Verification and Transparency in Future Arms Control

Verification’s importance has changed dramatically over time, although it has been in the forefront of arms control in the post-World War II period. The goals and measures of verification and the criteria for success have changed with the times as well, reflecting such factors as the centrality of the prospective agreement to East- West relations during the Cold War, the state of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the technologies available for monitoring. Verification’s role may be declining in the post-Cold War period. The prospects for such a development will depend, first and foremost, on the high costs of tditional arms control, especially those associated with requirements for verification. Moreover, a growing interest in “informal,” or “nonnegotiated” arms control would not allow for verification provisions by the very nature of these arrangements. Multilateral agreements are also becoming more prominent and argue against highly effective verification measures, in part because of fears of promoting proliferation by opening sensitive facilities to inspectors from potential proliferant states. As a result, it is likely that transparency and confidencebuilding measures will achieve greater prominence, both as supplements to and substitutes for traditional verification. Such measures are not panaceas and do not offer all that we came to expect from verification during the Cold War. But they may be the best possible means to deal with current problems of arms reductions and restraints at acceptable levels of expenditure.