ON THE face of it, the world’s arms control treaties seem to be relics of a less cynical era. Their underlying concept, born of the devastation of two world wars, is that nations can solemnly promise to give up horrific weapons – and mean it. Surely, the reasoning went, governments would rather spend their citizens’ money on bread than bombs, so long as some kind of verification assured them that their neighbours were doing the same.
Today such thinking appears almost naive, and cynicism over arms control is rife. Meetings to discuss the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty collapse as the nuclear “haves”…
