ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two basic distinctions: a distinction between disarmament and arms control; and a distinction between the conventional and nuclear forms of disarmament and arms control. Arms control is not disarmament at all, it is a mere regulation of the arms race. It is an understanding between two or more nations engaged in an arms race to pursue that race within certain agreed-upon limits. The attempts at conventional disarmament started immediately after the Napoleonic Wars. It was in 1816 that Czar Alexander I of Russia sent a message to the British Government suggesting a disarmament agreement. Scores of other attempts have been made since then. Of those attempts only two have been successful; one permanently and the other temporarily. There is in the nuclear arms race a dynamism which is different from the dynamism of the conventional arms race. While the latter is politically motivated, the former is technologically conditioned.
