The Test-Ban Negotiations: Implications for the Future

Abstract

The record of the nuclear test-ban negotiations can well be read for its implications both for the procedure of negotiating and the substance of arms-control agreements. The history of the negotiations covers five years and includes an unpoliced moratorium on testing nuclear weapons which lasted nearly three years. Starting with the collapse of the Paris summit meeting in 1960, the negotiations took a radical turn for the worse, and, had it not been for the Cuban crisis and heightened Sino-Soviet tensions, they might well have been fruitless. The level of the United States technical prepara tion was not adequate to the task at hand, nor were crucial political decisions taken prior to 1961. The impunity with which the Soviet Union could abrogate the moratorium in 1961 demonstrates the danger of dropping one's guard. The experi ence of the negotiations suggests that areas where there is rela tive parity perhaps offer the most promise for arms-control agreements and that more progress might be made if greater emphasis were placed on national control or what has come to be called adversary or reciprocal inspection techniques.