Arms control has recently come under intense attack from an unanticipated quarter. Nuclear abolitionist Jonathan Schell, in an unrestrained polemic, "The Folly of Arms Control," in the September/October Foreign Affairs, denounces arms control as a failed policy that "is the equivalent—in the context of the nuclear dilemma as it exists at the opening of the twenty-first century—of appeasement in the 1930s…" While one can share Schell's impatience with arms control's recent progress, his bizarrely distorted critique of arms control, which largely ignores accomplishments over the past decade, is bereft of any practical proposals on how to achieve his objective of abolishing all nuclear weapons.
Schell disparages the arms control process not only for its alleged current failure but also for its acceptance of the concept of nuclear-weapon states and nuclear deterrence, which he believes are responsible for proliferation and hence a barrier to the abolition of nuclear weapons. In his grim predictions about the future of nuclear proliferation, he fails to mention the first-ever consensus Final Document adopted at the 2000 Review Conference of the 187-member nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which strongly endorses the treaty and spells out ways to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.
In castigating arms control for failing to define a universal, time-bound path to zero, Schell attributes this failure to the U.S. desire to maintain its nuclear stockpile in perpetuity. The U.S. perception of its nuclear requirements has actually been in constant flux throughout the nuclear age and will certainly change in the future. In fact, candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore have both indicated they will initiate a critical review of U.S. nuclear requirements. Schell fails to mention that every U.S. president since World War II has espoused abolition as an ultimate goal and that the five nuclear-weapon states, in connection with the 2000 NPT Review Conference, "unequivocally" agreed "to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals," an obligation already implicit under Article VI of the treaty.
Schell can rightfully complain about the disappointingly slow pace of post-Cold War arms control and recent setbacks, including the Senate's rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), failure of START II to enter into force, increasing pressure to deploy a national missile defense requiring amendment of or withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and Indian and Pakistani nuclear testing (although their nuclear capabilities had long been known). However, when viewed objectively, despite these setbacks, arms control has made considerable progress over the past decade.
In making his case, Schell disregards the major accomplishments of arms control since the end of the Cold War, including the 1995 indefinite extension by consensus of the NPT, which now includes all states except Cuba, India, Israel, and Pakistan; the 1996 completion and signature by 160 countries of the long-sought CTBT; completion and entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention; full implementation of START I, reducing deployed strategic warheads by almost 50 percent from Cold War levels; and initiation of discussions on START III, which could reduce deployed strategic forces by some 80 percent from Cold War levels.
As an alternative to arms control, which he sees as inextricably constrained by U.S. commitments to deterrence, Schell calls on the United States to take the lead in a concerted effort for the immediate abolition of all nuclear weapons. To accomplish this, Schell proposes that a U.S. presidential candidate should adopt abolition as the central issue in his campaign to rally public support and after the election throw the full weight of his administration behind the effort. But with little or no public interest in foreign policy or military and arms control issues, the idea of such a political campaign is not connected to reality.
At this time, a U.S. president cannot and should not commit his successors to a time-bound schedule for the abolition of nuclear weapons. He should energize the ongoing process of reductions and constraints, avoiding disruptive diversions such as national missile defense. How fast and how far the process will go will depend on the evolution of international political relations. Each successful step in arms control will build confidence that security can be safely maintained at lower levels of dependence on nuclear weapons. In this manner, the abolition or prohibition of nuclear weapons can become an attainable objective and not a distant goal. To disparage arms control as a process because it does not promise instant resolution of all the problems and contradictions of the nuclear age is to abandon hope of eliminating nuclear weapons.