The disarray of US non-proliferation policy

Abstract

The US has been gradually shifting its focus away from the need to foster global and regional consensus against proliferation and towards the desire to keep all political and military options open and, indeed, to broaden their scope. The Clinton administration's spectacular failure to secure the Senate's timely ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has epitomised this shift. The US should redress this trend. It run contrary to the preference of the American public for cooperative solutions to international problems; it will impair cooperation with allies; and it could also be counter-productive for the US itself in the long run. The voluntary renunciation by states of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons or missiles is the ultimate measure of the success of non-proliferation policies, and much has been achieved by that measure during the 1990s. But this renunciation will not be secured in the long run if the US itself intends to remain essentially unconstrained by arms-control agreements, or free to devise any option it deems suitable to treat the problem on its own terms.