"Old Thinking" about Arms ControlAuthor(s): James LeonardSource: The Brookings Review, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer, 1992), p. 4Published by: Brookings Institution PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20080305 .

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LETTERS

"Old Thinking"

about Arms Control

It will risk appearing un

grateful to such a dedicated

arms controller as Jack Mendel

sohn ("Dismantling the Arse

nals," spring issue) to complain that his proposals do not go far

enough. It may also appear po

litically naive and unrealistic.

After all, Mendelsohn urges abandonment of our current

warfighting strategy and calls

for far deeper reductions than

the administration seems pre

pared to contemplate, even as a

"vision" for some time in the

next century. But Mendelsohn

then focuses on measures "to

increase the overall confidence

of both sides in the survivability of their nuclear forces." This, I

believe, has now become "old

thinking." The debate about

nuclear futures should be based

on the new fact that any at

tempt at a disarming first strike

by Russia is now just as

unimaginable politically as is an

attempt by us. Americans and

Russians should focus on de

signing stable force structures

and postures with warhead to

tals in the low tens rather than

in the low thousands.

The articulation by the two

leading nuclear powers of this

kind of "new thinking" would

have an enormous impact on

the other most serious threat to

world security?the threat of

nuclear proliferation. Ukraine,

Kazakhstan, India, and other

potential or threshold nuclear

weapon states will not be

greatly impressed by promises from Washington and Moscow

to limit themselves to a thou

sand or so nuclear weapons. But if the five nuclear powers

credibly commit themselves to

come down to levels some

where near zero, the

nonnuclear nations may be

more cooperative about our

efforts to discourage them from

getting even one.

James Leonard, Washington Council on Non-Proliferation

The Politics of Arms Control

Ironically, the very absence

of the Cold War that makes arms control more attainable

(Mendelsohn, "Dismantling the

Arsenals," spring issue) also

makes it politically less com

pelling. Even with the new

"declaratory arms control" that

avoids the tediously detailed

negotiations of the past, there

will be decreasing political in terest among policymakers in

devoting major time and atten

tion to arms control. We may be entering an era in which

arms control occurs largely as a

result of domestic budget deci

sions rather than well thought out arms control policies.

Conversely, halting prolifera tion is now more compelling

but also more difficult. The Iraq case has likely undermined the

value of the Nuclear Non-Pro

liferation Treaty as it revealed

that treaty's worst kept secret:

the nation that wishes to prolif erate likely will do so. Indeed,

the future of any meaningful

proliferation policy may depend more on international coercive

or punitive measures than

moral suasion, if the interna

tional community feels up to it.

This is not to suggest that we

do not have new opportunities to make the world a bit safer.

But we must remember that

arms control is not an abstract

concept or a preordained given. It is a policy whose pursuit, failure, or success, is grounded in and limited by the politics of the period.

Mark M. Lowenthal, Congres sional Research Service

Setting the Record Straight Marc Mauer's letter (spring

issue) on my article, with Anne

M. Piehl, "Does Prison Pay?"

(fall issue) contained several in

correct, misleading, and unfair

statements. First, the heading the Review gave his letter was

"Prison Is Not the Only An swer." Our article did not be

gin to suggest that it was.

Contrary to his letter, we did

not suggest that community based supervision programs have zero effect on crime con

trol, or imply that the country should "rush to lock up even

more people." I have written

extensively on the efficacy of

some such programs, including one article published in the Re

view ("Punishing Smarter," summer 1989).

Calculating the national in

carceration rate relative to the

country's crime pool paints a

less alarmist picture than his ad

vocacy group, The Sentencing

Project, favors. For example in

1960 there were 62 commit

ments to state prisons for every

1,000 serious crimes. By 1970

the number had dropped to 23. In the 1980s it climbed steadily

back to 62, which is what it was

in 1989. In many states the rate

of increase in the use of com

munity-based alternatives to

incarceration far exceeded the

rate of increase in the use of

prisons and jails. Today nearly three out of every four con

victed criminals are not behind

bars. Even with mandatory sen

tences, most convicted criminals

spend less than 50 percent of

their time behind bars, and the

likelihood of being sentenced to

prison if convicted is less than 50 percent for all crimes except homicide.

As our study indicated, for

some types of offenders incar

ceration is almost certainly not

the most sensible and cost

effective sanction. But, as we

stressed, more research is badly needed. What the numbers will

show remains to be seen.

I appreciate that Mauer's ad

vocacy group gets lots of

sensational headlines and is

widely cited in public debates. But there is a difference be

tween assertive policy advocacy and credible policy analysis. We

all should learn to respect that

difference, not trivialize it.

JohnJ. DiluliOyJr., Princeton

University

Horsetrading on Trade Issues Richard Boltuck and Robert

Litan ("Down in the Dumps,"

spring issue) must have missed

the newspaper accounts of the

initiatives advanced by the Bush

administration in the Uruguay Round over the past three years

to ensure that antidumping and

Continued on page 55

THE BROOKINGS REVIEW

ILLUSTRATION LEW AZZINARO

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