ABSTRACT
The treaty signed between the United States and the Soviet Union in Washington on 8 December 1987, on the elimination of their intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles (INF Treaty), is significant in a number of ways. For a start, it represented the first major American – Soviet arms control agreement in nearly 10 years; second, it was the first substantive outcome of the Geneva ‘Nuclear and Space Arms Talks’; and, third, it was the first nuclear arms control agreement to incorporate a substantial measure of disarmament. The verification procedures that are built into the treaty and its associated protocols were path breaking, and established clear precedents for future arms control agreements. Finally, the adoption of the global ‘zero-zero’ formula for the weapons covered by the treaty linked deployments in Asia and Europe, with consequent implications for American ‘extended deterrence’ postures globally. As will be argued below, this latter aspect of the treaty is compatible with a trend towards the increasing ‘regionalization’ of US security policy.
