The Department's arms control programs also depended heavily on the intelligence community, both in devising policy and in assessing compliance with commitments.ĭuring the Clinton presidency, the United States, including its forces abroad, and allies faced a growing threat from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the missiles to deliver them. The State Department worked especially closely with the Departments of Defense and Energy, which also had programs in support of the administration's arms control and nonproliferation objectives. ![]() Other agencies also played indispensable roles in meeting the nation's arms control and nonproliferation objectives. It coordinated implementation of all arms control and nonproliferation agreements. The State Department led in the formulation of nonproliferation policy and, with the National Security Council, arms control policy. Despite some setbacks, the Clinton presidency had many achievements in its efforts to reduce the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction and to curtail or reduce excessive or destabilizing conventional weapons. ![]() The shift from arms limitation to major arms reductions, policymakers believed, seemed possible. Verification and compliance were still essential elements in arms control, but greater openness in the New Independent States provided a measure of trust and assurances for the new Clinton administration to push forward toward completion of nuclear and conventional disarmament goals that the previous Reagan and Bush presidencies had successfully begun. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, by the early 1990s the United States began to reassess its national security and arms control policies. Thus arms control accords could not compromise allied security. security was indivisible from that of its friends in regional pacts like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A related principle was greater openness to reduce the fear of war from miscalculation. Second, accords limiting armaments had to include strict verification procedures to ensure compliance. In other words, arms control agreements were acceptable only if they served to enhance the nation's security. First, they subordinated arms control to national security policy. ![]() arms control initiatives in the Cold War years consistently adhered to certain basic principles. The increasing use of the term "arms control" instead of "disarmament" in the political lexicon suggested that more modest perspective. policymakers developed a much more limited view of what was possible in the field. Because of the widespread mistrust of a Communist and nuclear-armed Soviet Union after the Second World War, however, U.S. Their disarmament initiatives did not then provide, for example, for verification or inspection of the resulting agreements. Since the founding of the Republic, many Americans had espoused disarmament as a goal of their nation's foreign policies, and presidential administrations during the 1920s and 1930s had promoted disarmament as a desirable end in itself without much concern for its relationship to the nation's security. Released by the Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs You are in: Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs > Bureau of Public Affairs > Bureau of Public Affairs: Office of the Historian > More Publications > History of the Department of State During the Clinton Presidency (1993-2001) History of the Department of State During the Clinton Presidency (1993-2001)
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