Arms Control Verification

Abstract

The arms control experience of the past 25 years has shown verification to be the key to the future success of formal arms control agreements, and has highlighted how crucial cooperation is to the verification effort. Unfortunately, fundamental disagreement persists within the United States over what we should expect from verification, and we seem to have lost sight of how far we have come with the Soviet Union. The first half of this article outlines the questions involved in the debate over verification, how much of it is enough, and what we should do about suspected cheating. This lays the groundwork for a detailed discussion of the precedents already established for cooperative verification. These include measures to foster resolution of treaty-related problems, increase the effectiveness of national technical means, provide for on-site inspection, and allow the use of “black box” sensors. These precedents represent considerable progress of which we should remind ourselves, especially at a time when they may be placed in jeopardy by our more recent lack of success in arms control.

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