Space and Defense
Article Title
Arms Control Optimism and Great Power Competition
Abstract
Framing Great Power Competition as an extended War of Attrition rather than a typical Escalation game creates needed diplomatic space for a revival of arms control. In its unjust war, Russia rakes at Ukrainian civilian targets using dual-capable missiles. China meanwhile tightens the screws on Taiwan as it cements its friendship with Russia and continues its buildup of strategic nuclear warheads.1 Conventional wisdom and U.S. policy under such tense conditions unduly discount expectations for arms control.2 Arms control, in the popular mind, centers on bans in testing or deployment, and is therefore terminally associated with disarmament. Trepidation about disarmament fuels assumptions in polarized democracy, and the United States in particular, about the narrow political conditions under which arms control can succeed during great power competition. Conventional prerequisites, such as benign, cooperative relations going in and superiority or at minimum parity of forces coming out of negotiations, are imposed instinctively in tough times, without sufficient reflection on the historical record.