Despite recent breakthroughs on intermediate-range nuclear forces, the accomplishments of United States and Soviet arms control efforts during nearly two decades of more or less continuous negotiations have been—to say the least—not impressive. Doctrinally, the Soviet military has long viewed defensive systems as integral to its strategic forces. The ‘revolution in military affairs’ created by nuclear weapons did not, in the opinion of Soviet analysts, obviate the need to defend vital military and urban-industrial centers from attack. Historically, Soviet military doctrine has espoused a view almost diametrically opposed to the Western notion that ballistic missile defense systems are destabilizing because they threaten to upset the mutual deterrent relationship created by possession of secure second-strike forces by each side. The fundamental impermanency of a dialectical Weltanschauung is quite alien to Western commercial and legal bargaining efforts. The only current official proposals for limiting strategic defensive systems emanate from the Soviet Union and deal exclusively with space-based weapons.