Is There Life After Arms Control Death?
... arms control developed as a sum-total of supplementary elements rather than an eclectic set of separate unrelated bilateral or multilateral agreements. The first serious blow was dealt to this system when the United States withdrew from the Soviet-US ABM Treaty in 2002. However, the system withstood the first blow largely owing to the then general positive dynamics of Russia-US political cooperation. Meanwhile, judging by everything, the collapse of the INF Treaty 17 years later may prove fatal to the system because it coincided with a highly acute political crisis in relations between Moscow and Washington. Greg Thielmann: Are We Approaching the End of the Arms Control Era? The next link in the chain ...