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257  Philosophy of Arms Control
     March 1, 1976 - February 28, 1977
     (Third Interim Report to the Ford Foundation for the Program
      on Training and Research on Arms Control and Disarmament)

     There are, of course, many disparate views of arms control, its
central purposes and utility, and how it can best be related to the 
preservation of national security and of world peace.
Some view arms as evil things-in-themselves, and grudgingly accept
arms limitations as an unavoidable compromise in the direction of
general disarmament.  Others view arms control as a trial arena for
the development of a global law of nations, a step towards a world
government that its proponents see as the only solution to the conflict
that must eventually erupt on a Hobbesian model.  Still others
view arms control as an extension of military security policy -- an
alternative method of calibrating the distribution of means of forceful
compellence and deterrence in the world system; credibly verifiable
bargains, even with one's adversaries are viewed as cheaper and
more reliable than depending on the dynamics of competition in the
building of weapons systems.

     A recent article by Hedley Bull, in INTERNATIONAL SECURITY,
highlights the paradoxes inherent in these concepts of arms control.
He also stresses that bargains among superpowers, however effective
they may eventually be in preventing superwar, almost inevitably
fortify assumptions about the adequacy of the status quo ante as the
given of the distribution of power in the world.  Inherent in any
system of power stabilization is the hindrance to significant change
in power relationships and in that sense, arms control among the
superpowers may be viewed as succeeding at the expense of smaller
powers.  (Bull does not stress the historical reality that in a less
stabilized context, the great powers simply consumed what they
wished of the resources of the inferior ones.)

     Another argument for arms control stresses the PROCESS of 
negotiation.  It may be alleged that one virtue of SALT was the talk,
namely a protracted process of mutual education, whereby competing
powers could gain a clearer insight into the legitimate security
needs of the other, and adopt more nearly convergent world models of
a mutually acceptable security framework.  This education also extends
to the elites at home, who are obliged to come to grips with
the opportunities presented by offers of mutual limitation that
might never be presented by offers of mutual limitation that might
never be presented in so compelling a way by any other route.  One
is perhaps led to seek such secondary virtues in light of the fact
that the quantitative "limitations" of SALT have led, at best to an
acceleration of qualitative advances in weapons technology, and at 
worst to the establishment of what amounts to a floor as well as
ceiling on strategic arms levels that can hardly be called a severe
restraint.  The assertion of a convergent model it must be noted is
under attack by those who make just the opposite argument:  that 
Soviet doctrine in fact is directed to the development of a nuclear
war-fighting capability.  We have very limited analytical tools, if
any, by which to access such views; they do highlight the importance
of technical national means of verification as the means of sustaining
mutual confidence in the reliability of agreements with respect
to existing capabilities.

     For this reason, one of the alarming "advances" in military
technology that might undercut the entire arms control enterprise in
the potentiality for warfighting in the space regime, e.g. the
directed weapons that have been surfaced recently in the open press.
Whatever the immediacy of the technical threat to surveillance and
communications satellites, the possibility of accidental encounters
or malicious interference with these instruments could reopen a mood
of suspicion and tension, and incidentally motivate heightened
investments for technical competition in that regime.  The possibility
of war through accident or misunderstanding is so grave that at
minimum, the superpowers need to gain what assurance is possible
about the intent and capability of the programs already initiated on
both sides.  President Carter has already indicated the high priority
that his administration would give to arms control initiatives 
for this regime, and is perhaps signalling his intentions to enter a
more intense competition in it as an alternative to such agreements.
There are many technical as well as political problems in the design
of such agreements; and we are further hindered by the secrecy that
attends both sides' military capabilities and plans in this sensitive
area.  It is nevertheless a field that deserves high priority
of analytical attention in an effort to find constructive 
accommodations.
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