ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1932, some sixty nations gathered in Geneva under the auspices of the League of Nations to begin the first global disarmament conference. The concept of qualitative disarmament was introduced to the conference by Lord Robert Cecil, an eminent British statesman who had been instrumental in making the League of Nations a reality and in placing disarmament at the top of its agenda. Just as the British initiative began to lose momentum, President Herbert Hoover in June 1932 presented to the conference a US plan for comprehensive qualitative disarmament. The notion of designing an entire global disarmament process around shedding the offense and leaving in place only the defense was first reintroduced into the debate by Randall Forsberg. Closely related to the concept of qualitative disarmament is another, more encompassing principle that has also emerged among innovative strategists and policymakers in both the West and the East—the idea of common security.
