The aims of arms control and disarmament policies are peace and increased security through agreed limitations and reductions of armamentsmeasures that will reduce the danger of war, or lessen its destructiveness if efforts to avert war fail. The idea that nations can increase their security and make wars less likely by consenting to control their armaments reflects a fundamental American optimism about the manageability of human problems.

Geography helped to protect this optimism until the United States grew strong enough to ward off any external enemy. In 1801, in his Inaugural Address, Thomas Jefferson could observe that Americans were "kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe..." From this happy situation Jefferson drew the conclusion that Americans could pursue the cultivation of our principles in one "chosen country." Today we are no longer separated from the "exterminating havoc" in other parts of the world.

In its second century, the United States increasingly projected its ideals outward. It did so despite severe domestic disagreement about the kind and cost of efforts for a better world order that would serve America's interests and ideals, a debate punctuated by harsh disappointments. The League of Nations, almost entirely an American initiative, ended in tragic failure. The arms limitation agreements of the 1920's, some strongly encouraged by the United States, failed to prevent the outbreak of World War II. The United Nations, in whose creation and work the United States has invested a great effort and hope, has fallen well short of the purposes proclaimed in its Charter.

In the first half of the 20th century, such initiatives for an improved world order could be regarded by many as optional expressions of U.S. foreign policy-beneficial to be sure, but success was not deemed essential to national security. In the second half of the century, however, the world has changed. New technology for mass destruction has revolutionized warfare. Ironically, the United States once had a complete monopoly of this revolutionary technology.

The magnitude of the arms revolution is hard to grasp. From the end of the 19th century, until the end of the 1940's, there was no individual country,

or no likely combination of foreign powers, that could inflict significant damage on the territory of the United States. Since then, within less than two decades, at least one foreign power has acquired the means to inflict vast destruction on America's cities, economy, and society. And some two decades hence, several potentially hostile nations may possess the means to inflict catastrophic damage on the United States.

In this era of intercontinental missiles, there is no escape from "foreign entanglements." Military strength alone cannot shield us from devastating nuclear destruction at home. We must manage our military strength in such a way that the self-interest of potential adversaries impels them to forgo armed aggression and to cooperate with us in preventing nuclear war. In short, we must teach them the selfish practical wisdom of arms control.

These imperatives have been recognized by every Administration and Congress since the beginning of the nuclear era. The most ambitious American design for the control of nuclear technologythe Baruch plan-had broad public support. So did the arms control measures of the 1950's, which had necessarily to be less ambitious to be politically feasible the treaty demilitarizing Antarctica and the system for international safeguards on transferred nuclear materials and equipment provided for in the charter of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In 1961, Congress took a further step to enhance the American contribution to arms control. It established the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency to provide a continuing policy emphasis on arms control and disarmament efforts. The Agency's charter clearly envisages that these efforts complement and augment measures to assure U.S. national security. And the charter reaffirms the American optimism about a better world order:

An ultimate goal of the United States is a world which is free from the scourge of war and the dangers and burdens of armaments; in which the use of force has been subordinated to the rule of law; and in which international adjustments to a changing world are achieved peacefully.

No other major military power has taken such a positive step to integrate the objective of arms control into the conduct of its defense and foreign policies.

During the past 15 years, we have increased the scope and momentum of our efforts. The arms control agreements reached in bilateral and multilateral negotiations, though still only a beginning, have brought greater security to ourselves and our allies, as well as to the rest of the world. We have identified areas where agreed measures of control can prevent new forms of violence, have established new channels and forums for sustained negotiating efforts, and have achieved negotiations increasingly marked by candor, precision, and perseverance.

Over the years, we Americans-and the rest of the world-have learned much about the hazards

and the urgencies that we face, and the complexities and difficulties of dealing with them. We have come to recognize that the power of nuclear armaments has outrun our capacity to predict or measure their effects. We have yet to find effective ways to assure that the spread of nuclear technology does not lead to a world of nuclear anarchy. The continual development of new weapons technology can be expected to pose new difficulties. As we try for more significant agreements, we can expect fresh complexities but these should not daunt our patience, realism and deep-rooted optimism.

Arms control has been an objective of U.S. foreign policy since the earliest days of the Republic. In 1817, the United States and Great Britain signed the Rush-Bagot agreement (later joined by Canada), regulating naval forces on the Great Lakes. It was one of the first freely negotiated arms control agreements, and it is one of the oldest still in existence. Following World War I, an international conference met in Washington under the leadership of Secretary of State Hughes to seek limitations on naval armaments, which proved only temporarily successful. The hopeful beginning but tragic demise of the League of Nations and the American intellectual and political leadership in the creation of the United Nations the most ambitious peacekeeping organization yet established-are testimony both to U.S. initiative in international peacekeeping efforts, and to the need for our sustained support if such efforts are ultimately to succeed.

The advent of nuclear weapons has lent an entirely new dimension and urgency to efforts to limit armaments. There could be no winners in a fullscale global nuclear war today. We must attempt to influence a potential adversary's assessment of his own interests in order to deter such an attack. Creating a strategic posture designed to achieve this result is the first objective of arms control.

The Objectives of Arms Control and
Disarmament

Arms control includes all those actions, unilateral as well as multilateral, by which we regulate the levels and kinds of armaments in order to reduce the likelihood of armed conflicts, their severity and violence if they should occur, and the economic burden of military programs. Disarmament, a somewhat older term, describes a particular kind of arms. control-efforts specifically to reduce military forces and perhaps ultimately to eliminate them.

The reduction of armaments is a major objective of U.S. policy, but by itself it is an inadequate measure of progress toward arms control. Even with smaller military forces, nations retain the capability to wage war. Reductions in armaments which are one-sided, or which are not lived up to, might

actually create opportunities for aggression and increase the danger of war.

Progress toward arms control should be measured not in terms of arms reductions alone but in terms of movement toward its special objectives. The paramount goal is to make war less likely, and above all, to avoid nuclear war. Of course, U.S. arms control policy pursues other objectives as well: to reduce the destructiveness of war when wars do occur and to reduce the expenditure of human and economic resources for military preparations. Over the long term, these objectives are mutually consistent and even mutually supporting. In any actual policy decision, however, there may be conflicts between them.

Frequently, conflict arises between our objectives of reducing the economic burden of weapons and reducing the risks of war. For example, if costs were our primary concern, we could reduce the expense of our nuclear deterrent forces by establishing a policy that those forces would be launched upon clear warning of an enemy attack. Then it would no longer be necessary to spend billions of dollars on hardened concrete silos to protect our missiles from attack, or on expensive submarines which can hide missiles in the depths of the ocean. But such a policy would enormously increase the danger that a technical accident or the miscalculation of nervous decisionmakers might start a nuclear war and it has been consistently rejected as deliberate U.S. Government policy.

Thus, it is a mistake to think that the principal purpose of arms control is to save money. We may even need to spend money to improve the protection of our forces or verification-our ability to insure that agreements are being obeyed-if certain kinds of arms control are to be achieved. In the long run, however, efforts to reduce the risk of war should also reduce the economic burden of defense and reduce the violence of wars that do occur.

Even if we were to give up our weapons, it would not put an end to war between other nations. Moreover, Americans would hardly want to submit to the coercion of ourselves and our friends by those nations which remained armed. Unbalanced unilateral reduction of armaments can be a prescription for war, not peace. And it would be destructive of

our national aim to survive not only in the physical sense but as a nation dedicated to the proposition that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Arms Control in a World of Conflict

We live and of necessity are deeply involved-in a world of independent nations with intense fears, jealousies and animosities. Some nations covet the territory of others; some envy the wealth of others; and some even seek the destruction of the political and social orders of other countries. The fact that these ambitions are sometimes based not on greed alone but on belief in the justice of a particular cause does not make them less dangerous. If anything, it increases the willingness of such nations to realize their ambitions by violence if they can.

As long as the potential for such conflicts persists, hope for global security depends on our ability to make violence futile and counterproductive as a means of resolving international issues. A major goal of our policy must be to seek resolution of international disputes by peaceful means.

Men once took it for granted that human nature made war inevitable. With the destructiveness of modern wars, and above all of nuclear weapons, we can no longer afford such fatalism. Yet in a world where disputes remain and armaments remain, what can arms control do?

There is no way of making war impossible. Arms control demands commitment to an unending task. Even if all existing stocks of nuclear weapons could be eliminated, as long as men know the secret of their manufacture, another global war probably would witness their reintroduction. Our efforts must be directed at reducing both the likelihood of war and the likelihood that nuclear weapons might be used if war occurs.

The Techniques of Arms Control

Arms control rests on a basic premise that by regulating the kinds and sizes of military forces we can reduce the risk of war, particularly nuclear war. There are many ways in which this can be done.

One of the basic techniques of arms control, paradoxically, is to improve the military forces themselves, not by making them more destructive but by making them less vulnerable to attack.

Vulnerable forces can be an invitation to aggression. They can also drive countries to launch preemptive attacks out of fear of what would happen if they should be attacked first. A major purpose of

arms control is to avoid situations—such as the one preceding the First World War-in which countries may be driven to war because the vulnerability of their military postures deprives them of time to negotiate. This may be done by prohibiting particular weapons which make military forces more vulnerable. It may also be promoted through military disengagements—such as those recently negotiated in the Middle East-which reduce the possibility of surprise attack by separating opposing armies and providing improved warning.

Another major task for arms control is to reduce the danger of accidents or miscalculations that could lead to war. This is particularly important where nuclear weapons are involved. We can guard against such a possibility in part through unilateral measures such as safety devices and procedures to protect nuclear weapons from accidental or unauthorized use (or possible theft by terrorist groups). Other measures require the cooperation of potential adversaries to avoid possible dangerous incidentsone of the accomplishments of the 1972 U.S.-Soviet agreement on "Incidents at Sea" as well as the 1971 "Accidents Measures" agreement-or to improve communications which could keep an unintended incident from escalating to deliberate warfare. Most notable in the latter category are the 1963 and 1971 "Hot Line" agreements between Washington and Moscow.

Arms control measures may also reduce the likelihood of conflict by regulating the levels of armaments to produce a more stable military balance. In the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR) negotiations now underway in Europe, one of our objectives is to move both sides into military postures oriented as much as possible toward defensive rather than offensive operations, by reducing weapons such as tanks that are best suited for the offensive. Such efforts are designed not only to produce a more stable balance but to do so at lower force levels.

A primary purpose of arms control is to lower the level of violence and destruction if wars occur. That is one reason for limiting the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries, particularly those involved in direct military confrontations with their neighbors. It is also the purpose of the prohibition on biological weapons and on the use of poison gas. And it is one of several reasons why we seek reductions of military forces.

Controlling Technical Change

Technological change, which ceaselessly alters