ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the two main protagonists in the arms race, the USA and the USSR, and examines their political actions and positions with respect to verification. It examines the very considerable contributions of other states to the question of verification and analyses the political positions of such ‘third parties’. The chapter explains the subtle concepts of ‘adequacy’ in verification and ‘trust’ between parties to a treaty. Both of these concepts are fundamental to the problem of verification and both are of an essentially political or subjective nature, ensuring that they will be interpreted in widely divergent ways by groups with different interests and perceptions. The existence of such subjective concepts at the core of the verification problem, a core virtually impenetrable by technology, is the basic cause of most of the frustration and misunderstanding this problem has created.
