Arms Control and Disarmament

Efforts to implement arms control or disarmament have occurred sporadically throughout recorded history, often following the development of new, more destructive weapons or after an especially destructive war. According to Luttwak (1994), one of the earliest efforts to limit the scope of war was organized by Greek tribes in the eighth century b.c. and sought to limit the type of actions one army could take against another. More extensive limitations were implemented in the 1600s after the Thirty Years' War in Europe, limiting warfare to combat by armed forces, requiring the humane treatment of prisoners, and outlawing pillage. These rules were followed throughout the 1700s, making war "a relatively limited and civilized 'game of kings.'"
The next significant move toward controlling weapons was the Hague Conferences. The First Hague Conference was convened by Nicholas II of Russia in 1889. Twenty-six nations drafted a series of regulations regarding the conduct of war and also established the Permanent Court of Arbitration for the arbitration of international disputes. The Second Hague Disarmament Conference was held in 1907. Fewer agreements were made this time, although additional arbitration courts were established. These courts did not have enforcement power, however, and were unable to prevent the deteriorating international conditions from erupting into World War I.
Following World War I, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson spearheaded the establishment of the League of Nations. The league was to "establish reasonable limits on the military forces of each country and submit them for consideration to the member governments" (Luttwak 1994). Again, however, compliance was voluntary, and the short-lived league was largely ineffective. Several other disarmament efforts were made between World War I and World War II, including the Washington Naval Conference, which limited the naval power of signatory countries; the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy; and a world disarmament conference convened by the League of Nations in 1932, which sought the progressive elimination of offensive weapons. Lack of agreement about how this might be done prevented this conference from having a significant impact as the nations of Europe and Asia began the slide toward World War II.

The horrors of World War II and the threat of a more extensive nuclear war stimulated many more efforts at arms control and disarmament—especially regarding nuclear weapons—in the 1960s through 1990s. At the same time, however, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in an intractable arms race, only sporadically slowed by arms limitation agreements. In the late 1960s, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance, the United States and the Soviet Union ratified SALT I—the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements—which limited the size and the composition of the nations' nuclear weapons arsenals. A continuation of these agreements—SALT II—was not ratified by the U.S. Congress, however, due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the consequential demise of détente. In 1987, however, President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed an agreement limiting intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF). The treaty, which was ratified in 1988, required the phased destruction of all U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range missiles. In July 1991, Gorbachev and President Bush signed the START I agreement, which called for the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons by about 25 percent. Although Soviet weapons were dispersed when the Soviet Union dissolved in late 1991, Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed the START II agreement in 1993, which called for the elimination of many more of the nations' nuclear warheads. Both START I and START II called for the control of conventional weapons as well.