Arms Control Treaties and Their Impact
Arms control treaties have shaped the global security landscape by constraining military capabilities, building transparency, and reducing the risk of conflict. However, the arms control architecture built during the Cold War has eroded significantly, with the collapse of the INF Treaty, the uncertain future of New START, and the failure to bring China into bilateral frameworks designed for a bipolar world.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) remains the cornerstone of the nonproliferation regime, establishing a bargain whereby non-nuclear weapon states forgo nuclear weapons in exchange for access to civilian nuclear technology and a commitment by nuclear weapon states to pursue disarmament. Despite its imperfections, the NPT has limited nuclear proliferation far below the levels predicted at its inception, with only four states acquiring nuclear weapons outside the treaty framework.
The Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which limited military deployments between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, was suspended by Russia in 2015 and has effectively collapsed. The Open Skies Treaty, which permitted unarmed observation flights over member states, lost the US and then Russia as participants. The erosion of these transparency measures increases the risk of miscalculation in Europe.
New arms control challenges include regulating autonomous weapons, preventing an arms race in space, and addressing cyber weapons. The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons has discussed lethal autonomous weapons systems but achieved limited progress. The potential for AI-enabled weapons to make targeting decisions at speeds exceeding human control raises fundamental questions about accountability and escalation management.
The future of arms control likely requires moving beyond bilateral US-Russia frameworks to include China, addressing emerging technologies alongside traditional categories, and developing new verification mechanisms that can monitor compliance in domains like cyber and space where traditional inspection is impractical.