that the IAEA Board of Governors should create a 

special committee on safeguards and verification to improve the 

organization’s ability to monitor and enforce compliance with nuclear 

nonproliferation obligations; and asked that no state under investigation for 

proliferation violations should be allowed to serve or continue serving on 

the IAEA Board of Governors or on the new special committee. See the 

White House Fact Sheet on Strengthening International Efforts Against 

WMD Proliferation, February 11, 2004, 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/print/20040211-5.html, 

accessed March 5, 2004. 

53Presidents Remarks at NDU, February 11, 2004, 1-2. 

54 Senator Kerry’s views on arms control and nonproliferation can be found 

in a number of places including the special section on Election 2004 in 

Arms Control Today 34 (January/February 2004): 26, and in the foreign 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

50

 

policy section of the official Kerry campaign website, 

http://www.johnkerry.com. 

55 David Ruppe, “U.S. NGOs Coordinate to Revitalize Arms Control 

Efforts,” National Journal Group, Global Security Newswire, December 1, 

2003, hppt://www.nti.org/d_newswire, 

issues/print.asp?story_id=1D6BD20, accessed on December 2, 2003, 1. 

56 Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived from 1712 to 1778 and his writings were 

part of the European intellectual tradition that influenced America’s 

founding statesmen. Rousseau’s famous, oft-quoted passage that is 

paraphrased in this paper comes from The Social Contract, a fragment of a 

much more ambitious work on political institutions which he began to 

write in 1743 but never finished. 

57 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard 

University Press, 1971). 

58 Thomas Graham, Jr., “Biological Weapons and International Law,” 

Science 295 (20 March 2002): 2325. 

59 Graham, Disarmament Sketches, 327. 

60 US Department of State International Information Programs, 

Washington File, “Wolf Says U.S. Determined to Push Back Nuclear 

Proliferation (Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee),” 20 

March 2003, http://usinfo.state.gov/cgibin/washfile...wl&t=/products/washfile/newsitem.shtml, accessed March 

21, 2003. 

61 Arms Control Statements from the US Department of State, an e-mail 

service to subscribers, November 6, 2003. 

62 Leonard Weiss, “Nuclear-Weapon States and the Grand Bargain,” Arms 

Control Today, 33 (December 2003): 21. 

63 President Bush, Remarks on Weapons of Mass Destruction, February 11, 

2004, 5-6. 

64 Mohamed ElBaradei, “Towards a Safer World,” The Economist (October 

18, 2003), 47-48. 

65 Center for Global Security Research, Atoms for Peace after 50 Years: 

The New Challenges and Opportunities (Livermore, California: Lawrence 

Livermore National Laboratory, December 2003). 

66 Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) argue that the 

Bush arms control agenda taken in conjunction with Bush’s nuclear 

weapons policies are undermining American leadership in 

nonproliferation. “Toward a More Responsible Nuclear Nonproliferation 
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

51

 

Strategy,” Arms Control Today 34 (January/February 2004): 9-14. Their 

article includes a range of criticisms made of President Bush’s policies by 

other Democrats and by some congressional Republicans. 

67 For discussions pro and con on the nuclear testing debate in the United 

States, see, respectively, Jack Mendelsohn, ed., White Paper on the 

Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Washington, DC: Lawyers 

Alliance for World Security, Fall 2000), and Kathleen C. Bailey, The 

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: An Update on the Debate (Washington, 

DC: National Institute for Public Policy, March 2001). 

68 Fact Sheet: U.S. Actions and Policies in Support of Its NPT Article VI 

Obligations Related to Nuclear Disarmament, http://usinfo.state.gov/cgibin/washfile....ppo&t=/products/washfile/newsitem.shtml, accessed May 8, 

2003. 

69 In 1993, Representatives John Spratt (D-SC) and Elizabeth Furse (DOre.) cosponsored an amendment that became law in 1994, banning the 

American national nuclear laboratories from conducting research and 

development that could lead to the production of low-yield nuclear 

weapons, the so-called PLYWD restriction. That restriction was repealed 

on November 24, 2003, when President Bush signed the National Defense 

Authorization Act of 2004. The new act authorized research and 

development up to the point of engineering development, but required that 

anything beyond this point required new congressional authorization. 

70 The United States of America Meeting Its Commitment to Article VI of 

the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (April 2000), p. 5. 

http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/arms/stories/0425art6.htm, accessed May 

19, 2003. 

71 For a more detailed discussion of this continuing issue, see 

Michael O. Wheeler, Positive and Negative Security Assurances, 

Project on Rethinking Arms Control (PRAC) Paper No. 9 

(College Park, Maryland: Center for International and Security 

Studies at Maryland, School of Public Affairs, University of 

Maryland, February 1994). See also the collection of paper by 

George Bunn, Virginia I. Foran, Harald Müller, George Quester, 

Victor Utgoff, and Michael O. Wheeler, circulated by the 

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Security 

Assurances Study, at the 1995 NPT review and extension 

conference under the title, Security Assurances: Implications for 

the NPT and Beyond
Wheeler—The American Approach to Arms Control 

52

 
A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES: RUSSIA, NORTH KOREA, 

AND THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF ARMS CONTROL, 

NONPROLIFERATION, AND COUNTERPROLIFERATION IN 

UNITED STATES POLICY 

James M. Smith 

INTRODUCTION 

Much of the discussion of the past few years has forecast the end of 

arms control. That discussion focuses on both the changed nature of 

the strategic environment in the wake of the Cold War—with the 

changed context of United States-Russian relations from conflict to 

general cooperation—and the almost total absence of the essential 

preconditions for cooperative approaches to national security in the key 

strategic situations that challenge the United States today. But “arms 

control” in its broader, literal sense, implying the entire set of efforts to 

control dangerous weapons, deserves another look and a new, more 

inclusive framework. The requirement to address weapons and their 

spread, to control and limit their potential destruction, is ever growing 

in salience today and into the future, and that salience applies well 

beyond the United States approach to Russia. It involves other states, 

international organizations of several varieties, failing and failed states 

and their consequences, and increasingly, non-state entities of many 

forms. Arms control, in new as well as in altered focus and form, is 

very much alive today and into the future. 

This paper seeks to explain and analyze what has become a 

shifting, melding United States policy approach to more traditionally 

distinct forms of diplomatic-centric arms control and nonproliferation 

with the addition of military-centric counterproliferation constructs and 

postures. It briefly develops a process view of “arms control” (as the 

umbrella under which all efforts to manage military force and arms 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

54

reside) from its pre-nuclear roots and across its nuclear focus during the 

Cold War to today. It presents the Strategic Offensive Reductions 

Treaty (SORT, or Moscow Treaty 2003) and the United States-Russia 

relationship as representative of the continuing end game of arms 

control as it existed during the Cold War, characterizing that context, 

construct, practice, and dynamics as the traditional case and departure 

point for today’s US policy. It suggests that arms control is not absent 

from US policy today, but that it is transitioning into a new phase in the 

face of a new set of strategic challenges. It posits the North Korea case 

as representative of a whole new category of proliferation-based 

strategic challenges and of the emerging policy framework. It then 

reviews post-Cold War United States policy against that context and 

projects the threads of continuity and elements of change into the nearterm future. Finally, from that process and policy perspective, it 

suggests an evolving triangular policy construct—incorporating arms 

control, counterproliferation, and homeland defense imperatives—as a 

logical lens and perhaps more effective policy approach to address the 

challenges and promises of the full range of “arms control” efforts 

today and tomorrow. 

EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPTS 

Traditional Disarmament 

The classical practice of “disarmament” can be found almost as far 

back as the beginnings of recorded Western history. Even before the 

creation of the state system, warring parties imposed post-conflict 

disarmament on the vanquished. Belligerents also sought to 

demilitarize possible areas or regions of contact and to restrict the use 

of new and destructive technologies.1

 With the advent of the state 

system in Europe, disarmament efforts fell into three categories. One 

was the continuation of earlier efforts to impose post-conflict 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

55

disarmament and to ban the use of horrific weapons. The second was 

also a continuation of early practice, extending efforts at conflict 

avoidance by deconflicting colonial forces. A third was the effort to 

formulate legal standards and norms of just war. These traditional 

practices formed the foundation for 20th century efforts to impose 

technological limits both through banning some weapons and limiting 

others and through geographic limits on arms deployment. 

The practices and weapons of World War I—from chemical 

weapons to naval technologies—brought about a post-war flurry of 

activity aimed at banning poison gas and limiting numbers of naval 

combatants. The legacy here was less from the effectiveness of those 

efforts than from the establishment of an international process of 

negotiation on weapons issues. So “disarmament” traditionally 

represented the full range of efforts—cooperative and imposed—to 

reduce or restrict military weapons and practices. It included both 

efforts to eliminate arms and efforts to limit arms in numbers or 

employment. It applied before, across, and after actual conflict, and it 

applied both to military activities at home and throughout the world. 

Increasingly, disarmament efforts focused on controlling new 

technologies and weapons types, and on bounding practices toward 

behavioral norms and standards. The concept “disarmament” provided 

a single umbrella under which all of these efforts and means of 

implementation could reside. 

Cold War: Arms Control and Efforts to Block Proliferation 

The legacies of World War II and the advent of the Cold War 

brought revolutionary new technologies and modes of military 

application, and they also added an ideological context that shaped 

every aspect of interstate relations. This conceptual and technological 

complexity led to the development of a new, multifaceted approach and 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

56

changed the language of “disarmament.” Nuclear weapons were seen 

by policy makers and influential observers as a reality and fixture of the 

strategic landscape, and much of what had traditionally resided under 

the unitary disarmament umbrella became “arms control” and 

“nonproliferation.”2

 The focus fell to bounding the impact of nuclear 

weapons, primarily, in order to frame and bound a national security 

problem to close to manageable dimensions. 

This perspective was perhaps best captured by Thomas Schelling 

and Morton Halperin in their seminal 1961 book Strategy and Arms 

Control when they framed the arms control construct as follows: 

We believe that arms control is a promising . . . enlargement of 

the scope of our military strategy. It rests essentially on the 

recognition that our military relation with potential enemies is 

not one of pure conflict and opposition, but involves strong 

elements of mutual interest in the avoidance of a war that 

neither side wants, in minimizing the costs and risks of the 

arms competition, and in curtailing the scope and violence of 

war in the event it occurs.3

“Arms control” in a world of nuclear weapons was, first and 

foremost, an integral component of overall national security and 

military strategy. It goals revolved around the employment of 

diplomacy to enhance the security of the United States. “Arms control” 

sought to foster and exploit a more cooperative side of the US-Soviet 

relationship, with significant preconditions and constraints facing any 

level of agreement here. A complementary set of cooperative efforts 

on the multilateral front sought to bound the nuclear problem to a small 

number of players; this was termed “nonproliferation.” Beside these 

efforts, and providing the necessary security guarantees where they 

could be developed and in the event of cooperative failure, military 

forces created and deployed a credible defensive and nuclear offensive 

force, and they pursued a more punitive policy track to be implemented 

to reverse nonproliferation failures; this track was termed 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

57

“counterproliferation.” All three tracks sought the same goals of war 

avoidance, cost containment, and damage and casualty limitation. This 

set of activities makes up the construct of “arms control” as it was 

practiced during the Cold War in both multilateral and bilateral 

settings. 

In practice, the stage was set on the multilateral front via 

nonproliferation efforts that culminated in the completion of the 

Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968. This treaty sought to arrest 

the number of nuclear states, prevent the spread of military nuclear 

capability, and eventually to reverse trends and denuclearize the world. 

It was at once a treaty to “control” and to “disarm,” and it represents 

the linked nature of these artificial categories. This nonproliferation 

track continued, and is still an active track today, bringing much of the 

disarmament focus under its banner. One family of agreements here 

created nuclear weapons free zones in Antarctica, outer space, and the 

Earth’s seabed, as well as in Latin America, the South Pacific, Africa, 

and now Southeast Asia. Other efforts banned chemical and then 

biological weapons. Despite this spirit of agreement, and recognizing 

established Soviet nuclear and chemical battlefield capabilities and use 

doctrines, United States military forces established operational efforts 

to enable military operations in the face of such an attack. This series 

of operational efforts combined with the complementary policy effort 

to provide stringent export controls, penalties, and disincentives for the 

spread of these weapons bridged over to the counterproliferation arena. 

Also against early gains in the nonproliferation track, arms control 

took a distinct focus on the United States and Soviet nuclear arsenals 

and threat. Distrust had to incrementally be overcome, however, with 

the combination of slowly built trust and confidence reinforced by 

technical advances that allowed independent verification of 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

58

compliance. A series of agreements limiting nuclear weapons testing 

was made possible by over-the-horizon detection of nuclear explosions, 

and more significant limits on future force development and 

deployment were enabled by the fielding of national technical means of 

independent surveillance. US-Soviet arms control then became a 

highly technical, formal process revolving around detailed negotiations 

and technical sessions to build agreements that centered on supposedly 

unbeatable compliance and independent verification regimens. To 

advance beyond limiting nuclear capabilities, actual on-scene 

inspection for verification was eventually needed to allow reductions in 

nuclear weapons numbers and capabilities. It took until the very end of 

the Cold War to achieve this level of trust and confidence. With active 

reductions (and even the elimination of one class of weapons as in the 

INF Treaty), arms control was again merging conceptually into 

nonproliferation and disarmament. 

ARMS CONTROL AS A PROCESS 

One way to more systematically examine this course of Cold War 

arms control is to view it as a process that today has largely completed 

two phases and is transitioning into a third: first the effort to bound the 

nuclear arena for specific bilateral agreements that would limit future 

advances and manage the course and scope of the arms race; second the 

set of efforts to reduce strategic inventories and delivery systems to 

shrink the existing threat and manage the Cold War end game; and 

third the effort to stem and reverse active proliferation of the most 

deadly categories of weapons. The first phase began in the multilateral 

arena and then shifted focus to the bilateral US-USSR arena; the second 

saw a continuing bilateral focus alongside a reemerging multilateral 

track; and the third is developing along unilateral, bilateral, and 

multilateral paths. All of the phases were characterized by 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

59

psychological and political drivers that were both enabled and limited 

by technical capabilities of independent verification. 

Phase I: Bounds and Limits 

The first phase of Cold War arms control started as an effort to 

bound the international problem posed by nuclear weapons. By the 

early 1960s the P5 nuclear club was complete, international and 

national organizational structures to address the management of nuclear 

matters were in place, and the stage was set for complementary formal 

approaches to freeze the number of nuclear weapons states and limit 

nuclear weapons testing and deployment. 1962 was an important year 

in this effort with the Cuban Missile Crisis providing the political 

imperative to act and the Vela Hotel satellite providing a means of final 

verification of test ban compliance—a key ingredient in these early 

bounding efforts. The results of this multilateral thread were most 

notably the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT—if you don’t have 

them, don’t get them; if you do have them, don’t give them to anyone 

else) and the first set of agreements establishing nuclear weapons free 

zones (Antarctica, outer space, Latin America). The major nuclear 

arms control effort then shifted over to the bilateral arena between the 

US and the USSR for the remainder of this phase. Here the effort was 

to bound the pace and scope of strategic weapons systems growth to 

keep the nuclear arms race in check and maintain two-way deterrence 

between the superpowers. 

The pivotal point here was 1968, which saw the NPT and the shift 

to the bilateral, but it also was the year that United States “national 

technical means” were certified as operational. Serious negotiations 

could thus go forth on limits at least up to the technical capabilities that 

these systems represented. Formal Strategic Arms Limitations Talks 

could then be pursued along with confidence-building agreements 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

60

toward bilateral strategic and test limits (SALT I and II Treaties along 

with Threshold Testing and Peaceful Nuclear Explosions limits). So 

the first phase of Cold War arms control began with multilateral efforts 

to bound the strategic nuclear problem to a bilateral game, and then 

shifted to bilateral efforts to bound future growth within that game. 

The impetus behind these efforts was the combination of weapons 

capabilities and political imperatives, and the parameters within which 

they took place were dictated by the technical abilities to independently 

verify compliance with major provisions.

Phase II: Reductions and Elimination 

The second phase, which completed the Cold War and bridged the 

transition to a very different post-Cold War strategic environment, 

began slowly in terms of products (treaties). However, it highlights the 

importance of the established bilateral process. With the SALT 

agreements limiting future developments in strategic systems, the next 

logical and national security enhancing step in US-USSR arms control 

was to begin reductions in the vast numbers of deployed weapons and 

systems. But this step would require on-site inspections and 

monitoring measures to extend national technical capabilities of 

independent compliance verification. Thus, the phase began with a 

series of sidebar agreements and other confidence-building measures 

working up to the acceptance of on-site verification. With the signing 

and initiation of implementation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear 

Forces Treaty (INF) that provided for on-site inspection and system 

destruction verification, the path was paved for strategic reductions that 

were codified in the Strategic Arms Reductions Treaties (START I and 

II). Noteworthy, the fall of the Soviet system and even the change of 

form of government in Russia did not pose major disruptions to the 
Sm

61 

Figure 1: The Arms Control Process Across and Beyond the Cold War

Phase I—Bounds and Limits 

Year Influencing Event Multilateral AC US/USSR CSBM US/USSR 

1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 

US Atomic Bomb USSR Atomic Bomb Britain Atomic Bomb Sputnik US ICBM Test France Atomic Bomb Cuban Missile Crisis PRC Atomic Bomb US MIRV 

US Baruch Plan US Atoms for Peace IAEA Antarctica Treaty UN CD Formed LTBT Outer Space Treaty Treaty of Tlateloco NPT 

US Open Skies Proposal US/USSR Test Moratorium US Proposes Test Ban US ACDA Formed US Vela Hotel Satellite US/USSR Hot Line Glassboro Summit US NTM SALT Talks 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

62 

1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 

India Atomic Test NATO Dual Track Afghanistan 

Zangger Committee Seabed Treaty BWC Environment Modification Treaty 

Nuclear War risk Reduction  Agreement Incidents at Sea Agreement Prevention of Nuclear War  Agreement Vladivostok Summit 

SALT I TreaABM Treaty TTBT PNET SALT II Tre

Phase II—Reductions and Elimination 

Year Influencing Event Multilateral AC US/USSR CSBM US/USSR 

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 

US SDI Program US INF Deployment 

Certain Conventional Weapons Convention Treaty of Rarotonga 

INF Negotiations START Talks START/INF/MBFR Talks  Suspended Nuclear and Space Talks  Resumptions/Expansion USSR Accepts OSI in Principle Early Notification of Nuclear  Accidents Agreement Reykjavik Summit 
Sm

63 

1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 

Berlin Wall Falls Gulf War USSR Dissolved India Atomic Bomb Pakistan Atomic Bomb Kosovo Conflict US Terror Attacks 

Big 5 NP Initiative Agreed Framework  US/DPRK CWC FMCT Talks Treaty of Pelindaba Wasenaar Agreement CTBT Ottawa Treaty Bangkok Treaty US Rejects CTBT 

Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers Ballistic Missile Launch  Notification Agreement Dangerous Military Activities  Prevention Agreement Notification of Strategic  Exercises Agreement CWC Data/Inspections  Agreement US/Russsia CTRP PNIs I PNIs II Helsinki Summit US DTRA Formed US ACDA Disbanded US Withdraws ABM Treaty 

INF Treaty (START I TrSTART II TSORT Treat
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries 

64

arms control process. After a series of unilateral “Presidential Nuclear 

Initiatives” by Presidents Bush, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin, the START 

process resumed, resulting in the finalization of START II and 

eventually the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT). 

SORT as Phase II Endgame; North Korea Points the Way into 

Phase III 

SORT is founded in the “new strategic framework” of cooperation 

and competition—not confrontation—between the United States and 

Russia. The US-Russia relationship that was formerly driven by 

nuclear balance and stability concerns is now a function of the totality 

of the more “normal” relationship. However, even though “friends 

don’t need arms control,” the sheer sizes of the nuclear inventories held 

by these two powers mandate a continued caution. Mutual reduction 

agreements such as the broadly defined SORT can continue to play a 

constructive role. Further, the possibility of third-party challenges 

intervening, particularly on Russia, gives added weight to the call for 

continued caution. A significant shift in the nuclear balance at a critical 

sector of the Russian border, for example, could become destabilizing 

to the US-Russia balance. At the same time, the broader reality of 

global proliferation—especially any actual employment of weapons of 

mass destruction—could pose severe challenges to the parallel course 

of US and Russian nuclear draw downs. Thus, a formalized yet not 

overly burdensome (in terms of defined verification mechanisms) 

agreement such as SORT forms a sensible hedge. In the absence of 

challenges of the magnitude cited above, the cooperation, stability, and 

predictability fostered by agreements such as SORT are important 

vehicles for continuing the path toward a “normal” bilateral 

relationship. Whether or not further formal arms control agreements 

between the United States and Russia are ever concluded (such as one 

addressing non-strategic nuclear weapons?), the process of strategic 
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65

cooperation has been established, and it should extend the security 

benefits of Phase Two into the near- and mid-range futures. 

While this series of events indicates a maturation and stabilization 

of the US-Russia strategic relationship—along with a concurrent series 

of stability and arms control agreements extending to the broader range 

of European security that grew out of the US-USSR/Russia process—

the end of the Cold War pointed out some major threads of instability 

and weakness in the original multilateral, nonproliferation track. As 

indicated above, the first phase of arms control in the nuclear age 

addressed nuclear proliferation concerns, seeking to bound the nuclear 

question to essentially a two-player game. Late in the first phase this 

track added the Biological Weapons Convention, and the 

nonproliferation track continued along this nuclear/biological path into 

the second phase. During the late Cold War the international 

community added several more nuclear free zones, extended nuclear 

testing limitations, completed a Chemical Weapons Convention, and 

addressed weapon and delivery system critical component transfers and 

controls. But just as the success of the US-Russia nuclear process 

centers on growing two generations of trust under independent national 

compliance verification assurances (“negotiate but verify” the byword), 

there is little international or independent compliance verification 

capability for widespread nuclear proliferation, and certainly not for 

dual-use categories of weapons such as in the chemical and biological 

arenas or for weapons delivery means. 

The history of the North Korean nuclear program is a continuing 

series of reluctant, externally pressured accessions to international 

nonproliferation agreements and norms, uninterrupted national efforts 

undertaken in violation of those international agreements, refusals and 

delays in allowing compliance inspections that would uncover the 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries 

66

string of violations, and manufactured crises when these delays could 

no longer stall the inevitable. Brinksmanship behaviors seeking onesided external concessions in return for compliance, or status quo 

acceptance of the violations, have been the norm. One could forecast a 

range of eventual outcomes for the North Korea nuclear challenge, but 

in all of the range of outcomes there are requirements for verification 

regimes, skills, and tools that carry over from more traditional arms 

control and nonproliferation. And there are also requirements for 

expanded capabilities and new applications as the emerging conditions 

of active counterproliferation become clearer. These emerging 

requirements are not fundamentally unique, however; they represent 

another stage on the arms control continuum just as counterproliferation represents an expansion into Phase III of the evolving 

strategic arms control process. 

From this process perspective, then, SORT indeed represents the 

endgame of Phase II—the logical conclusion of the superpower 

confrontation of the Cold War. It extends to the limits of combined 

off-site and on-site independent verification, and it transitions the two 

sides from confrontation to cooperation—and “arms control” is not a 

policy tool for cooperative relationships. It caps the requirement to 

control strategic nuclear weapons and security challenges resulting 

from them, at least in terms of Russia and the current strategic balance. 

But even as SORT continues as one face of arms control today, the 

established process, cooperative framework, and technical assurances 

of SORT also underscore the absence of all of those “luxuries” when it 

comes to the current and growing threat of global proliferation. This 

threat—manifest in the early twenty-first century most markedly by the 

defiant North Korea nuclear challenge, along with a significant Iranian 

challenge not far in its wake—represents another current and future 
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67

face of arms control. Phase III returns directly to a central focus on 

proliferation challenges and multilateral venues, both of which 

complicate arms control for the foreseeable future. 

The preeminence of efforts to address the challenge of 

proliferation—nonproliferation and counterproliferation, cooperative 

and punitive—will continue, and ideally with significant synergy. All 

of these programs constitute an umbrella of policy threads that blend 

one into another across a continuum from a basis in traditional 

disarmament through arms control and nonproliferation and into 

counterproliferation. This development is evident in United States 

policy since the end of the Cold War. 

TRANSITION AS REFLECTED IN UNITED STATES POLICY 

Post-Cold War United States policy both reflects and projects the 

process and the environmental characteristics developed above. This 

section traces the major policy foci and threads from the George H. W. 

Bush administration through the George W. Bush administration, with 

a brief projection into and beyond the 2004 presidential election. 

George H. W. Bush 

The foreign and security policy direction for the senior Bush 

administration was reflected in its inaugural August 1991 National 

Security Strategy statement. The two key sections for this paper are 

from the discussion that spelled out the administration agenda, and they 

are labeled—in order—“Arms Control” and “Stemming Proliferation.” 

Arms control is given a significant role in both enhancing security and 

strengthening stability—it is tasked to relieve tensions and eliminate 

the causes of that tension—by “reducing military capabilities,” 

“enhancing predictability,” and “ensuring confidence in compliance.” 

As reflecting the second phase of east-west focused arms control in the 

process offered in this paper, this policy effort still centered on United 
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68

States-Soviet (Russia) relations. Advances revolving around the 

START process, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in 

Europe, and the Conventional Forces Europe effort are cited as 

examples of effective arms control policy implementation.4

 

Efforts to stem proliferation are couched here primarily in terms 

separate from the east-west conflict, and these address proliferation 

limitation for nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as the 

missile delivery systems associated with such weapons. A key policy 

driver for Bush senior was the public realization that international 

agreements—while the essential base for stemming proliferation—were 

inadequate alone to address the growing threat. The 1991 strategy 

called for strengthened export controls and an effort to reverse 

proliferation motivations (couched here in terms of “underlying 

security concerns”). Its three prongs were “to strengthen existing 

arrangements; to expand the membership of multilateral regimes 

directed against proliferation; and to pursue new initiatives.”5

 

The places of arms control and proliferation control at the point of 

transition to a post-Cold War world were, then, set well into the main 

evolutionary thread represented in the process view of arms control. 

The important addition is that while arms control remained mainstream 

and bilateral, proliferation concerns were now broken out for separate 

(if still secondary) focus and were framed in international, multilateral 

terms around the discussion of their threat and response. The trend line 

was fairly straight and evolutionary, but it now had two linked 

threads—arms control and nonproliferation. 

William J. Clinton I 

While George H. W. Bush had given separate emphasis to 

nonproliferation and had acknowledged that international agreements 

alone were inadequate to stem the growing threat, the first Clinton 
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69

administration went the next step. The July 1994 (first term) Clinton 

National Security Strategy elevated proliferation concerns by 

addressing proliferation third and arms control fourth in its 

development of security policy components, and it also expanded those 

concerns by explicitly pairing nonproliferation efforts with 

“counterproliferation.” The Clinton strategy began from the assertion 

that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their means of delivery 

pose “a major threat” to US, allied, and friendly nation security. The 

effort to continue the Bush policy thrust to “stem” this threat was based 

in the continued emphasis on traditional multilateral nonproliferation 

regimes and structures. Significantly, however, the Clinton statement 

went beyond those efforts to add “should such efforts fail, U.S. forces 

must be prepared to deter, prevent and defend against their [WMD] 

use.” A year after the formulation of the Agreed Framework to address 

the manifest North Korea threat, and six months after the issuance of 

the US Department of Defense Counterproliferation Initiative, 

President Clinton’s strategy stated “The United States will retain the 

capacity to retaliate against those who might contemplate the use of 

weapons of mass destruction.” A major unilateral arrow had been 

added to the US policy quiver, and declaratory policy incorporated both 

deterrent and preventative use of United States power—as well as 

expanded defenses—to stem proliferation and address its 

consequences.

6

Backing up this expanded policy approach to proliferation, arms 

control was addressed separately but as another “integral part of our 

national security strategy.” Clinton promised “full and faithful 

implementation” of existing treaties, and he opened the door for future 

regional and multilateral treaties while also expressing support for 

international arms control negotiation and implementation institutions.7
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70

Thus the Clinton administration maintained the evolutionary path, 

linking the past of arms control with the present and future of 

cooperative arms control and nonproliferation efforts. But it also 

reflected the reality of the emerging new threat dimension represented 

by North Korea as it added a third dimension to the trend line—the 

complementary and reinforcing dimension of counterproliferation. 

This new dimension was necessitated by clear failures of the traditional 

norms, and it was intended to augment and expand deterrence while 

also being reserved for use as a preventive and defending tool should 

this new application of deterrence also fail. 

William J. Clinton II 

The second-term Clinton administration began from the same 

departure point: “Weapons of mass destruction pose the greatest 

potential threat to global security.” This threat was attributed to both 

“outlaw states” and a range of non-state actors. The administration 

program was based first on reducing the existing threat and also 

blocking further proliferation. This implied a continued priority on 

counterproliferation backed by active nonproliferation efforts. 

However, in an administration focused on multilateralism and coalition 

peace operations, the term “counterproliferation” was absent from the 

National Security Strategy and again limited to use within the 

Department of Defense.8

Among the “integrated approaches” to addressing the international 

security environment, active “shaping” efforts included an important 

role for arms control as “an essential prevention measure.” 

Cooperative approaches would reduce strategic weapons inventories 

and block the spread of both weapons and delivery technologies to help 

reduce or eliminate the need for active military responses. The second 

Clinton term team saw arms control as extending beyond US-Russia 
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efforts to include the full range of multilateral arms limitation and 

nonproliferation efforts.9

The second-term Clinton foundation National Security Strategy

then goes on to specifically address nonproliferation initiatives as key 

shaping activities. This emphasis spans from treaties to export and 

technology transfer controls, and on to regional challenges (Korea, the 

Middle East/Southwest Asia, and South Asia), and to US-Russia 

cooperative threat reduction efforts, even to concerns about Chinese 

missile technologies. Again, the stated priority was with strengthening 

international efforts and blocking further proliferation at this point—no 

specific attention was given in this document (other than mention of the 

Korea Agreed Framework) to reversing or countering existing 

proliferation.10

While the second Clinton administration backed away from a 

primary public emphasis on more active counterproliferation policy 

with its implication of failure for more traditional nonproliferation 

tools, the relatively linear evolutionary trend line for US policy 

continued. Counterproliferation left the public policy limelight and 

returned to the purview of military policy, and a renewed international 

cooperative focus returned to give primary emphasis to strengthening 

failed nonproliferation tools. And arms control regained front-stage 

position as the umbrella security construct. However, regardless of 

public emphasis, the three parallel lines of arms control, 

nonproliferation, and counterproliferation—of combined multilateral, 

bilateral, and unilateral actions—continued side-by-side at the heart of 

US policy. 

George W. Bush 

The foundation for strategic policy in the George W. Bush 

presidency was established well before the tragic events of September 
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72

11, 2001. As both candidate and president, Bush set forth his new 

emphasis on blended deterrence, expanded defense, and active 

counterproliferation across the campaign and into the early months in 

office. If the Clinton presidency—particularly the second term—had 

been identified with multilateralism in US policy, the context for Bush 

included assertive unilateralism when indicated. The Republican 

platform crafted by the Bush team described a foreign policy basis of 

“American international preeminence” . . . a “singular opportunity to 

shape the future” . . . and “mold international ideas and institutions” . . . 

under a “distinctly American internationalism. . . .”11 Bush stated “we 

need new concepts of deterrence that rely on both offensive and 

defensive forces,” and strongly backed the near-term fielding of active 

missile defenses. The ABM treaty would have to be modified or the 

United States would have to withdraw from it to enable that fielding. 

Traditional retaliatory deterrence and the ABM treaty were seen as 

relics of an obsolete framework, strategy, and set of implementing 

mechanisms. 

As president, Bush called for “a new policy, a broad strategy of 

active nonproliferation, counterproliferation and defenses.”12 The pre9/11 Bush identified the primary strategic problem: “A generation of 

American efforts to slow proliferation of weapons of mass destruction 

has unraveled;” and he outlined what would be his answer: “renew 

America’s faltering fight against the contagious spread of nuclear, 

biological, and chemical weapons, as well as their means of delivery.”13 

As for how to mount that renewed fight, he stated that in addition to 

deployed missile defenses “the best defense can be a strong and swift 

offense,” going on to say that for example in Iraq, if Saddam were 

building WMD, “I would take them out.”14
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The basis for the Bush administration security strategy was the 

Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which addressed centrally the 

threat of failed and failing states and non-state actors possessing 

advanced capabilities—specifically WMD and delivery capabilities—

and willing to use that asymmetrical set of capabilities directly against 

the United States, US forces, or key US interests. It called for a 

strategy not focused simply on deterrence, but one linking assurance (of 

allies and friends), dissuasion (of future challenges), deterrence (much 

more broadly based than traditional nuclear retaliation), and the ability 

to decisively defeat any adversary. While not yet specifying how the 

United States would achieve these broadened and blended goals, the 

QDR called for a transformation of US security forces and concepts for 

the new world security challenges.15

What many see as a departure, then, or at least an abrupt change in 

vector, for the Bush team following 9/11 is actually much more a 

deepening than a change: the 9/11 attacks reinforced, extended and 

expanded, and placed the already developing Bush policy on a war 

footing. This more active counterproliferation focus was highlighted in 

the president’s 2002 graduation speech at West Point. Reinforcing his 

earlier references to proliferation as the chief danger to US security, 

President Bush said “The gravest danger to freedom lies at the perilous 

crossroads of radicalism and technology. When the spread of chemical 

and biological and nuclear weapons, along with ballistic missile 

technology—when that occurs, even weak states and small groups 

could attain a catastrophic power to strike great nations.” That 

imperative was voiced in concert with the administration’s firm 

conclusion that existing nonproliferation regimes were ineffective in 

implementation and enforcement: “We cannot put our faith in the 

world of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then 
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74

systemically [sic] break them. If we wait for threats to fully 

materialize, we will have waited too long.” 16 Thus, the policy of both 

responsive and preemptive action was formalized. 

Homeland defense and missile defense are part of stronger 

security, and they’re essential priorities for America. Yet the 

war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take 

the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the 

worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have 

entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this 

nation will act.17

The George W. Bush National Security Strategy further formalized 

these themes. Citing the West Point speech, its chapter on preventing 

WMD threats called for, in order of presentation, “proactive 

counterproliferation efforts” (including detection, active and passive 

defenses, and counterforce capabilities), “strengthened nonproliferation 

efforts” (here diplomacy, arms control, multilateral export controls, and 

threat reduction assistance), and “effective consequence management.” 

The Strategy statement went on to state a legal and logical case for 

preemptive action in the face of WMD threats.18 This statement was 

closely followed by the release of a more detailed implementing 

National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. Restating 

the three policy thrusts outlined in the National Security Strategy, the 

WMD Strategy detailed four enabling functions: counterproliferation 

(calling for development of “the full range of operational capabilities to 

counter the threat and use of WMD by states and terrorists” and 

unambiguously stating that the United States “reserves the right to 

respond with overwhelming force—including through resort to all of 

our options—to the use of WMD against the United States, our forces 

abroad, and friends and allies.”), nonproliferation, WMD consequence 

management, and integrating functions such as improved intelligence 
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collection and analysis, research and development, strengthened 

international cooperation, and targeted strategies against proliferants.19

The place of “arms control”—as referred to by the George W. 

Bush administration as US-Russian strategic agreements—has been 

supplanted by efforts to address the primary threats of proliferation. 

The stage has shifted from east-west relations to focus primarily on 

failed states and non-state entities potentially armed with mass effect 

weapons and means of delivery. The emphasis here, particularly after 

the locus of threat was demonstrated to include—perhaps to be 

primarily cited within—the United States homeland, is shifted from 

cooperative efforts to assertive unilateral measures shared where 

possible with “coalitions of the willing.” And the deterrence and 

defense effort has also shifted from “offenses for deterrence in the 

absence of effective defense capabilities” to a combination of 

traditional strategic deterrence, active offenses for both deterrent and 

preemptive effects, and active defenses to reinforce across the board. 

All of these policy threads have their foundations in the evolutionary 

shifts from across the post-Cold War era, but each is also deepened, 

extended, and at least slightly tailored by the attacks of September 

2001. 

Election 2004 

As the United States enters the 2004 election season, national 

security looms as a primary arena of contention between the likely 

contenders. However, in arms control, nonproliferation, and 

counterproliferation, the differences rest more on implementation than 

on policy itself. 

Entering campaign season, President Bush reinforced and 

expanded his positions in a speech at the National Defense University 

(NDU). Just as he had given the first strategic policy speech of his 
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presidency at NDU, he chose that locale to launch what he hoped 

would be his second-term policy agenda. The NDU speech reiterated 

that the nature of the primary threat had shifted to “the possibility of 

secret and sudden attack with chemical or biological or radiological or 

nuclear weapons.” He also reinforced his rationale for preemption: 

“What has changed in the 21st century is that, in the hands of terrorists, 

weapons of mass destruction would be a first resort—the preferred 

means to further their ideology of suicide and random murder.” His 

prescription, then, besides active defenses and enhanced intelligence, is 

to seek to remove the threat at the source—stop proliferation in all of 

its forms. His examples highlight diplomacy, the efforts of the 

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), bilateral cooperation, 

active removal, and strengthened multinational efforts such as the 

Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). The PSI involves intelligence 

sharing and coordinated actions to interdict the shipment of materials or 

weapons in transit. The Bush nonproliferation agenda, then, includes 

seven specific action items: 

 -Expand the PSI to address more than shipments and transfers—

add direct action against sources; 

 -Strengthened laws and controls—criminalize proliferation, stiffen 

export controls, and secure dangerous materials; 

 -Expand nuclear materials assurance efforts of Russia and of our 

own weapons stockpiles, and extend the effort to other states (Iraq 

and Libya cited); 

 -Strengthen the NPT to address dual-use capable power systems; 

stop enrichment and reprocessing capability proliferation; 

strengthen IAEA enforcement capabilities; 

 -Limit import of civilian nuclear program equipment to only states 

that have signed the NPT Additional Protocol (requires declaration 

and inspection of a range of nuclear activities and facilities); 

 -Create a special committee of the IAEA Board for intensive focus 

on safeguards and verification; 
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 -Prohibit nations that are under investigation for proliferation 

violations from serving on the IAEA Board of Governors.20

The expectation of a second George W. Bush term, then, would be 

one of continued emphasis on active counterproliferation both within 

and outside of the multilateral proliferation regimes, attempts to expand 

and strengthen those regimes—particularly their verification and 

enforcement—and a continued declaratory policy of unilateral action to 

preempt either state or terrorist threats. The now secondary but 

essential sidebar effort is a continuation of the implementation of the 

Moscow Treaty draw down in deployed strategic nuclear warheads 

along with safeguards and sustainment of withdrawn weapons and 

materials. Finally, a primary adjunct to both the counterproliferation 

and traditional arms control threads is the early deployment of missile 

defenses as soon as technological development allows. 

The Democrats and Senator John Kerry raised issue with the Bush 

decision to go to war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence and with its 

virtually unilateral implementation, but not with the underlying 

identification of proliferated weapons as a vital national security 

concern. Senator Kerry’s cited arms control differences with the Bush 

administration were, first, over Kerry’s commitment to the abandoned 

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and his preference for an enforcement 

mechanism in SORT; second, a more multilateral approach to 

strengthening nonproliferation regimes; third, an opposition to any 

moves toward developing new nuclear weapons, with that opposition 

couched in terms of damaging effects on the arms control and 

nonproliferation process; fourth, a more focused approach to North 

Korea and also to Iran (he sited Iraq as diverting that focus); and fifth, a 

more deliberate deployment of missile defenses only after full technical 

capability can be demonstrated along with a real threat identification.21 
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78

Other influential Democrats added a six-point plan to strengthen 

nonproliferation and “proactive diplomacy”: 

 -Improve international weapons monitoring, inspection, and 

verification capabilities; 

 -Expand and accelerate Nunn-Lugar threat reduction programs; 

 -Conclude the Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty to achieve a global 

halt to the production of weapons-useable fissile materials; 

 -Enhance export controls and use the PSI to further restrict access 

to nuclear weapons applicable fuel-cycle technologies; 

 -Engage/re-engage “states of proliferation concern” such as North 

Korea to find ways to bring those states back into the community 

of responsible nations; 

 -Lead by example, reconsider the CTBT, and reduce the role of 

nuclear weapons in United States (and Russian) security policy.22

The bottom line for near-term United States policy, then, seems to 

be that, first, a central emphasis will continue on strengthened 

nonproliferation enforcement. A Democrat administration would likely 

place more focus on strengthening and perhaps expanding the regimes 

themselves, while a second Bush term would look more toward 

verification and enforcement either within or outside of the 

nonproliferation regimes. In both cases, the PSI and the IAEA will 

continue to receive United States emphasis and backing. Second, the 

US-Russia strategic draw downs will continue, along with continued 

emphasis on safeguarding the withdrawn weapons and materials. 

Finally, one should expect differences in rhetoric, in preferences for 

multilateral approaches to proliferation issues, in the timing and 

character of any missile defense deployments, and in the public 

emphasis on counterproliferation actions and policies. 

TREND LINE PROJECTION AND IMPLICATIONS 

Again, arms control is a political process at its core and a 

technological process at its parameters. The mix of political will and 
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79

verification capability sets the agenda, enables agreements and 

cooperation, and controls implementation. Thus Phase I of the nuclearera process bounded the scope of the effort to address strategic nuclear 

weapons and systems by first limiting it to fundamentally a two-state 

issue and second providing independent verification technology to 

enable limits to future growth. This narrowly defined “arms control” 

track (defined in terms of US-Soviet/Russian strategic controls) 

continued into Phase II where, after an extensive confidence-building 

effort, on-site inspections overcame verification technology limitations 

to allow warhead reductions. This effort is today represented by 

SORT, and it continues—but now as an important but secondary 

track—into Phase III and the near- to mid-term future. The sheer size 

of the draw down efforts—and the stores of weapons quality 

materials—have added a significant nonproliferation safeguards effort 

to this strategic reductions implementation program, tending to merge 

the “arms control” and “nonproliferation” tracks into Phase III. 

The multilateral track, that in Phase I allowed the bounding of the 

strategic nuclear problem, continued as a sidebar track across the 

remainder of Phase I and also Phase II, with nuclear free zone 

declarations, NPT refinements, and testing limits supplementing that 

nuclear bounding. It also added biological and chemical weapons 

limitations to its more narrowly labeled “nonproliferation” focus. 

Political will allowed these additions, but a lack of technology and 

procedures to ensure independent verification have to date prevented 

full and successful implementation of the biological and chemical 

regimes. 

One cautionary note on this multilateral track is that there have 

been preliminary discussions within the international community on 

seeking to add regulatory regimes addressing cyber activities and 
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restrictive regimes addressing military space applications. These are 

legitimate arenas of concern; however, some of the activity here is 

clearly aimed at checking United States military advantages in these 

areas. The United States must remain actively engaged in this track to 

both facilitate security enhancing developments and also to check 

attempts to blunt required capabilities to the detriment of our security. 

In sum, then, efforts to strengthen overall detection and 

verification, and to add additional enforcement avenues, perhaps even 

new arenas, mark the course of Phase III for nonproliferation. In the 

absence of verifiable compliance assurances, a relatively more selfhelp, or “counterproliferation,” track was launched midway into Phase 

II and continues as a primary track into Phase III. As long as questions 

continue on the political will of some parties and the general state of 

technology to assure nonproliferation, this track will likely maintain 

some significant place in United States policy. However, even with a 

primary role, efforts to expand multilateral nonproliferation regimes 

pull some of this focus away from its initial unilateral reliance. The 

end result is three relatively parallel policy tracks into and across Phase 

III, with proliferation-focused efforts at center stage, but also with 

some merging from bilateral and unilateral into a renewed and 

invigorated multilateral effort to stem the rising threat of proliferation. 

Implementation Issues 

The evolution of arms control represented at the stage of SORT 

indicates a focus on the cooperative dimension of even the highest level 

of strategic conflict maturing toward cooperative security based on 

active cooperation and ever-building trust. This is an evolution of 

bilateral cooperation with regional/alliance spillover, all transitioning 

toward partnership. The target today continues to be strategic nuclear 

systems, with diversion and accident the conditions to be blocked. And 
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81

while there is some attention to expanding the emphasis to theater 

nuclear weapons, and to residual chemical and biological weapons, the 

process centers on decommissioning and then safeguarding and 

disposing of strategic stores. There are certainly political, economic, 

and physical challenges in implementation, but the overall environment 

is stabilizing and relatively predictable. Independent and cooperative 

technologies are employed on-site, and independent off-site means 

continue to provide the ultimate verification failsafe. 

The complementary nonproliferation track exists as a mix of 

mature and nascent agreements, implementing structures along side ad 

hoc implementation, and rigorous inspection regimes along with 

compliance based almost solely on trust. The policy requirements here 

are to reinforce the strengths and shore up the weaknesses of these 

regimes, processes, and structures. A renewed focus on nuclear 

materials and weapons is a priority, as is the search for effective 

controls on the proliferation of delivery systems, particularly ballistic 

missiles. A continued effort to find effective verification and 

enforcement means for chemical and biological weapons also takes on 

renewed urgency today. And a reinforced effort to secure stocks from 

which radiological weapons can be produced is also indicated. Political 

will still varies widely, so bilateral and smaller coalition efforts are 

needed until wider multilateral improvements can be crafted. 

Enhanced export controls and PSI-style cooperative enforcement 

represents a start toward filling that gap in effectiveness. And here too, 

both independent and cooperative technologies must be improved to 

support effective controls. 

The Phase III counterproliferation stage represented by Korean 

nuclearization is fundamentally more challenging. The core 

relationship here is hostile and non-cooperative to the extreme. Even 
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82

within negotiated boundaries, active deception and noncompliance are 

the expectation and the norm. Even within multilateral approaches to 

compliance verification, one must continue to fully rely on 

independent, off-site confirmation at every step; where the limits of 

national technical means are exceeded, there can today be no 

confidence that compliance occurs. The concern here is to stop the 

continued development of a full range of weapons of mass destruction 

as well as delivery systems and even system employment. The 

program must focus primarily on discovery and stemming future 

growth before it can turn to safeguarding or disposal. Building 

consensus toward unified action is a political imperative, with 

unilateral efforts and preparedness probably the only alternative while 

that consensus of will can be built. The technology requirement is for 

area detection systems and intelligence applications as well as for onand off-site systems that are reliable under the full range of conditions 

to include trans-conflict and contaminated post-conflict operations. 

While the United States arms control, nonproliferation, and 

counterproliferation communities are addressing many of these 

concerns—developing requirements and systems, as well as programs 

and personnel to employ those systems to address much of the range of 

concern—this is not yet a cohesive effort. The arms control/ 

nonproliferation effort resides primarily in the Department of State in 

policy terms and in the Departments of Energy and Defense in terms of 

implementation, and counterproliferation is centered in the Department 

of Defense. There are logical overlaps and synergies in some areas—

particularly in personnel skills and technologies—but there is no formal 

means to ensure that those synergies and associated efficiencies are 

routinely realized. 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

83

One primary recommendation, therefore, is to adopt a dual-track 

approach to policy and programs—certainly to the specification of 

human and technological requirements—that bridges traditional arms 

control/nonproliferation with counterproliferation. This can be 

accomplished through an interagency “arms control, nonproliferation, 

and counterproliferation” (ANC) task force, and must incorporate a 

series of expert-level working groups that meet regularly for interaction 

and communication. The requirements definition and resourcing 

processes must also be modified to incorporate this interagency and 

cross-functional structure. The promise is for greater effectiveness 

across the board, and for more efficient development along with 

broader and deeper political backing that will benefit the entire United 

States arms control effort. 

Figure 2: “ANCH”—The Way Ahead 

Arms Control/ 

Nonproliferation 

Policy 

Programs 

People 

Organization 

Technology 

Homeland Defense/ Counterproliferation/ 

Homeland Security Force Protection 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries 

84

Further, as there is a large area of overlap in the human and 

technical capabilities required for this combined ANC arena and the 

emerging homeland defense/homeland security arena, even greater 

effectiveness, efficiency, and support can come from a triangular 

structure and effort within the policy community (arms control/ 

nonproliferation, counterproliferation, and homeland security—

ANCH). As Dr. Richard Falkenrath related to a conference audience, 

he had come into government on the staff of the National Security 

Council to work proliferation issues, and now he works homeland 

defense issues on the Homeland Security Council staff, yet he still does 

the same things every day.23 Here initial ANCH task groups aimed at 

establishing communication and defining mutual requirements should 

be established and fostered to prepare the ground and plant the seeds 

for increasing integration. Competition for scarce resources can be 

turned into combined development, and synergies in capability can 

further all three sets of programs and efforts. 

CONCLUSION 

As is clear from the discussion here, the policy choice for the 

United States is not one of arms control or no arms control, or of either 

nonproliferation or counterproliferation, or even of active defense or 

disarmament. The policy imperative to ensure national security is how 

to craft an inclusive framework to ensure coordinated action and 

synergy of results across all of these integrally linked activities. 

If the imperative is to achieve policy coherence toward synergy 

and enhanced national security, the first requirement is for a national, 

bipartisan commitment to a broad national security strategy that 

incorporates the umbrella arms control as an integral track. In a postSeptember 11, 2001, proliferated world, forging a broad national 

consensus on security strategy should be possible IF the parties and 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

85

branches can agree to engage the debate. Failing that debate and 

movement toward consensus, or during the debate and awaiting its 

outcome, active interdepartmental coordination of implementation 

activities is needed to both achieve preliminary synergies and establish 

the foundation for later and expanded policy coordination. Some 

organizational changes, or at least review and possible realignment of 

responsibilities, may be indicated by future policy guidance. Again, 

either failing or awaiting such guidance, the various agencies and 

offices involved in “arms control” most broadly defined can and should 

form cooperative task force/fusion center arrangements to maximize 

current effectiveness. This should include all arms control, 

nonproliferation, and counterproliferation functions, to include all 

related intelligence functions. Only this close coordination can begin to 

address the informational and human requirements identified above. 

In the end, effective cohesion will require a national commitment 

and priority backing. Policy coherence must include the deliberate 

fusion of knowledge and expertise behind both synergistic policy 

formulation and implementation. It must also incorporate a deliberate 

commitment to develop the human resources of arms control—from 

strategic and policy expertise to technical, operational, and 

informational expertise—and foster a cadre of arms control specialists 

across effective careers of service and excellence. Policy commitment, 

organizational commitment, and human commitment are all essential to 

success here. 

The overall conclusion, then, is that the full range of activities and 

policies under the inclusive umbrella of “arms control” remain vital and 

relevant now and into the foreseeable future. Human history is a 

chronicle of efforts to limit the potential and destructive results of 

warfare. Today, as modern technologies threaten massive suffering and 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries 

86

even catastrophic destruction, nations, groups, and individuals will 

continue to strive for security enhancing limitations and restrictions on 

military capabilities. As long as weapons remain tools of international 

relations, international actors will be involved in “arms control.” This 

field of international policy will remain viable and vital into the 

foreseeable future, and United States national security can only be 

enhanced by deliberate attention and priority to this policy arena. 

NOTES 

 

1

 See, for example, Richard Dean Burns, “An Introduction to Arms Control 

and Disarmament,” Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament (New 

York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1993), 1-12, for one summary of the 

history of disarmament efforts. 

2

 An early distinction between the disarmament tradition and Cold War 

arms control was drawn by Hedley Bull, The Control of the Arms Race: 

Disarmament and Arms Control in the Missile Age (New York: Frederick 

A. Praeger, 1961). 

3

 Thomas Schelling and Morton Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control

(New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1961), 1. 

4

 George H. W. Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States

(Washington DC: The White House, August 1991), 14-15. 

5

 G.H.W. Bush, National Security Strategy (1991), 15-16. 

6

 William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and 

Enlargement (Washington DC: The White House, July 1994), 11-12. 

7

 Clinton, National Security Strategy (1994), 12-13. 

8

 William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy for a New Century

(Washington DC: The White House, May 1997), 6. 

9

 Clinton, National Security Strategy (1997), 7-8. 

10 Clinton, National Security Strategy (1997), 8. 

11 “Republican Platform 2000, Principled American Leadership” (at 

http://www.rnc.org/2000/2000platform8) 

12 George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President to Students and Faculty at 

National Defense University,” 1 May 2001 (at 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/05/print/20010501-

10.html) 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries

87

 

13 “Republican Platform 2000.” 

14 “Presidential Election Forum: The Candidates on Arms Control,” Arms 

Control Today 30:7 (September 2000): 5, 7. 

15 Donald H. Rumsfeld, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington 

DC: Department of Defense, 30 September 2001). The QDR report was 

prepared prior to 9/11, but its release was delayed for review following the 

attacks. The document did not receive major revisions in content during 

the less than three weeks of post-9/11 review. 

16 George W. Bush, “President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West 

Point,” 1 June 2002 (at http://www. 

whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/print/20020601-3.html) 

17 “President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point.” 

18 George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of 

America (Washington DC: The White House, September 2001), 13-16. 

19 George W. Bush, National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass 

Destruction (Washington DC: The White House, December 2002). 

20 George W. Bush, “President Announces New Measures to Counter the 

Threat of WMD,” 11 February 2004 (at 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/print/20040211-4.html) 

21 “Profiles of the Candidates: Senator John Kerry,” Arms Control Today

34:1 (January/February 2004): 26. 

22 Senators Carl Levin and Jack Reed, “Toward a More Responsible 

Nuclear Nonproliferation Strategy,” Arms Control Today 34:1 

(January/February 2004): 9-14. 

23 Richard Falkenrath remarks at “Counterproliferation at Ten: 

Transforming the Fight Against Weapons of Mass Destruction” 

Conference, Alexandria, VA, 8 December 2003. 
Smith—A Tale of Two Countries 

88

 
THE EU APPROACH TO ARMS CONTROL: 

DOES IT DIFFER FROM THE AMERICAN APPROACH?

Glen M. Segell 

© Copyright Glen Segell 2004 

INTRODUCTION 

The European approach to nonproliferation does not differ from the 

American approach. To be sure, the American approach as a 

hegemonic power at the start of the 21st century resembles the 

European approach of the Great Powers at the start of the 20th century. 

There is thus consensus in 2004 on the approach to the two big 

nonproliferation issues for European states. The first of these revolves 

around relations between America and European states within NATO 

over European regional security issues. These include the impact of 

NATO enlargement on Cold War arms control arrangements, 

particularly the adaptation of the CFE treaty; the future of the Balkans; 

and, specific matters in the Baltics such as the Russian Kaliningrad 

base. The second is commonality surrounding the ongoing arms 

control process on nuclear weapons and missiles between America and 

Russia that needs European Union (EU) consensus given EU 

enlargement. Integral to this is EURATOM holding jurisdiction to 

own, monitor, and verify nuclear material within the European Union, 

including the new members from Central and Easter Europe.1

 For all 

of these America has a willing partner in EU states to engage in 

bilateral, small-party multilateral, and large-party multilateral 

nonproliferation efforts. Notwithstanding this trans-Atlantic 

nonproliferation consensus, there are fundamental differences on 

counterproliferation on a global scale outside of Europe. Intrinsic 

differences of approach exist on the use of American armed force for 

counterproliferation, especially on the matter of rogue states and non-
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

90

state entities. In this America finds itself having to engage in unilateral 

counterproliferation. This will continue to be the case, especially if 

America chooses to pursue the doctrine of pre-emptive military force 

for arms control, namely, the Bush Doctrine. Such differences are 

reconcilable through multilateral cooperation such as the Proliferation 

Security Initiative. 

Integral to explaining and comprehending the consensus and 

differences on arms control policies are definitions and historical 

experiences.2

 There does not appear to be a difference over definitions. 

Diplomats of America and member states of the EU agree that 

nonproliferation is defined as having a strong political, diplomatic, and 

economic dimension or emphasis. Nonproliferation in 2004 is 

characterised by 1) the end of Cold War arms control diplomacy 

dominated by treaties negotiated between the two superpowers, 2) 

residual Cold War WMD stockpiles requiring agreement, 3) the advent 

of rogue states and global terrorism leading to American pre-emptive 

armed force to disarm them, and 4) the common approach by 25 EU 

member states in determining regional and global agenda. In this 

context arms control is a synonym for nonproliferation. There is also 

agreement that counterproliferation includes the application of military 

power to support intelligence collection and analysis, diplomacy, arms 

control, and export controls. Thus counterproliferation may be viewed 

as the military component of nonproliferation. In this context 

disarmament is a synonym for counterproliferation.3

 The agreement on 

definitions is an important part of any diplomatic process towards 

international arms control policy formulation but does not necessarily 

lead to implementation. 

The formulation and implementation of international arms control 

policies is also the product of a state’s geography, its cultural roots, its 

constitutional arrangements, and its historical experiences. These 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

91

experiences are linked to the traditional or conventional view that 

diplomacy is statist in character. Such a view is promoted by a recent 

dictionary of diplomacy arguing the essence of diplomacy has to do 

with promoting and justifying states’ interests.4

 By this it is understood 

that the state is the focal point that makes arms control diplomacy 

possible by granting the act and actors of diplomacy (diplomats) 

authority, legitimacy, and jurisdiction.5

 Diplomats promote a sovereign 

state’s arms control agenda.6

 This identifies with the view of the state 

as the institution that claims a monopoly of legitimate force for a 

particular territory.7

 It is of no surprise that deliberations on the 

capabilities and attempts to limit such force, namely weapons, play an 

important feature in the diplomatic relations between states.8

 Given 

this one can understand the dilemmas to nonproliferation and 

counterproliferation posed by states (rogue) and non-state entities 

(terrorists) that do not participate in diplomatic activities or that do not 

adhere to the norms and principles established in and inferred from 

internationally negotiated and agreed arms control treaties. 

These issues will continue to be viewed as building upon a wide, 

deep, and impressive range of preceding scholarship on American and 

European nonproliferation under these headings: what is war; war as a 

political act of arms control; military means to affect arms control; 

American arms control diplomacy; European arms control diplomacy; 

21st century nonproliferation; the CFE Treaty; and CSFP/ESDP. To 

commence the analysis it must be noted that preceding scholarship 

noted in important literature shows a gradual transformation in 

contemporary international security and arms control.9

 Such a 

transformation was indicative of the termination of the bipolar Cold 

War deterrence and nonproliferation milieu. The specific watershed for 

the change in American approaches to WMD proliferation, namely the 

Bush Doctrine, arose from the psychological perception of political 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

92

elites emanating from the catalytic 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York 

and Washington in 2001. Despite this specific event, the 

transformation is not considered a dramatic transformation historically 

when considering the activities of previous European hegemonic 

powers. 

THE NATURE OF ARMS CONTROL10

The similarity of international security facing the sole superpower, 

the USA, at the onset of the 21st century to that faced by the European 

Great Powers at the end of the 19th century is the process of arms 

control and disarmament as a political objective, albeit with different 

scales of weapon capability. Nuclear weapons were not yet in 

existence, while the use of biological weapons was not considered 

widespread. Chemical weapons were, however, a definite issue of arms 

control. This can be viewed through The Hague Conference of 1899 

that failed to achieve the purpose for which it was originally called, as 

the larger Powers, particularly Germany, were unwilling to agree to a 

limitation, much less a reduction, of armaments.11 The failure to affect 

arms control, in part, led to WWI and hence WWII.12 The historical 

precedents of the consequences to restrain the build-up of arms are all 

too clear should the current international political process of arms 

control fail to restrain proliferation. 

The Hague Conferences then, and the United Nations today, are 

important because they show the possibility of nations, as an 

international society, meeting in conference and agreeing upon 

measures of interest to the world's welfare. Arms control is the 

resulting process of such diplomacy, showing consensus of the 

international community even if the main structure of the international 

system is anarchic and the main agents are sovereign states.13 Arms 

control is about establishing norms agreed to by the international 

community at large to attain cooperative international security to ensure 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

93

order within the anarchy. States that do not adhere to such norms are 

rogue to the consensus of the international community. As seen from 

numerous international diplomatic debates around the wording of, and 

voting on, the text of UN resolution 1441 on Iraqi WMD capability (8 

November 2002), it is, more often than not, that the case is not what has 

to be done, but how best to do it.14 Clearly the current need to address 

proliferation of WMD is an accepted principle and practice of 

international society led by the hegemonic power and reflects the 

understanding inherent in the Hague Conventions of 1899/1907 noted 

in hindsight after the onset of hostilities during World War I.15 

Given the historical incidents of the failures of arms control 

(nonproliferation), disarmament (counterproliferation) is an established 

precedent for the use of armed force for international stability on behalf 

of the international society of nations. The issue at stake in the 21st

century is how to affect such arms control, and if need be change the 

regime of any resisting state in order for it to accept the principles of 

international law, without challenging the inherent right of any nation 

to sovereignty and domestic self-rule. Arms control of any rogue states 

is thus to enforce compliance of its leadership with the accepted norms 

of the international community, not to threaten any other state and not 

to invoke generic fear or terror by the attempted acquisition or 

possession of WMD capability. 

Given this, at the start of the 21st century, the world’s sole 

hegemonic power that is active in international affairs, the USA, is now 

facing what the European Great Powers faced prior to World War I—

the need to effect arms control on states attaining capability that tend 

towards the periphery of the society of nations by flouting, and even 

rejecting, the principles of international law, namely the international 

arms control agreements such as the Biological Weapons Convention 

(BWC), Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), and Nuclear Non-
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

94

Proliferation Treaty (NPT).16 Of paramount importance in this respect 

of arms control is not only the actions of the rogue states but also the 

changing role of America in international affairs, given that the greater 

part of its history as an independent power, virtually the whole of the 

19th century, to say nothing of the twenty years that followed the First 

World War, was a time in which it seemed to have little need to worry 

about foreign affairs at all. Given this, America has seen the need to 

adapt its approach to international affairs and war. 

AMERICAN ARMS CONTROL DIPLOMACY 

American arms control diplomacy has constantly evolved given the 

radical changes of its role in world affairs at precipice points in its short 

history of sovereignty and hegemony. Shortly after independence it 

followed discretion in the observance of the principle enunciated by 

John Quincy Adams in 1821 when he said of his country “she goes not 

abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the 

freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator 

only of her own.”17 This changed rapidly given American engagement 

in conflicts outside her borders such as the Philippines Insurrection 

1899-1902; the “punitive expedition” of 1916 by General John J. 

Pershing against the Mexican guerrillas led by Pancho Villa; and 

ventures into Haiti against the "cacos," 1918-1921; the Dominican 

Republic, 1916-1924; Nicaragua until 1933; and participation in World 

War I. Such foreign engagements using military force led America to 

become party to European diplomatic arms control processes such as 

the Hague Conventions of 1905/1907. 

It was in the aftermath of World War I in the era of the League of 

Nations that America, under President Wilson, entertained its first 

major arms control diplomatic initiative.18 It was, however, only after 

World War II that America entered its current role as a global arms 

control initiator having migrated from idealism to political realism. 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

95

This was indicative of the reality of its victory in the Pacific, its 

commitment to Europe, its interests to oppose communist expansion by 

the USSR, and its own nuclear arsenals. Despite the intense 

antagonism of the Cold War there was a concerted arms control effort 

by the two superpowers at nonproliferation of WMD from the haves -- 

an elite club of nuclear states -- to the have-nots, including all other 

states and non-state entities.19 Globally, small states were dependant 

upon the superpowers for the supply of weapons, were ideologically 

proxy to them, and were intricately linked on economic and financial 

matters. America did not have to try hard to enforce nonproliferation 

during the Cold War given the rigidity of the bipolar system of arms 

control negotiations combined with the fear of mutually assured 

destruction by nuclear war. European states within NATO and the 

Warsaw Pact followed a diplomatic approach to nonproliferation 

dictated to by the two superpowers. Antagonistic non-state entities, be 

they ideological, religious, cult, criminal, or obstreperous, operated 

mainly within the territorial boundaries of their own states. The most 

prevalent examples were decolonisation and those proxies to the 

superpower rivalry in the overthrow of existing regimes. These 

characteristics of the world order led to an imposition on any small 

state from being rogue to the international arms control process 

dominated by the two superpowers and indeed on non-state entities 

from rising to prominence. 

Given the Cold War system, the main role of America as a 

superpower has been in bilateral diplomacy with the USSR. This was 

typified by formal, legally binding arms control treaties or agreements 

as well as informal but not legally binding agreements.20 Part and 

parcel of the American approach to arms control is the role of the 

president and the Senate and lack of a role of the House of 

Representatives. International treaties are negotiated in the name of the 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

96

president who signs them pending Senate approval. Style must be 

complemented by substance for presidents to survive the domestic 

democratic process yet it should not be supposed that the electorate is 

naïve. It would be patience and diplomacy hard learned that won the 

Cold War; that ended the Berlin Blockade; and, that brought about such 

agreements as the Austrian State Treaty, the Test Ban Treaty, the 

Treaty on Nuclear Nonproliferation, and the SALT and START 

agreements. By the final quarter of the twentieth century, most 

Americans were becoming reconciled to their country being 

permanently involved in world politics and arms control processes. 

WHAT IS WAR? 

War, as seen by the Cold War of the 20th century, does not 

necessarily entail death and destruction on the battlefield. War also 

entails the act by which one state changes the leadership or regime of 

another state, by diplomatic means or by economic pressures. War, as 

constructed by the doctrine of nuclear deterrence originally written by 

American strategists, may also be the threat of the use of force invoking 

fear that prevents the use of physical force to achieve the same 

objectives. Any arms control and disarmament process against the 

rogue states by diplomatic means, by the threat of force’ and if need be 

by deployed military forces is by definition a war. 

America having a democratically elected government, accountable 

to its population, and under constant global media critique, is well 

aware of the limitations of different arms control and disarmament 

means in dealing with proliferation and states aiming to acquire WMD. 

It is nevertheless understood that should these rogue states attain a 

deployable WMD capability, they would threaten local, regional, and 

global security. The Cold War has shown that a country’s own 

population can be totally destroyed by escalation of a conflict to 

mutually assured destruction while an arms race can result in sufficient 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

97

WMD to destroy the entire planet. Thus, acquiring WMD capability 

forms a threat of notional terror for the sake of terror. This form of 

terror has evolved with warfare from the 19th century to the 21st

century, since the international system level of state diplomacy has 

evolved from the balance of power in military capability, occasionally 

through alliances, to the balance of terror highlighted by the bipolar 

Cold War nuclear deterrence.21 Acquisition by rogue states of WMD 

threatens the precarious post-Cold War world with its rise in radical 

sub-state and non-state terror. This terror by the rogue states has been 

well established through statements and actions threatening domestic, 

regional, or global security. This comes at a time when the Cold War 

adversaries are trying to reduce their arsenals from offensive/deterrent 

levels to more acceptable defensive levels. 

Such terror invokes fear, not through the act of violence but 

through the implied capability, whether real or not, by rogue states who 

may imply their intent to attain WMD. It is the same fear that is the 

political discourse of sub-state and non-state terror perpetrators through 

media-generated potential scenarios and statistical possibilities and 

potentials of assumed capabilities. These actors have proven that in the 

eventuality of a single act of violence the dead would remain the dead. 

The wounded, physical and psychological, would live in fear of the 

next act of violence based upon their experiences of the previous act of 

violence and through continued rogue capabilities. The next act of 

violence may never happen, nor could capabilities ever be deployed, 

but the fear lives on. The use of nuclear weapons at the end of World 

War II has shown this. It is the mass media that creates a narrative of 

fear to those who have not been present at the act of violence. Time is 

a double-edged sword. The longer the time after an act of violence or 

the proliferation of capabilities heightens the fear that a next act of 

violence will occur. The longer the time after an act of violence, the 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

98

more paranoid a state’s security forces become. In this terror can 

succeed -- in a single act of violence, or through capability -- in 

changing the texture of a society. America is aware that the true threat 

to democracy comes once it no longer fears the consequences of the 

processes of threat management. The Bush Doctrine has hinted at this 

by declaring the end to a policy of nuclear deterrence, pronouncing 

instead pre-emptive war and missile defence systems. It follows that 

the moral structure and principles of society can be diminished through 

techniques to enforce arms control and disarmament. This threatens the 

basis of democracy as vulnerability based military strategy replaces 

threat-based strategy. Rogue WMD capability can, through the threat 

of violence, change the foundations of society, domestically and 

internationally. The alternative to civilisation is anarchy should terror 

through capability become the new means of warfare. Hence, pursuit 

of WMD capability by states rogue to the international order, with or 

without a political intent, gives justification for the international 

community to declare a war of disarmament as a means to pre-empt the 

use of this WMD capability. 

The means of doing so are arguable. In order to maintain a 

modicum of civility and not to stoop to a similar level of barbarism that 

is practiced by the rogue states, the use and threat of the unilateral use 

of American armed force for disarmament as a continuation of arms 

control policy can only be manifest in a finite number of options. 

Initially it is recognised for multilateral coercive diplomacy based in 

communication, rationality, and willingness to compromise. As seen in 

the cases of Iraq, North Korea, and Iran, diplomatic and economic arms 

control means and measures constitute the first steps being attempted 

via the established practises and use of such bodies as the United 

Nations over a prolonged period before the deployment of military 

force. Should such diplomacy of arms control fail to achieve 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

99

disarmament, then pre-emptive war has been voiced as a continuation 

of arms control policy to achieve the political objective of 

disarmament. Such a war, against the rogue states, would then be the 

first ever of its kind for America to wage unilaterally as a direct 

continuation of arms control policy against a foreign state to change its 

regime through disarmament though retaining its national sovereignty 

and existing borders. This would not be ideal given the lack of exit 

strategy for the American military, the problems of providing any new 

regime with legitimating its power into authority, and the potential for 

continual resistance from the previous regime’s supporters leading 

perhaps to local and regional instability. There is no certainty that any 

new regime will embrace the international norms of arms control. 

Further, history has shown that promoting democracy after conflict has 

been rare and difficult.22 In the long term a “Hague Style Convention 

on Proliferation” to introduce the international community of nations to 

a self-regulatory multipolar approach towards arms control and 

disarmament would seem to be prudent. 

WAR AS A POLITICAL ACT OF ARMS CONTROL 

Prudence, in the short term, may necessitate immediate and 

decisive military action. The rationale and justification is provided by 

the astute 19th century Prussian commentator Clausewitz who is, to be 

sure, often credited with formulating the truism that in war the military 

objective is to disarm the enemy while “war is an act of force to compel 

our adversary to do our will.”23 Clausewitz further wrote “in pure 

theory, we are bound to say that the political object of war really lies 

outside war's province”24 and “war is nothing but the continuation of 

policy with other means.”25 The major premise, then, is that war can be 

a rational instrument and that what can make it rational is its political 

purpose—what gives war meaning is not and cannot be military. War 

is meaninglessness unless it has a purpose that lies outside itself, 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

100

nonetheless it is understood that in war there is no substitute for 

victory. Hence, pre-emptive war against the rogue states is nothing but 

the continuation of arms control policy with other means. Both the 

military and political objectives are the same: to disarm an adversary 

threatening international security. This matching political and military 

objective is the uniqueness of the war against the rogue states. 

In particular, the political objective of the international community 

to force rogue states to adhere to the accepted international norms not 

to pursue the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction has clearly 

been spelled out as a case of counterproliferation by disarmament—to 

negate the radical politics and terror that such WMD capability inflicts. 

The military objective of war against the rogue states, as requested by 

democratic leaders, is to defeat them at minimum cost, ultimately to 

disarm them by destroying their armed forces or forcing them to 

surrender, and thereby to render them defenceless against the full 

imposition of the will of the international community—the will being 

arms control. The contemporary catalyst to use war as a political act of 

arms control was the September 11 terrorist attacks in America. 

American military and political planners took note of states rogue to 

international arms control on the basis of a new vulnerability strategy 

and not on the previous threat-based strategy that prevailed during the 

Cold War. Clearly, pre-emptive war such as enacted against Iraq 

(2003) was based on American vulnerability to deter and to defend 

against WMD rather than any specific threat posed by Iraq. These 

military planners saw the offence as the best means of the defence; a 

traditional and rarely disputed military strategy. 

MILITARY MEANS TO AFFECT ARMS CONTROL 

Such pre-emptive war, and indeed preventive war, is well 

established in history though its use, physical or psychological, to 

affect arms control and is in part indicative of technological innovation 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

101

due to the scale of intensity of capability and the geographical reach of 

WMD. From the end of the 19th to the start of the 21st century war has 

moved from being localised between neighbouring states to being 

global, from being prolonged in trenches to being near instantaneous by 

inter-continental ballistic missiles, from hand-to-hand to being nuclear, 

from industrial to cyber-based. The processes of such an evolution 

from local to global with technological changes, enhanced 

communication networks, and global proliferation has often being 

ascribed in literature as “globalisation,” but rarely in the context of 

arms control. Such global reach and the ability of mass destruction 

have generated the fear of vulnerability. 

This technology driven revolution in military affairs (RMA)26

would not in itself justify a pre-emptive war to further an arms control 

process against the rogue states. It is the asymmetrical nexus between 

globalisation and radicalism at the crossroads with the proliferation of 

WMD technology with near instantaneous attack and no warning time 

that brings the possibility of the battlefield into the industrial and cyber 

homeland of democratic states and against the homes of civilians.27 

The radicalism is oppressive dictators of states knowing no rationality 

or ideology, non-state terrorist organisations not aiming to attain 

authority by supplanting existing state government, and sub-state actors 

such as warlords. This nexus provides the casus belli for pre-emptive 

war against the rogue states,28 as it negates the doctrine of local defence 

that evolved from the inter-World War period that the aircraft bomber 

would always get through, and negates the doctrine of deterrence that 

arose from the Cold War that the missile would always get through.29

The doctrine of local defence is negated, as countries no longer 

face the threat of the aircraft bomber but the vulnerability posed to 

civilians by unstoppable suicide suitcase or truck bombers that carry 

WMD warfare into the urban homeland. Even passive defence is a 
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form of deterrence that shows an enemy that any attack can be 

absorbed without undue or substantial damage, thereby making an 

aggressor realize that its offense would be valueless. WMD warfare 

that can wipe out large metropolitan areas cannot easily be absorbed 

through air-raid shelters, by biological and chemical decontamination 

units, through individual gas masks whose filters need to be changed 

every few hours, or through inoculation by a cocktail of potentially 

hazardous vaccinations. Faced with these threats, pre-emptive war 

becomes a viable alternative option to local defence as a continuation 

of arms control policy. 

The doctrine of Cold War nuclear deterrence that was forthrightly 

presented to the world as a substitute for local defence,30 because it was 

considered less burdensome both financially and in terms of manpower 

and hence provided a surer way for America to fulfil its collective 

defence commitments, has similarly been negated. This is a 

dichotomous situation since the very strategy of the imperative 

necessity to provide a deterrent against a WMD attack upon America 

rested on the premise that no feasible local defence was readily 

available in a given timescale at a given price. Hence, America can no 

longer rely on this doctrine of nuclear deterrence that had two broad 

views contending in strategic thought. Both of these views have been 

negated, justifying pre-emptive war against states rogue to the 

international community that seek WMD capability. 

The first view was a broad approach that contended that if peace 

was to be preserved then all mankind, in two blocs with nationalist 

ideological conflicts that perpetuated after the end of monastic 

dynasties in the early 20th century, had to be locked into permanent 

hostile confrontation of WMD forces poised for instant retaliation. The 

mutual terror of such arsenals would prevent the use by another. This 

view was based on symmetry, assuming that “they” think and act like 
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“we” with no room for radicalism or irrational acts, and hence has no 

value against rogue states. America no longer faces this bilateral Cold 

War situation of two opposing ideological blocs by the creation of 

multiple WMD situations by radical rogue states compounded by 

potential state sponsorship of non-state terror entities and individuals 

where the intent of the rogue states and the location of their WMD are 

not easily identifiable. Hence WMD proliferation by the rogue states 

reintroduces the relationship of “force vs. violence” since the use of 

force (military) cannot be deterred and can be followed by the radical 

use of violence. 

The second view recognised that military strength and the threat of 

revenge had to be complemented by internationally agreed upon arms 

control policies to restrain and reduce WMD arsenals through 

nonproliferation and counterproliferation. It could only succeed so 

long as there was communication, and sometimes negotiation, for all 

sides to understand the value of what they were facing—mutually 

assured destruction. Rationality is not a prerequisite, though sensitivity 

to costs is essential even if these costs are no more than the life of the 

leader threatening world stability. Cold War nuclear deterrence-linked 

arms control is negated against rogue states with radical leadership 

since communication and negotiation to ensure that all sides understand 

the implications of the use or threat of physical force is almost nonexistent. Further, in a post-September 11 terrorist environment the 

validity of deterrence being able to stop “the man with the suitcase 

nuclear bomb” is negated due to this lack of communication, and the 

lack of adequate safeguards to ensure that the weapons of mass 

destruction that they have procured will not fall into other hands or be 

launched by accident. 

Hence, the overall decline of confidence in local defence against 

WMD and the Cold War nuclear deterrent against WMD would seem 
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104

to suggest that renewed emphasis on active defence, in some form, is 

inescapable. It has been known for a long time that this would 

eventually happen. An active defence against the rogue states is 

rapidly becoming manifest in the pre-emptive use of military force. 

For this to be successful the time factor is crucial in deliberating at 

which point the rogue states attain viable WMD capability, at which 

point any form of passive defence against such capability would not 

succeed, coercive diplomacy has failed as a measure of arms control, 

and it is clear that a military offense would be the best possible manner 

to achieve defence. In all instances there is notably a doctrinal 

evolution from the Cold War concepts of escalation to total war, proxy 

war, or local wars, and of containment 

Integral to this doctrinal shift and to the steps prior to pre-emptive 

war is a refined version of containment. This is not the containment 

within state boundaries of armed forces, with buffer and satellite states 

associated with the arms control of Cold War deterrence. It is arms 

control through the containment of technology and the free movement 

of people. It is using intelligence sources and police services to inhibit 

the forces commonly known during the 1990s as “globalization.” The 

free flow of information on a global level needs to be monitored and 

contained when posing a threat. Cyber interdiction is not virtual, it is 

physical—it is infrastructure disruption, it is data destruction in any 

form, whether kinetic or cyber. The free flow of technology, even the 

movement of students learning about technology in foreign universities, 

needs to be monitored and contained as part of an arms control process. 

The flow of goods, be they dual-purpose such as computers or solemilitary use, needs to be contained with export controls. The free flow 

of people as tourists also needs to be monitored and contained. Since 

the September 11 attacks and the suicide bombings in Israel, Bali, and 

Kenya it is clear that the world can no longer assume that tourists 
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traveling freely on world airlines are not suicide terrorists. This is a 

new form of arms control by redefining what constitutes arms, threats, 

and vulnerability. 

Integral to this doctrinal shift is also the notion of missile defence 

systems.31 This was conceived when President Reagan spoke on 22 

March 1983, urging US scientists “to turn their great talents to the 

cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering 

. . . Nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” This was arms control at 

its apex! 32 In the pre-emptive war against the rogue states, the first 

formative step towards a national missile defence system was taken on 

13 December 2001 when President George W Bush officially 

announced that the US would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic 

Missile treaty with Russia, stating “I have concluded the ABM treaty 

hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people 

from future terrorist or rogue-state missile attacks.”33 This was despite 

the “man with the bomb in his suitcase is the real problem,” having 

become one of the standard mantras of those opposing the development 

of ballistic missile defence. But to point to the existence of one 

problem is not to deny the existence of another similar problem since 

pre-emptive war against the rogue states would need some form of 

ability to defend against the occasional missile that might be launched. 

More important, if the rogue states are aware that America could 

defend against a limited missile attack then it might be deterred from 

considering launching such an attack.34 

In this fashion missile defences will dictate the future of NATO. 

The main military purpose of NATO has been to provide an umbrella 

for European states. During the Cold War this was a nuclear umbrella. 

European states were able to disarm their conventional forces and open 

their borders to develop the European Union under this umbrella. In 

the future American missile defences could be able to provide a similar 
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106

umbrella for European states. If missile defences are successful then 

European states will not need to rearm to protect against external 

attack. NATO by the year 2020 may then have two members, the EU 

and NAFTA. The political purpose of NATO will be to protect trade 

routes, open borders, and prevent European rearmament. As during the 

Cold War, below this strategic level will be sub-strategic, i.e. mininuclear, forces and conventional forces. The conventional forces will 

be in the form of joint and combined rapid reaction forces for global 

deployment on such missions as peace-enforcement, humanitarian, and 

terrorist denial. 

It is clear then that in the short term, pre-emptive war as a 

continuation of arms control is justified jus ad bellum, or else America 

will rue the consequences of its own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. It 

is war that America has never seen before since these weaknesses are 

not only a consequence of the negation of local defence and nuclear 

deterrence against rogue WMD capability, but also a continuum of the 

nature of American foreign policy. To this end, President George W. 

Bush on September 20, 2002, in the tone first advocated by Donald 

Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, in January 2002, set out a new 

military and foreign policy doctrine for America as it faced the 

uncertainties of terrorist threats and rogue states.35 He noted that the 

American national security strategy advocated a policy of pre-emptive 

action as a form of self-defence suggesting “As a matter of common 

sense and self-defence, America will act against such emerging threats 

before they are fully formed.”36

In this unilateral foreign policy by the world’s sole hegemon, there 

is no doubt that American politicians should be wary of the ghost of 

Alexis de Tocqueville rising out of the graveyard reminding us that 

American democracy with institutional fragmentation and democratised 

policy constraints is a deridingly inferior system for making and 
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107

carrying out foreign policy.37 It is well recognised that the Achilles 

heel of American foreign policy is widely believed to be the instability 

of public support for American policies. The superficiality and 

instability of public attitudes toward foreign affairs creates the danger 

of under- and over-reaction to changes in the world political situation. 

This unstable atmosphere surrounding American foreign policy makes 

anything more than a series of improvisations difficult to achieve. 

Perhaps George Washington was accurate in stating that “the Great rule 

of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations” should be “in extending 

our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection 

as possible.”38

For the first time in American history, foreign policy is not a fluid 

interplay of kaleidoscopic forces and individuals, a continuum of peace, 

conflict, and crises. In the 21st century, foreign policy has become a 

specific activity designed to avert the vulnerability of WMD 

proliferation, by pre-emptive means, lest this proliferation slow down 

the march of economic and social progress. The disarmament of the 

rogue states has become a specific series of rescue operations and 

trouble avoidance with crises coping and threat management defining 

the task. No longer present is the hard-learned arms control patience of 

bilateral WMD capability that won the Cold War between nation-states 

based on opposing ideologies and the fear of a bipolar deterrent of 

mutual assured destruction. If the present administration is serious 

about its pronouncements on a “tough” foreign policy, a historic glance 

at the implications of “toughness” in war situations might prove 

sobering.39 As the distinctions between conventional and 

unconventional war becomes more blurred with each year, America has 

to recognize the fact that revolutionary, guerrilla, terrorist, and preemptive war is a permanent feature of the strategic environment of the 

future.40 To be sure, winning a conventional war against Iraq’s WMD 
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program has left America facing a tougher guerrilla war in keeping the 

peace. 

In such a strategic environment the use of military force, or preemptive warfare, jus in bello will be asymmetrical. Should pre-emptive 

war be necessary, then in the short term rapid deployment of forces is 

needed, as seen in the transformation policy announced with NATO 

enlargement at the Prague Summit in 2002. To this end most 

Americans are familiar with the popular wars of history, with the total 

mobilization of men, resources, and technology and the traditional 

American faith in quick military victory. Nevertheless the viability of 

the local political system in the rogue states may make or break even 

the most brilliantly devised tactical military response Washington can 

devise. America has a past of “other wars” over the last 300 years—

those involving guerrilla war and terrorism—where the conventional 

use of armed force didn't work and where the military had to conduct 

unrewarding and brutal operations against civilian populations, often 

against the will of public opinion at home. Should such a situation 

prevail against rogue WMD capability, then America in the public view 

cannot use the same methods against radicals that radicals use against 

America and still claim to be a western liberal democracy. Maintaining 

western morals is hard pushed to achieve such an objective since 

America must be seen to use minimal military force and not violence 

against the rogue states. 

To this end of asymmetrical warfare it has also been known for 

some time that the American armed forces are not necessarily the most 

suitable military means for WMD arms control. Intelligence agencies 

have known that they need to sift through large volumes of data to 

enable the viability of missile defence systems. Law enforcement 

agencies have similarly known that they are the best means of 

preventing the suicide bomber from getting through. This will suit a 
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109

long-term goal of arms control against the rogue states in denying 

them, through containment, the technology, weapons, and delivery 

systems. A consoling feature of this asymmetrical war is that the 

weapons needed for this type of combat show that defence is neither a 

leader nor a consumer of the latest technology. In fact defence 

production is a technology burden as it keeps open lines of obsolete 

technology such as computer chips in Patriot and Tomahawk systems. 

The military-industrial complex worries of the Cold War that 

threatened American democracy play no role in the war against the 

rogue states. 

Long-term sustained victory against terrorists and rogue states that 

acquire WMD with no stated objective is thus to inflict massive 

psychological fear using minimal force and violence. In this fight it is 

understood that the power to hurt is not necessarily the power to win 

should brute force bypass the regulation of armaments. Rogue states 

and terrorists have to face a similar threat of violence but not the same 

actual use of violence to deter them from using violence. Nonetheless 

the American soldier knows that there is no absolute victor in battle but 

there is an absolute loser. It is understood if there can be no escape 

from the presence of terror then terror has to be respected lest both 

sides lose the fear of terror in which case barbarism or anarchy will 

supplant civilisation in the international community. This is surely the 

case in the removal of the Ba’ath Party and President Saddam Hussein 

from power in Iraq where the occupying American and British forces 

face daily attrition by local forces whilst political planners struggle in a 

Lennist fashion to impose a new political regime, create a new 

economic infrastructure, form a local police military force capable of 

maintaining law and order and defending Iraq’s borders, and generally 

create a civil-society that will willingly accept these changes. The 

success of military victory is thus not measured in the success of 
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disarming an adversary but in the ability to prevent the adversary from 

rearming. The Versailles Treaty after World War I is a lesson learnt 

from history that the victor cannot always enforce this, and it may lead 

to even more devastating wars. 

EUROPEAN ARMS CONTROL DIPLOMACY 

The European approach to arms control processes contrasts with 

the American national style, the European being a legacy of a 

millennium of territorial, monarchical, and colonial wars. European 

arms control treaties, typified at the Versailles Treaty after World War 

I, have traditionally been in the aftermath of such wars to prevent future 

wars or atrocities. Agreements reached have traditionally been 

multilateral given the nature of the alliances and treaties that 

predominated during the conflicts and wars. Such agreements were 

usually negotiated at large diplomatic conventions requiring little if any 

consent or response from the electorate who were only too happy to be 

demobilised. Cold War arms control processes between the 

superpowers were not only unique in threat and tension reduction 

during a conflict, but also because European states became minor third 

parties in diplomatic negotiations. Further both superpowers infringed 

on European territorial integrity by progressively stationing large 

arsenals of men and equipment in European countries ostensibly for 

European defence. European states consented to this arms escalation 

on their soil given that this permitted them to reduce their own arsenals 

and investment. 

Further, the nature of the fear of Cold War nuclear mutually 

assured destruction generated a unique reduction in European territorial 

wars. This situation also permitted Western Europe to progressively 

negotiate the sharing of resources and territory that had once been a 

cause of wars and form the European Union (EU) as a value- and not a 

state-based polity. This resulted in a natural arms control process given 
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111

that EU member states opened borders between each other. EU 

member states no longer needed standing armed forces to protect their 

sovereignty. Further, the enlargement of the EU into Eastern Europe 

after the Cold War has meant that progressively the majority of EU 

states have been able to abolish conscription, restructuring their armies 

to suit more extra-European tasks such as missions for the United 

Nations and humanitarian tasks. 

In the post-Cold War period the diplomatic nature of the 

nonproliferation approach of each European state originates from 

unique historical legacies such as neutrality, non-alignment, federal 

subservience, dependence upon the NATO or Warsaw Pact strategic 

nuclear deterrence, or having its own triad of strategic nuclear, tactical 

nuclear, and conventional forces. Each state enters global arms control 

treaties on its considerations such as NPT, the Land Mine Treaty, 

BWC, and CWC. Similarly each state entertains its own identity and 

diplomatic process for specific European arms control treaties such as 

CFE. However, neighbouring states with their own identities form 

geopolitical sub-regional blocs overlapping organisationally for overall 

European arms control purposes in membership of the European Union, 

NATO, the OSCE, and others. Uniquely, the international standing of 

EU institutions offers potential for a dual approach in arms control 

diplomacy given the presence of both EU diplomats and sovereign state 

diplomats in many multilateral processes. Integral to the coalescence 

of this twin approach is the unanimity within the EU of a value-based 

polity with a civil-society model that places human rights at its centre. 

The development, formulation and implementation of EU arms control 

policies is the cognition to maintain a trans-Atlantic bridge to advance 

the successes of Cold War arms control and disarmament efforts in 

Europe. 
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21ST CENTURY WAR NONPROLIFERATION 

In the 21st century the coalescence of American and EU arms 

control efforts focuses on two agendas. The first agenda stems from 

the demise of the predominant Cold War, statist-based arms control 

process. Certain former have-not states are seeking to procure weapons 

of mass destruction. These are rogue to the practise and participation in 

arms control diplomacy and adherence to the norms instilled and 

inferred in international treaties and agreements. There is also a rise of 

non-state entities (terrorists) that could be harboured by rogue states 

and that aim to procure weapons of mass destruction. Historically the 

concept is not new given that it is understood that the very existence of 

the state assumes that others will exercise force challenging the state’s 

claim on the monopoly of legitimacy of force. Explicitly these are 

terrorists or dissidents. Implicitly these are criminals.41 The Cold War 

was a unique period that held such phenomena at bay. 

The 9/11 attacks functioned as the catalyst for the change of 

American nonproliferation policy towards vulnerability-based 

management against rogue states and non-state entities. The American 

approach to active counterproliferation by armed force in the 2003 Iraq 

war highlighted the trans-Atlantic discord as well as an intra-European 

rift that emerged. Resting on well-established and acceptable historical 

precedence, America as the sole hegemonic power considered it an 

obligation to use armed force for disarmament purposes given that 

nonproliferation processes had not met its goals. Such an approach was 

not avidly followed by European states who continued to view arms 

control as predominately resting on diplomatic negotiations premised 

on a threat-based policy to promote deterrence and self-regulatory 

disarmament. When America challenged the non-compliance of Iraq to 

United Nations Resolutions by a show of force, European states fell 

into the three groups: 1) limited support for American efforts (Spain 
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and the UK), 2) those firmly against (France), and 3) the somewhat 

indifferent (Ireland and Luxembourg). French and German diplomats 

went so far as to insist that counterproliferation is not acceptable as a 

NATO military strategy because they believed that American focus on 

retaliation and pre-emptive strikes could undermine diplomatic 

nonproliferation efforts.42 

Given this, counterproliferation became primarily an American 

military doctrinal concept that knows no similarity in European states’ 

policies. This was a unique divergence of diplomatic consensus on a 

specific event on the means to achieve an agreed international goal of 

preventing the proliferation of WMD. It differed from the normal 

trans-Atlantic consensus found in NATO forums throughout the Cold 

War and the broad consensus and unified action in Afghanistan (2001) 

given that the field of arms control is part of the NATO “acquis.” In 

the aftermath of the Iraq War disagreement persists on how to enforce 

another rogue state, Iran, into compliance with the accepted norms of 

arms control of weapons of mass destruction. Javier Solana, the EU's 

foreign policy chief, made it clear that the EU and America had agreed 

Iran should not have nuclear weapons, the issue being how to make 

Iran comply. US Secretary of State Powell, believing that Iran had not 

gone far enough in agreeing to sign up to the additional protocol by the 

IAEA, called for punitive action.43 The EU persisted on the diplomatic 

level, pressing that “those who are unwilling to do so should 

understand that there is a price to be paid, including in their relationship 

with the EU.”44 

There is no doubt that in the longer term the hegemonic power 

needs to offer concessions to prevent overstretch by way of supporting 

multilateral diplomatic processes. These could take the form of global 

convention for regulation, verification, and disarmament. President 

Bush took the first step toward such give-and-take diplomacy when he 
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proposed the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) in May 2003 in 

Poland. America and ten other close European allies and friends 

agreed to seek to combat proliferation by developing new means to 

disrupt WMD trafficking at sea, in the air, and on land. By September 

2003 more than 50 countries signalled that they support the PSI 

including its “Statement of Interdiction Principles” and were ready to 

participate in maritime interdiction operations in both the 

Mediterranean and the western Pacific Ocean, two areas that are 

particularly prone to proliferation trafficking.45 The United Kingdom 

hosted the first PSI air interception training session, a table-top exercise 

to explore operational issues arising from intercepting proliferation 

traffic in the air. In mid-October, Spain hosted the second maritime 

exercise, this one in the western Mediterranean Sea. Finally, France 

recently hosted a third maritime exercise in the Mediterranean Sea. 

The long-term objective is to create a web of counterproliferation 

partnerships through which proliferators will have difficulty carrying 

out their trade in WMD and missile-related technology.46 Other US 

initiatives to prevent proliferation include the G-8 Global Partnership 

(initiated in June 2002 at the Kananaskis Summit), the Dangerous 

Materials Initiative, and HEU (highly enriched uranium) Minimization. 

The second agenda of 21st century coalescence of American and 

EU arms control efforts stems from residual bilateral Cold War arms 

control processes that still persist. Protracted statist diplomatic 

negotiations are considered not worth the effort even though the 

nuclear threat is anything but over. Neither America nor Russia has the 

stomach for another Cold War-style, 500-page treaty like START I. 

The new model is the 2002 Moscow Treaty—a simple three-page 

commitment to reduction.47 This has furthered the establishment of a 

NATO-Russia Council whose mere existence was to thicken up the 

web of arms control commitments in Northern and Eastern Europe. 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

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Russia appears to be committed to this given the numerous attempts 

that Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken to urge the Russian 

parliament to ratify the key nuclear arms reduction treaty with America, 

the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), that renders Start II 

(1993) redundant.48 Essentially, the technology of monitoring and 

verification has made these types of agreement more viable. There are 

now many means of knowing what is going on inside the nuclear 

arsenals of the other countries.49 

Further efforts on the European continent aim for arms control 

efforts to be comparable with continuance of the EU and NATO and 

their respective enlargement processes. Examples of where America 

and European states participate together in arms control diplomacy 

toward this goal include (1) through the OSCE, the implementation and 

adaptation of the CFE, (2) various pan-European arms control 

agreements such as “The Vienna Document on Confidence and 

Security-Building Measures (1999),” and (3) the sub-regional 

agreements such as the “Joint Declaration and Document on 

Confidence and Security-Building Measures in the Naval Field in the 

Black Sea (2002),” “Agreement on Sub-Regional Arms Control 

concerning Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), Bosnia and 

Herzegovina and its entities the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina 

and the Republika Srpska, and Croatia ('Florence Agreement,' 1996),” 

and the “Agreement on Confidence and Security-Building Measures in 

Bosnia and Herzegovina (1996).” 

THE CFE TREATY 

Diplomacy towards renegotiation of Conventional Forces in 

Europe Treaty (CFE) has been seen to be the most crucial of all treaties 

for immediate European nonproliferation requirements to ensure 

European stability. America saw the Cold War CFE Treaty as 

ineffectual given that it cannot prevent the local wars that crop up on 
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116

the European strategic landscape. A prime example was the local 

Balkan demagogues violating international law and human rights and 

the international community of NATO and its partners trying to stop 

them. America suggested that a more approachable format for 

nonproliferation would be to negotiate a new pan-European CFE to 

keep European arsenals small enough so that the only conflicts that 

could emerge would remain below the threshold of NATO’s ability to 

manage them. Specifically, this would mean that nonproliferation 

should become an active crisis management instrument in addition to 

its traditional dialogue role given that most of the crises that await in 

and around Europe today result from particularism.50 Following this 

line America proposed that CFE should become a tool for compliance 

moving in the direction of disarmament. 

European states opposed such proposals, considering America as 

confusing CFE with attributes typified by the American-led Dayton 

Accords. These were a complex, balanced package of political and 

military arrangements reflecting a delicate compromise among the 

involved parties for a specific peace plan in the Balkans. They entailed 

implementation of confidence and security building measures (CSBMs) 

and the arms control arrangements for Bosnia-Herzegovina and its two 

neighbours.51 European states saw CFE as aimed at the whole of the 

European continent.52 Clearly the European states’ position stemmed 

from their lack of military and political capability to move outside the 

realm of mediation and negotiation in arms control and into active 

enforcement.53

As an interim measure, the CFE negotiations in 1999 produced a 

compromise treaty signed by 30 nations on conventional arms control 

for Europe. It set limits on an individual national basis instead of the 

Cold War bloc-to-bloc totals determined in the previous 1990 

document. Further NATO, at the 2002 Prague Summit, attempted to 
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bridge the trans-Atlantic divide by establishing collaborative security 

norms and associated arms control efforts with 43 countries in the 

Partnership for Peace and 40 in the Euro-Atlantic Partnership 

Council.54 When NATO enlarged with new members from Eastern and 

Central Europe, it adapted relations with Russia and the Ukraine, 

simultaneously offering a refined ability towards joint and collaborative 

military activities with new military command structure and 

committees. Further attempts to bridge the trans-Atlantic divide 

consisted of negotiations towards a European Security Charter setting 

out the principles and role of the OSCE for the 21st century; a unified 

European arms control regime with restrictive regulations on armament 

exports to improve the control of the transfer of conventional 

armaments. 

The new CFE Treaty combined with the enlarged NATO shows 

that at the institutional level national verification organizations are 

empowered to be responsible for the implementation of conventional 

arms control agreements on European territory. This will generate 

greater EU cohesion since there will be a greater need for coordination 

of verification missions between countries to establish priorities, 

objectives, and procedures. Such cohesion is aimed at confidence 

building towards establishing a more co-operative European Security 

and Defence Policy. Such European cohesion is also seen as essential 

for dealing with non-state entities as noted in a European Commission 

paper stating “A more cohesive Union, speaking with one voice or 

singing from the same hymn sheet, will be better placed to counter such 

tendencies.”55 Following this line, a targeted initiative has been 

launched exploring “the implications of the terrorist threat on the 

nonproliferation, disarmament and arms control policy of the EU.”56 
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118

CSFP/ESDP 

In implementing these steps on conventional forces, the European 

Union has moved towards speaking with one voice on other aspects of 

nonproliferation based on the legacy of Cold War arms control regimes 

pertaining to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.57 Indicative 

of this is the emerging trend of a common stance amongst all European 

Union states on security, defence, and foreign affairs. This is but one 

prominent step towards a Common Security and Foreign Policy 

(CSFP), with a subordinate European Security and Defence Policy 

(ESDP) operationalized in a European Rapid Reaction Force.58 The 

goals of ESDP/CSFP extend toward strengthening WMD arms control 

norms at global levels and for development of measures to implement 

these norms as principles, led by Britain, France, and Germany. Such 

progressive strengthening of opinions and voices towards affirmative 

action stemmed from the constitutional development marked by the 

Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Nice. The 1992 Treaty of 

Maastricht established the CFSP that included questions related to the 

security of the Union, bringing disarmament and nonproliferation 

firmly within the scope of constitutional development. The subsequent 

Treaties of Amsterdam (1997) and Nice (2001) have elaborated upon 

the CFSP provisions of Maastricht. 

Part and parcel of CSFP/ESDP is the EU Code of Conduct on 

Arms Exports (1998), first voiced in the OSCE then established by 

agreement of the Foreign Affairs Ministers of the European Union and 

adopted as a Council Declaration.59 This Code sets out a unified 

European arms control regime with restrictive regulations on armament 

exports to improve the control of the transfer of conventional 

armaments.60 There was also agreement on the need for a more 

harmonised system of end-use data provision, certification, and 

enforcement.61 Later the EU Council adopted a regime in June 2000 
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which controlled the export not only of tangible items but also of 

intangible technologies.62 By September 2001, the European Treaty 

Article 3 and Article 11 were codified, making the Common 

Commercial Policy consistent with CSFP. In practise this means that 

legislatively the export of any form of weapon or related equipment 

becomes a commercial activity needing to adhere to the Code of 

Conduct on Arms Exports. In effect, this strengthened the Code of 

Conduct so that exports of military, paramilitary, and security 

equipment would be denied in circumstances where they might 

contribute to gross human rights abuses. During the debate it was 

noted that the EU regretted that so far America had not adopted its own 

code of conduct on arms exports.63 

The Treaty of Amsterdam specified that the European Council 

adopt Common Strategies (geographic or thematic) in areas where 

member states have important interests in common. CBW 

disarmament and nonproliferation has been designated the first 

thematic area.64 An example of success on nonproliferation has been 

the provision of EU financial assistance for the destruction of chemical 

weapons in Russia.65 Considering the proximity of Russia to the EU 

and the environmental threats posed to the EU by the Russian nuclear 

complex such as the Chernobyl accident (1986), this priority is 

understandable. Implementation came as part of The Common 

Strategy on Russia (4 June 1999).66 Based on Objective Three of this 

Strategy the European Council in December 1999 adopted a Joint 

Action.67 This Joint Action established a “European Union 

Cooperation Programme for Nonproliferation and Disarmament in the 

Russian Federation.” This has complemented American efforts to help 

Russia.68

Further on this line, internal EU diplomacy on nuclear matters is 

rigid given that all members are signatory to the NPT. Verification and 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

120

monitoring is simplified given that the EU has, since its inception, been 

involved in control and regulation of nuclear material. All European 

Union states are automatically members of EURATOM, established in 

1957. EURATOM procures all nuclear material and enforces 

safeguards with inspections of all nuclear-related matters, civil and 

military, in the EU—not the IAEA.69 In 2004 there are no nuclear 

reactors under construction in the EU. Fourteen of the fifteen EU states 

have rejected any growth in civil nuclear capacity. Only Britain and 

France are declared nuclear weapon states, while reducing their 

arsenals, and no other EU state is seeking military nuclear capability. 

Seven EU states do not have nuclear power and four more have the 

political objective of phasing out nuclear power programs. 

In addition to nuclear matters and being signatories to the NPT, all 

EU member states are members of the CWC and BWC, as well as the 

1925 Geneva Protocol, except Slovenia which has not yet joined the 

Geneva Protocol.70 Both America and involved European states agree 

that a verification regime to augment the Biological Weapons 

Convention, similar to that used in the CWC, would contribute 

significantly to countering the threat of biological weapons. To be 

sure, EU member states coordinated positions during the 5th Biological 

Weapons Convention Review Conference.71 Despite this consensus 

there are inherent limitations even though the EU Presidency has been 

very active in diplomatic activities.72 The EU is not recognised, by 

law, as a state; although it is an actor in disarmament and 

nonproliferation it does not possess signatory rights.73

Looking towards the future, Belgium commissioned a strategic 

reflection in 2003 on Europe’s security policy, and its findings tend to 

echo overall EU member states consensus on nonproliferation.74 The 

Belgian study suggests that the EU promote accession to and 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

121

verification of the key multilateral agreements on nonproliferation, 

arms control, and disarmament. In particular, it calls for 

1) establishing a UN Counterproliferation Committee under the 

Security Council to monitor compliance with relevant agreements 

and resolutions and to coordinate, if need be, the different UN, 

regional and national bodies; 

2) strengthening the verification and enforcement mechanisms of 

the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention; 

3) strengthening the inspection regime under the Non Proliferation 

Treaty; 

4) enacting legal instruments that would empower the International 

Atomic Energy Agency to verify compliance and render the 

organisation less dependent on the member states; and 

5) increasing efforts in the field of export controls, both within the 

European Union and in cooperation with partners such as America, 

to prevent dangerous materials from falling into the wrong hands. 

This would entail undertaking effective measures in the direction of 

nuclear disarmament, notably by banning testing and production of 

nuclear materials with a military application and by resuming the 

efforts to create regional zones free of weapons of mass destruction, 

especially in the Middle East.75 The Belgian study indicates that 

enlargement (EU widening) will have ever greater significance on the 

dynamics of arms control given the internal debate (EU deepening) on 

peace, security building, foreign affairs, and defence. 

ROGUE STATES 

President George W. Bush, in the January 2002State of the Union 

speech, described Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an “axis of evil” and 

accused these states of seeking to acquire and develop weapons of mass 

destruction, namely nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.76 

Further, Under Secretary of State John Bolton said that Cuba, Libya, 

and Syria could be grouped with these, classifying all as “rogue 

states.”77 In doing so, the alleged acquisition, without any stated intent, 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

122

of such WMD weapons and delivery systems was designated a threat to 

local, regional, and global stability and security given the terror and 

fear they invoked. The ensuing policy agenda and process of arms 

control (nonproliferation) and disarmament (counterproliferation) had 

as its basis the vulnerability management of these capabilities, given 

the refusal of the labeled rogue states to accept the international norms 

of recognized arms control practices of diplomacy, international 

negotiation, compliance, regulation, transparency, and verification as 

dictated by the world’s sole hegemonic power, the United States of 

America. 

One may be able to accuse President George W. Bush of many 

things, but inventing the term “rogue state” would not come to mind. 

A paper, entitled ‘“Rogue’ States and International Relations,” 

presented by Paul D. Hoyt of West Virginia University at the 

International Studies Association 40th Annual Convention in 

Washington, DC, February 16–20, 1999, provides a comprehensive 

study on “rogue” and “pariah” states mentioned in US Government 

documents since May 1993.78 It found that after the end of the Cold 

War, Washington was looking at what new challenges might emerge to 

the interests of the United States and its allies and defined “rogue or 

pariah states” as being one such threat. Hoyt further quotes National 

Security Advisor Sandy Berger placing terrorists in the same category 

as rogue states: “What if they and the rogue states that sponsor them 

try to attack the critical computer systems that drive our society? What 

if they seek to use chemical, biological, even nuclear weapons?”79 

Hoyt’s work rests on a review of literature that argues that rogue state 

doctrine was being written upon already in 1995.80 Indeed, the notion 

of rogue did not rest solely with intellectuals and advisors—evidence 

was heard by the Committee on International Relations in the House of 

Representatives on March 25, 1999.81 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

123

The facts of each rogue state need not be addressed specifically, 

given that the crux of the situation is a policy agenda issue, a perceived 

vulnerability issue, and a security approach issue. Hence, and despite 

the cognitive perceptions of the political elites, the urgency for 

international security action rests on a clear military case that should 

any state attain WMD capability or even delivery systems such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, then America and her allies will rue the 

consequences of their weaknesses and vulnerability in local defences 

and in deterrent. It is clear that there is a consensus to the ends that will 

befall states rogue to the international norms of WMD proliferation. It 

is the means to such ends that remain arguable between America and 

Europe. 

To be sure, research shows that the concept of rogue states and 

irregular warfare transcends history from the birth of the American 

state including Sheridan's rampages through the Shenandoah Valley; 

the Seminole War west of Arkansas; the Philippine Insurrection 1899-

1902; the “punitive expedition” of 1916 by General John J. Pershing 

against the Mexican guerrillas led by Pancho Villa; in Haiti against the 

“cacos” 1918-1921; in the Dominican Republic, 1916-1924; and in 

Nicaragua until 1933.82 In 21st century international relations, rogue 

states tend to have similar characteristics. They are usually developing 

countries, essentially hostile to international society, suspected of 

pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programmes, and 

probably also sponsoring terrorism. They are not inclined to enter 

diplomatic interactions or normative behavior to attempt to ameliorate 

tensions, they refuse to ratify important treaties, they ignore UN 

resolutions, and they tend to violate human rights with impunity.83 

The philosophy of “international society and realism” places the 

responsibility on the hegemonic power, America, to utilize all means at 

its disposal to act on behalf of international society.84 It is felt that 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

124

should the international society of nonproliferation collapse, then 

anarchy and barbarism might ensue in the proliferation and use of 

weapons of mass destruction. The nature of such warfare is 

asymmetrical and ascribed to information age warfare.85 President 

Clinton highlighted America’s responsibility to international society in 

clarifying “We must face them together because no one can defeat them 

alone.”86 Clinton further emphasised that “In the next century, the 

community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat 

Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready 

to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized 

criminals.”87 

Following Clinton’s line, a thoughtful but one-side approach to 

rogue states, international society, and realism was undertaken by Barry 

Rubin when writing in MERIA in September 1999. He suggested that 

a rogue state requires special treatment and high levels of international 

pressure in order to prevent it from wrecking international order, setting 

off wars, and subverting whole areas of the world.88 Significant, but 

not mentioned by Rubin’s thoughtful approach to international 

behaviour, is the description of states opposing rogue states. The mere 

existence of rogue states presupposes the notion that there must also be 

“enlightened states.” Such enlightenment rests on international 

diplomatic norms of arms control regimes. Rogue states threaten the 

reduction of state-based regulatory utility and globalisation and in 

doing so threaten civil society more than states. 

Two years later President George W. Bush designated Iran, Iraq, 

and North Korea as an “axis of evil” in his State of the Union speech 

while invoking a “war on terror.”89 Further, after grouping Cuba, 

Libya, and Syria with them as “rogue states,”90 Under Secretary of 

State Bolton informed Congress “We aim ultimately not just to prevent 

the spread of WMD, but also to eliminate or 'roll back' such weapons 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

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from rogue states and terrorist groups that already possess them or are 

close to doing so.”91 To be sure Bush’s actions question whether 

America has adopted the role of world policeman on behalf of the 

international society of nations. On analysis of the lead-in to the 

2003Iraq war, it has been revealed the word “allies” or the notion of 

“international community” was used in 100% of statements coming 

from various American government agencies on actions that might be 

taken against rogue states.92 One notable instance was John R. Bolton: 

“American concern was not the imminence of Saddam’s threat, but the 

very existence of his regime, given its heinous and undeniable record, 

capabilities, intentions, and longstanding defiance of the international 

community.”93 

Having found the commonality and historical progression, it is also 

paramount to differentiate between the Clinton and the Bush references 

to rogue states. This is to grasp the difference between the regimes of 

international society and realism in the use of armed force. The 

difficulty in choice was succinctly given by a State Department official 

when stating “rogue states make for a good sound-bite but not for good 

policy.”94 Clinton, in the immediacy after the Cold War, aimed for 

nonproliferation of rogue states assuming that it was possible to 

entertain statist diplomatic negotiations with these states in a fashion as 

that undertaken with Warsaw Pact states during the Cold War. Such 

nonproliferation diplomacy clearly did not work while 9/11 acted as a 

catalyst for Bush to take on a vulnerability perception and deterministic 

reaction. America under Bush turned to pro-active counterproliferation 

of rogue states as seen in the 2003war against Iraq. Following this has 

been a turn to multilaterism through the Proliferation Security Initiative 

aimed at broadening international cooperation in interdicting shipments 

of WMD and missile-related equipment and technologies. Even French 

President Jacques Chirac conceded that state sponsors represent a key 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

126

impediment to the international campaign against terrorism while 

diplomacy is not adequate to handle rogue states,95 and he has targeted 

the French [nuclear] capacity on “rogue states”.96 

The successes of these trends of the threat and use of armed force 

(realism) on behalf of international society come in the wake of the 

2003 Iraq war. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has warned “it's 

important for Syria to recognize that not only is it . . . the wise way to 

conduct diplomacy, but also . . . a way of sending a message to the 

people of a newly liberated Iraq.”97 Further, Libya has set a superlative 

example following nine months of secret negotiation. Libya has 

publicly acquiesced to relinquishing the intent to manufacture nuclear 

devices and opened its borders to IAEA inspections.98

A six-page joint report from National Security Adviser 

Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge 

enshrines the Bush initiatives, highlighting the linkages between 

international society and realism on the case of rogue states. The report 

states “The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the 

right to respond with overwhelming force—including through resort to 

all of our options—to the use of weapons of mass destruction against 

the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.”99 The 

report offered a strategy that was composed of three pillars: 

counterproliferation, nonproliferation, and preparation. This report also 

indicates the move from Clinton to Bush given that the previous such 

statement of US policy was issued in 1993 but did not include an 

emphasis on nonproliferation or preparedness at home.100

Given this, a reflection of the war against the rogue states shows 

the unique unified singular military and political objective of the war 

being disarmament as a continuation of arms control policy that 

necessitates a regime change. In the short term the change in the 

administrative regime of each and every state rogue to the acceptable 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

127

international order of acquisition/procurement of weapons is decided 

on a case-by-case basis. The failure of thirteen years of diplomatic 

activity provoked America into pre-emptive war with Iraq. Diplomatic 

activity is ensuing with Iran and North Korea. It is recognized that the 

new regimes within these states do not have to be democratic; they 

must simply adhere to acceptable norms of international consensus on 

arms control and disarmament. In the longer term, this regime change 

is the international security regime regulating arms flows and arms 

control. 

In light of this, the lessons of history have shown that any and all 

stages in the world order of states rogue to international consensus on 

WMD capability needs viable forms of arms control and disarmament. 

There is practicality and realism in this since well known from history 

are the dangers of international agreements that have failed to prevent 

countries from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. If new 

international regimes do not materialize for arms control, then the 

unilateral threat of pre-emptive and/or preventive war might become an 

integral approach to disarmament through the functional activity of the 

sole hegemonic power, the United States of America. Such a threat is a 

form of deterrence since strong American forces ready to deploy might 

be powerful enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a 

WMD capability buildup in hope of surpassing, or equalling, the power 

of America. An alternative to this form of international security would 

be a multilateral approach through the international community of 

nations apparent in United Nations debates concerned with issues of 

proliferation. This could be manifest in a Hague-style Convention to 

agree inter alia on the international supply of arms and the containment 

of the globalization of dual-use technology. Inherent to such 

multipolarity and international consensus would be to instill a selfregularity approach for all states to reflect on foreign policy objectives 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

128

of arms trade. Of due concern will no doubt be the global market of 

second-hand weapons since states that wish to acquire WMD capability 

have discovered that money can buy virtually anything. 

CONCLUSION 

America as a hegemonic power is not facing anything conceptually 

new in arms control and disarmament that has not been experienced by 

other historical hegemonic powers, such as the European Great Powers. 

So one might then ask “so what?” or “why does it matter?” to consider 

the different approaches between America and Europe. The answer 

comes in three parts. First, the uniqueness of the current iteration of 

“rogue states” is the intensity of the weaponry (WMD) and its potential 

global reach where there is no longer a Cold War bipolar deterrent 

situation in international security. Second, the global situation 

indicates a watershed in American foreign policy. Though the path 

chosen does not differ radically compared to previous Great Powers, 

namely war, the potential adversaries facing America are not 

necessarily sovereign states that follow the same basic politicaleconomic premises. Negotiations and diplomatic activity are strained 

and limited in their expected success. The potential adversaries 

constitute irrational leaders proven to have used WMD on their own 

populations (Iraq), against neighbouring states (Iran-Iraq), and provide 

implicit support to terrorist organizations that show no constraints in 

the terror they perpetrate (Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya). The nexus 

between technology and radicalism may necessitate arms control to 

discount most nonproliferation treaties in favour of a doctrine of 

counterproliferation, a reference to everything from missile defence to 

forcibly dismantling weapons or their components. Third, given this, 

America is flexing its hegemonic might in pre-emptive war based on a 

vulnerability perception emanating from the 9/11 attacks rather than 

any specific threat-based issue. 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

129

In conclusion it is clear that the European approach to 

nonproliferation does not differ from the American approach despite 

fundamental differences on counterproliferation, especially in the use 

of pre-emptive armed force. Nonproliferation diplomacy is at a 

watershed of a new world order that consists simultaneously of Cold 

War foes that are now self-regulatory and rogue states and not-state 

entities that portray no rational acceptance to self-regulation, do not 

participate in diplomacy, and do not adhere to norms of international 

arms control regimes. One way to bridge the oceanic gap is to increase 

diplomacy—talking and negotiating tends towards transparency in 

finding solutions. As declared by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher 

before the United Nations in 1982, “Wars are caused not by armaments 

but by the ambitions of aggressors.”101 America must consider 

advocating and indeed leading more efforts that comprise multinational 

regimes of regulation, verification, and compliance. The Proliferation 

Security Initiative is clearly the first success of such efforts. 

Nonproliferation diplomacy does not function in a void. It is part 

of a greater cooperative security process. Hence a deliberation of 

whether American and European arms control approaches differ rests 

upon cooperation or discord in other areas of defence, security, and 

foreign affairs bilaterally or in collective organizations such as 

NATO.102 Looking forward to the next twenty years indicates that EU 

states individually and collectively will likely be involved in a mix of 

bilateral, small-group multilateral, and large-group multilateral 

diplomatic activities. It is most likely that a common arms control 

position will eventually migrate towards a single-player European 

Union giving America a strong ally and partner in nonproliferation 

diplomacy. There remains a predominant position for statist arms 

control diplomacy. 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

130

NOTES 

 

1

 Jaroslav G. Polach, Euratom: Its Background, Issues and Economic 

Implications (New York: Oceana Publications, 1964); Darryl A. Howlett, 

Euratom and Nuclear Safeguards (Macmillan: Centre for International 

Policy Studies, University of Southampton, 1990). 

2

 For further pedantic points and definitions consult 

<http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/xon/definition.htm>. 

3

 CJCS Counterproliferation Charter, 3 September, 1996. 

4

 Geoffry Berridge and Allan James, A Dictionary of Diplomacy

(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), vii. 

5

 G. von Glahn, Law Among Nations: An Introduction to Public 

International Law (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 15-19, note 8. 

6

 Sason Sofer, “Old and New Diplomacy: A Debate Revisited,” Review of 

International Studies, No. 14: 207; Sason Sofer, The Diplomatic 

Encounter: Conventions and Rituals Re-appraised (Leicester: Leicester 

University Press, 2001), 8; H. Nicolson, Diplomacy (London: Oxford 

University Press, 1950), 7, 80, 103, 220; Paul Sharp, “Who Needs 

Diplomats,” International Journal (Autumn 1997): 609-610; Paul Sharp, 

“For Diplomacy: Representation and the Study of International Relations,” 

International Studies Review, No. 1 (Spring 1999): 53; A. Watson,

Diplomacy (London: Eyre Merthuen, 1982), 11, 20. 

7

 M. Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (London: Louisiana 

State University Press, 1986), 53. 

8

 J. Der Derian, On Diplomacy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); J. Der 

Derian, Antidiplomacy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992); J. Der Derian, 

Vistuous Diplomacy (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000). 

9

 Important literature on contemporary thinking on arms control and 

international security includes Jeffrey A. Larsen, ed., Arms Control: 

Cooperative Security in a Changing Environment (Boulder, CO: Lynne 

Rienner, 2002); Special Edition “Arms Control: Thirty Years On,” 

Deadalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Winter 

1991); Special Edition “Is Arms Control Dead,” Washington Quarterly 

(Spring 2000): 171-232; Joseph Cirincione, ed., Repairing the Regime: 

Preventing the Spread of Mass Destruction (New York: Routledge, 2000); 

Michael Dando, The New Biological Weapons: Threat, Proliferation and 

Control (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000); Nancy W. Gallagher, The 

Politics of Verification (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999); 

Peter L Hays, Vincent J Jodoin, and Alan R Van Tassel, eds., Countering 

the Proliferation and Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (New York: 

McGraw-Hill, 1998); Thomas C Schelling and Morton H Halperin, 

Strategy and Arms Control (Washington DC: Pergamon-Brassey’s 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

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Classic, 1985) (orig pub 1961); Michael J. Sheehan, Arms Control: Theory 

and Practice (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988). 

10 An introduction to arms control in the Middle East can be found in: Glen 

Segell, “Regional Perspectives of Arms Control: The Middle East,” in 

Larsen, Arms Control: Cooperative Security in a Changing Environment, 

291-308. 

11 Professor T. E. Holland, ed., The Laws and Customs of War on Land, as 

Defined by the Hague Convention of 1899 (London: Harrison & Sons, 

1904), and Christine D. Gray, International Law and the Use of Force 

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 

12 Gordon Craig, Germany 1866-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 

and A. J. P. Taylor, The Second World War (London: Athlone Press, 

1974). 

13 An insight to arms control and diplomacy, on START for example, is 

provided by Ambassador Richard Burt, “The Strategic Aims Reduction 

Talks—A Look at End Game and Beyond,” NATO Review, Vol. 38, No. 4 

(1990): 24-27. 

14 The full text can be found at http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/ 

3984602.html. 

15James Brown Scott, Hague Conventions and Declarations of 1899 and 

1907, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington DC: 

Byron S Adams, 1915), xi. 

16 The full compliment of Treaties, Signatories, and Ratifiers can be found 

on Department of State Web Site at http://www.state.gov/www/global/ 

arms/bureau_ac/treaties_ac.html. 

17 Gunter Motlmann, Atlantische Blockpolitik in 19 Jahrhundert: Die 

Vereinigten Staaten und der deutsche Liberalismus wahrend der deutschen 

Revolution von 1848/49 (Duseldorf, 1973), 335. 

18 John J Tierney, “America’s Forgotten Wars: Guerrilla Campaigns in US 

History,” Conflict, No. 3 (1980). 

19 The nuclear states were the USA, USSR, UK, France, and China who 

were also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Israel 

is considered to have been an undeclared nuclear state since the 1960s, 

India and Pakistan declared nuclear states since the 1970s, South Africa a 

roll-back nuclear state since the 1990s, and many other states possess 

scientific knowledge but lack intent, e.g. Switzerland, Sweden, Canada. 

20 Kerry M. Kartchner and George R. Pitman, “Alternative Approaches to 

Arms Control in a Changing World,” Disarmament Diplomacy, No 62 

(January-February 2002). 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

132

 

21 Views on terrorism can be found in Gawdat Bahgat, “Iran and 

Terrorism: The Transatlantic Responses,” Studies in Conflict and 

Terrorism, April-June (1999); Great Britain, Police Staff College, Crime in 

Europe: “A Study of Areas of Crime in Belgium, West Germany, Holland 

and Italy, with particular reference to terrorism, mobile criminals, drug 

trafficking and liaison and comparison of police methods: Exercise 

Europa,” 12th Senior Command Course: Crime (Basingstoke: Police 

College, 1975); Richard Clutterbuck, Terrorism, Drugs and Crime in 

Europe: After 1992 (London: Routledge, 1990); Council Of Europe, 

Explanatory Report on the European Convention on the Suppression of 

Terrorism (Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe, 1977); Roger Faligot, 

Britain's Military Strategy in Ireland: The Kitson Experiment (London: 

Zed Press, 1983); Charles Fletcher-Cooke, Terrorism and the European 

Community (London: European Conservative Group, 1979); Noami Galor, ed., Tolerating Terrorism in the West: An International Survey

(London: Routledge, 1991); Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New 

York: Columbia University Press, 1998); David Martin and John Walcott, 

Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of American’s War Against Terrorism 

(New York: Harper & Row, 1988); Edward Moxon-Browne, ed., 

European Terrorism (New York: Macmillan, 1994); Fernando Reinares, 

ed., European Democracies Against Terrorism: Governmental Policies 

and Intergovernmental Cooperation (Brookfield: Ashgate Publishing 

Company, 1999); Antonio Vercher, Terrorism in Europe: An 

International Comparative Legal Analysis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 

1992); The US Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism at 

http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2000. 

22 Marina Ottoway, “Promoting Democracy after Conflict: The Difficult 

Choices,” International Studies Perspective, Volume 4, issue 3 (August 

2003): 314-322. 

23 Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege (Berlin: Dummlers Verlag, 1832). Bk. 

I, Ch. 2, 19. 

24 von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, Bk. I, Ch. 2, 19. 

25 Michael Howard and Peter Paret (translation), Clausewitz: On War

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976/84), based on the original in 

German, Vom Kriege (Berlin: Dummlers Verlag, 1832), 69-70. 

26 The main views on RMA are outlined in “Asymmetric Threats,” 

Strategic Assessment 1998 (Washington DC: Institute for National 

Strategic Studies, 1998); Roger W. Barnett, “Information Operations, 

Deterrence, and the Use of Force,” Naval War College Review (Spring 

1998); Rachel Bronson and Daniel Goure, “The Diplomatic Consequences 

of the Coming RMA,” Foreign Services Journal (September 1998); Eliot 

A. Cohen, “A Revolution in Warfare,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 

1996); Ahmed S. Hasim, “The Revolution in Military Affairs Outside the 

West,” Journal of International Affairs (Winter 1998); Col. Mackubin T. 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

133

 

Owens, “Technology, the RMA, and Future War,” Strategic Review 

(Spring 1998). 

27 “Powell: U.S. prepared to act alone,” CNN, Sunday, January 26, 2003, 

Posted 9:53 AM EST (1453 GMT). 

28 This is noted in President George Bush, National Strategy to Combat 

Weapons of Mass Destruction (December 2002). 

29 Uri Bialer, The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack and 

British Politics, 1932-1939, Royal Historical Society Studies in History 

Series No. 18 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1980), and Glen Segell, 

“Britain, the United States and Missile Defense,” The Review of 

International Affairs, Vol.1, No 4 (Summer 2002): 91-104. 

30 Also important is the shift in passive defence measures; see for an 

example of thinking in the Cold War Morton Halperin, “Civil Defence and 

Fall-out Shelters: A Rebuttal,” The New Republic, Vol 146, No 9 (26 

February, 1962): 13-20. 

31 SDI opened the scope to escape this and allow arms control negotiations 

that can grapple with the fundamentals. This was already apparent in 1967 

at the Johnson–Kosygin summit at Glassboro, NJ. 

32 “Reagan Emphasizes Conventional Force Improvement to Reduce the 

Reliance on the Threat of Nuclear Escalation,” The Washington Post 

(Sunday, 27 March, 1983), B5. 

33 “America Withdraws from ABM treaty,” BBC, Thursday, 13 December, 

2001, 18:17 GMT. 

34 Glen Segell, “Britain, the United States and Missile Defense”, The 

Review of International Affairs, Vol.1 No 4 (Summer 2002): 91-104. 

35 “US Unveils Muscular New Foreign Policy,” James Harding and 

Richard Wolff, Financial Times, 20 September, 2002. 

36 “Bush to Outline Doctrine of Striking Foes First,” David E Sanger, New 

York Times, 20 September, 2002. 

37 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (NY: Vintage, 1945), 

Vol. V, 243. 

38 George Washington, “The Farewell Address,” in James D Richardson, A

Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington: 

Vintage, 1945), Volume I, 213-224. 

39 John J Tierney, “America’s Forgotten Wars: Guerrilla Campaigns in US 

History,” Conflict, Volume 2, Number 3 (1980). 

40 A sampling of intelligent and experienced advice on this at the onset of 

the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 includes Lewis H. Gann, 

Guerrillas in History (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1971); Robert B. 
Segell—The EU Approach to Arms Control 

134

 

Asprey, War in the Shadows, the Guerrilla in History (Garden City, NY: 

Doubleday, 1975); Lawrence Grinter, “How They Lost, Doctrines, 

Strategies and Outcomes of the Vietnam War,” Asian Survey (December, 

1975); Robert Moss, Urban Guerrillas (London: M.T. Smith, 1972); and 

W. Bruce Weinrod, “Counterinsurgency: Its Role in Defense Policy,” 

Strategic Review (Fall, 1974). 

41 John Hoffman, “Reconstructing Diplomacy,” British Journal of Politics 

and International Relations, No. 4 (November 2003): 525-542. 

42 Jeffrey A. Larsen, “NATO Counterproliferation Policy: A Case Study In 

Alliance Politics,” INSS Occasional Paper 17 (November 1997), 11. 

43 Judy Dempsey , Roula Khalaf and Mohsen Asgari, “Europe and US Stay 

Split over Iran,” Financial Times, 18 November, 2003. 

44 Ian Black, “EU Turns 'Rogue State' into Conditional Friend,” The 

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48 “Putin Urges US Arms Pact Backing,” BBC, Saturday, 5 April, 2003. 

49 Rose Gottemoeller, “Beyond Arms Control: How to Deal with Nuclear 

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50 John E. Peters, “From Arms Control to Controlling the Recourse to 

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52 David Callahan, Unwinnable Wars (NY: A Twentieth Century Fund 

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53 Callahan, Unwinnable Wars; Polk, Neighbors and Strangers, 281–311. 

54 International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 

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55 European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the 

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56 Council of the European Union, Conclusions of the 2397th Council 

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57 Alyson J.K. Bailes, “NATO Enlargement and the Cause of Peace,” 

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58 Anthony Browne and Philip Webster, “Deal to Form EU Military Arm 

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59 Amnesty International, The EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports: 

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62 Council of the European Union, “Council Regulation (EC) No 

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64 Peter Norman, “Solana Hits at EU Foreign Strategies,” Financial Times, 

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65 Council of the European Union, “Decision 2001/493/CFSP of 25 June 

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67 Common Strategy of the European Union of 4 June 1999 on Russia, 

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69 Darryl A. Howlett, Euratom and Nuclear Safeguards (Macmillan: 

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71 Council of the European Union, “Decision 2001/493/CFSP of 25 June 

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74 Royal Institute for International Relations (IRRI-KIIB), A European 

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75 Royal Institute for International Relations, A European Security Concept 

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76 “The President's State of the Union Address,” (2002). 

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77 “UK Analysis: Capabilities of US 'Rogue States,'” BBC, Wednesday, 15 

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84 Marko, “Mini-Nukes and Rogue States: Is The State An Enemy of 

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85 Myriam Dunn, Information Age Conflicts, Swiss Federal Institute of 

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87 William J. Clinton, “Remarks by the President On Iraq to Pentagon 

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88 Barry Rubin, “U.S. Foreign Policy and Rogue States,” MERIA Volume 

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89 George W. Bush, “The President's State of the Union Address" (29 

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90 “UK Analysis: Capabilities of US 'Rogue States,'” BBC, 15 May, 2002. 

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91 “US to Eliminate WMD in All Rogue States, By Force if Necessary,” 

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92 Glen Segell, Disarming Iraq, (London, 2004). 

93 John R. Bolton, “Nuclear Weapons and Rogue States: Challenge and 

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94 “Analysis: The New Bogeymen,” BBC, 12 December, 2001. 

95 Le Monde Diplomatique. <http://mondediplo.com/focus/iraq/a3588> 

96 “France to Target Rogue States,” 28 October, 2003, Reuters. 

97 “U.S.: Syria Is a Rogue State,” Newsmax Wire, 15 April, 2003. 

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98 “U.N. Nuclear Chief to Visit Libya,” CNN, 22 December, 2003. 

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99 “Rogue States Warned of U.S. Nukes; Bush: Threat is Real, Stakes Are 

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100 Andrew Marshall, “US Spies Inflate Risk From 'Rogue' States,” The 

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101 Quoted by Senator Jon Kyl (R- Arizona), The Future of Transatlantic 

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102 House of Commons Hansard, 1 Nov 2001: Column 1556 quoting EUUS Police Cooperation (AR 53 CON: pts US 4 & 5).