ABSTRACT
Some skeptics of arms control have asked whether satisfactory arms control agreements can be negotiated with such a regime, which is notoriously secretive, dependent on military forces for its international position, and influenced by large and powerful military bureaucracies. In the early 1980s there was less enthusiasm in the United States for the pursuit of arms control agreements than there was throughout most of the 1970s. Of course, so complex and consequential an enterprise as the negotiation of a treaty limiting arms will always provoke a certain amount of dispute, if only over its technical details. There has been a novel and deep skepticism about the usefulness of attempts to limit arms. The final and perhaps most influential respect in which the improvements to Soviet strategic forces have cast doubt on the usefulness of arms control is the diminished sense of security that, justifiably or not, they have created.
