Progress and Failure in Disarmament

Abstract

In the late 1980s progress in disarmament is certainly more in our minds than is failure in disarmament. The world has been brought close to a much awaited breakthrough, showing that the nuclear arms race can be reversed. A US-Soviet agreement to eliminate land-based intermediate- and shorter-range nuclear weapons from Europe would, by clearly demonstrating this, be an event of historic significance. In the slightly longer perspective of the last few years we have, however, seen much of both progress and failure. Indeed the ups and downs of a truly dramatic negotiating process can best be characterised in the words of Charles Dickens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

This has, in essence, been a Tale of Two Cities, of Moscow and Washington, with important happenings in Geneva and Reykjavik.