ABSTRACT
There have probably been efforts at arms control for almost as long, and in almost as many places, as there have been arms to control. Arms control assumed a permanent place on the national agenda, and every president—Republican or Democrat— has felt impelled to address the subject, notching at least some movement toward these widely-shared objectives. The earliest contemporary iterations of arms control efforts had adopted several different types of attitudes toward the eventual disposal of the regulated weaponry. Other early and even contemporary treaties, such as the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty essentially amounted to mere geographic limitations upon the deployment or positioning of weapons, rather than prohibitions or limitations upon their possession. There was plenty of grist for critics to argue that the Soviets had incompletely complied with those few treaties that did mandate some degree of dismantling.
