This Arms Control Dog Won't Hunt: The Proposed Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty at the Conference on Disarmament

This is the 36th volume in the Occasional Paper series of the U.S. Air Force Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). This paper is particularly timely, as it addresses emerging issues based in the changing forms and norms of post-Cold War arms control. These issues confront United States strategic planners and the national security policy community today, and they promise to have increasing impact into the future. As traditional arms control -- with its focus most centrally on limiting and then reducing fielded U.S. and Soviet/Russian strategic systems -- evolves into multilateral and multidimensional efforts to stem the now-central threat of proliferation, the whole landscape of arms control changes. The players, the multiple agendas, the role of international organizations in addition to the traditional focus on states all increase the complexity of the game and the difficulties in forging successful and verifiable international agreements at the very time when the problems of proliferation rise to the top of national security calculations. Guy Roberts explains this complexity and its effects on arms control -- placing process over product and forcing those serious about controlling fissile materials to go in search of varied avenues and approaches -- to educate everyone on the emerging "rules of the game."