Tilting at Warheads (Books) (The Future of Arms Control) (Book Review‪)‬

The Future of Arms Control, by Michael A. Levi and Michael E. O'Hanlon. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2005, 190 pp. During the past decade, arms control has fallen on hard times. The decline began during the Clinton administration, when the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was abolished and its functions absorbed into the Department of State, followed in 1999 by the U.S. Senate's refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Further retrenchment has occurred under President George W. Bush. With the sole exception of the 2002 Treaty of Moscow, which calls for bilateral cuts in U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces but is devoid of verification measures, the Bush administration has declined to negotiate any new agreements and has repudiated or rejected several existing ones, including the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Ottawa Landmines Treaty, and a draft verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention. President Bush has also ruled out joining the CTBT, and the administration's pursuit of new nuclear warhead designs could generate pressures to break the 13-year-old U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing.