A determined effort is underway in the Congress to do just that, by requiring that the President build a nationwide defense against ballistic missiles. This national missile defense plan thus would dislodge a foundation stone of strategic arms control, annulling the basic understanding on the relationship between offense and defense that has made deep cuts in offensive arms possible. Our best intelligence is that rogue states missiles able to reach the United States are years away. Anyone should be able to see that's a bad bargain. Another array of threats to arms control has grown out of a hostage-taking mentality on Capitol Hill.
Chemical weapons are less implements of defense than instruments of terror.
So in the mid-1980's the United States decided unilaterally to abolish its chemical weapons arsenal. The Reagan and Bush Administrations then took the lead in negotiating the Chemical Weapons Convention, to ban not only the use of chemical weapons, but their production, transfer, even possession. The Convention was submitted to the Senate in 1993. There it sits, still. Ten hearings were held in 1994, and hundreds of additional questions were answered for the record.