Editor's Note

Changes in technology, international relations, and the global economy have made it ever more challenging to discover and control the spread of dangerous weapons and related technologies, be they ballistic missiles or the building blocks of nuclear weapons. This month, Arms Control Today examines some new approaches to assessing and stemming weapons proliferation.

In our cover story, Aaron Karp notes that a patchwork of missile nonproliferation control mechanisms and missile defenses have not succeeded in containing ballistic missile proliferation and at times may work at cross purposes. He argues that it is time to re-evaluate our fundamental attitude toward the ballistic missile itself. Although the moment for visionary schemes such as banning ballistic missiles has not arrived, this might be the right time to take steps in that direction.

Geoffrey Forden proposes beefing up tools to uncover black market trade such as the nuclear network operated by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. He notes that such proliferation schemes make use of the same financial instruments as legitimate international trade and leave a tell-tale trail that can be used to detect and stop, or at least inhibit, the efficiency of this proliferation path. Current international nonproliferation regimes, he argues, could be significantly strengthened if they were buttressed by a dedicated international auditing and investigations authority that would track down and look into suspicious international deals.

Ellen Laipson examines the role intelligence can and should play in the nonproliferation policymaking process. She says that a recent White House-appointed commission offered useful recommendations for improving weapons of mass destruction intelligence collection and analysis. Yet, it could not resolve a dilemma that plagued the Bush administration in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and that is sure to extend into other future proliferation crises: how publicly accountable policymakers use intelligence, particularly in circumstances where war is a choice, but not the only option.

In our “Looking Back” section this month, John Holum, the final director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, draws on his own experience to argue against a pending Department of State proposal to merge the State Department’s arms control and nonproliferation bureaus. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claims that the changes in technology, politics, and the global economy make the change necessary. Holum, who oversaw the merger of the two bureaus into the State Department, says that combining them will impair the U.S. government’s ability to carry out both of these vital missions.