Login/Logout

*
*  
“[My time at ACA] prepared me very well for the position that I took following that with the State Department, where I then implemented and helped to implement many of the policies that we tried to promote.”
– Peter Crail
Business Executive for National Security
June 2, 2022
Editor's Note
Share this

Latest ACA Resources

Miles A. Pomper

All too often, political and public attention focus on who is winning or losing arms control and national security debates, rather than the mundane but crucial task of following through whatever decision is ultimately reached.

Take missile defense, for example. President George W. Bush’s December 2001 decision to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty marked the culmination of a decades-long debate between those who saw the treaty as a cornerstone of national and international security and those who believed that it impeded the development of strategic missile defenses necessary to protect the United States and its allies.

But as ACT’s interview with Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency—our cover story this month—makes clear, the technological challenges of building such a defense persist even though the ABM Treaty is gone. Indeed, new technological and diplomatic hurdles loom as the Pentagon seeks to deploy additional interceptors in Europe and test the possibility of space-based interceptors.

Similarly, Ed Ifft notes that public attention tends to focus on negotiating arms control agreements, but the real test of whether they are effective lies in their implementation. In one of our feature articles this month, he examines the day-to-day challenges that international organizations face in interpreting, implementing, and verifying compliance with the accords, providing useful recommendations on how to make such monitoring and inspection efforts more successful.

In another feature, Anupam Srivastava notes that China has made great strides in its legal regime for preventing exports of dangerous weapons or weapons-related materials. But, as he points out, Beijing’s willingness and ability to enforce these rules is still open to question.

James Lewis notes in a “Looking Back” piece that today’s transatlantic split over whether the European Union should liberalize arms sales policy toward China has deep roots. It reflects differences that surfaced a decade ago during the negotiation of the voluntary Wassenaar Arrangement, which established guidelines for conventional weapons transfers.

The selection of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director-general as the winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize tops our news section this month. It also features exclusive interviews with leading figures in charge of implementing national nuclear policies and international arms agreements, including the head of Brazil’s nuclear regulatory commission, the chief of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and the executive secretary of the organization set up to prepare for the entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.