Editor's Note

Miles A. Pomper

Many arms control issues do not lend themselves to a quick resolution. In our cover story this month, Jonathan Tucker proposes a resolution to one of the longest and most contentious international policy debates: whether to destroy the last known stocks of the smallpox virus. These stocks have been preserved at two World Health Organization-authorized repositories in Russia and the United States. They are intended to help develop improved medical defenses against the disease in case some countries or even terrorists have covertly retained or should figure out how to reconstruct the disease. Developing countries, which suffered disproportionately from the ravages of smallpox, see the continued existence of the disease as an even greater threat.

Another long-standing arms control standoff concerns attempts to move forward on negotiating a treaty that would end the production of fissile materials, particularly highly enriched uranium and plutonium, for use in weapons. For more than a decade, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva has been unable even to truly begin negotiations on this proposed fissile material cutoff treaty. Two pieces this month offer significantly different means of breaking this logjam. Arend Meerburg and Frank N. von Hippel call for expanding the scope and verification provisions of a proposed treaty to take into account fissile material not used for weapons purposes; Christopher A. Ford calls for a more limited treaty among the eight countries, aside from North Korea, known or believed to have nuclear weapons.

In our news section this month, Cole Harvey looks at the Obama administration's first moves in arms control, Peter Crail discusses signs that North Korea will once again test ballistic missiles, and Jeff Abramson reports that U.S. arms sales notification last year jumped sharply.

Finally, Edward Ifft takes a look back at the negotiations over the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. He notes one important lesson from that experience is that the oft-repeated statement that U.S.-Russian arms control negotiations must unavoidably be long, painful, and "adversarial" is simply not true. Perhaps not, but some other arms control efforts, it seems, take quite a while.