ABSTRACT
The military lessons of the Gulf War and their arms control implications will be portrayed. In general, any two countries' conventional military forces are very dissimilar, much more so than nuclear forces. Even in the context of US-Soviet military competition, each side suspected that the other was using arms control as a form of military operation aimed at gaining some kind of unilateral advantage. If a high-tech military competition is turned into a mass infantry army competition, the side that has the advantage in terms or manpower will benefit from that agreement. Crisis stability tends to be reinforced when the offensive aspects of military forces are reduced. The Gulf War has revealed a major innovation in conventional warfare. A number of military analysts seem to share this view in one form or another. If money becomes tight in the Middle East, a much more practical kind of arms control may be achieved, perhaps on a tacit basis.
