REAL Arms Limitation?

It occurred to me recently that, although there have been limitations on the production and/or deployment of various types of weapons - MRBMs, biological and chemical weapons - there never seems to have been any serious attempt at a reduction in weaponry and armies overall. Yes, the Versailles treaty could be taken as an example, but it was one-sided, and too easy to circumvent or outright break.

What would it take for this to be seriously attempted at some point in the 20th century? And preferably, (generally) successfully implemented.
 
It occurred to me recently that, although there have been limitations on the production and/or deployment of various types of weapons - MRBMs, biological and chemical weapons - there never seems to have been any serious attempt at a reduction in weaponry and armies overall. Yes, the Versailles treaty could be taken as an example, but it was one-sided, and too easy to circumvent or outright break. What would it take for this to be seriously attempted at some point in the 20th century? And preferably, (generally) successfully implemented.

Divine intervention - and even then the odds aren't good. There has never been a case of a class of weapons being eliminated by an arms control agreement.
 
Divine intervention - and even then the odds aren't good. There has never been a case of a class of weapons being eliminated by an arms control agreement.
That's not what I asked for. At least not as a starting point.

" a reduction in weaponry and armies overall." That's what I'm talking about... although obviously with the utopian objective being the elimination of all armies... :)

It just seems to me that a huge amount of effort - resources, whether human, monetary or industrial - are essentially wasted on armed forces. The main reason any country has them is because every other country has them... far as I can tell. Then the parallel of SALT-type treaties occurred to me, hence the thread.
 
What Faeelin said. Also, the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty- local, true, but it is an international treaty limiting the conventional arsenals of both sides.
 
...The Hague Comferences in 1899 and 1907 had this as their ultimate goal, although they never went anywhere. If you could somehow get rid of WWI, it's possible that they could have some effect... although continuing peace for years and years and years would probably be the better cause.
 
Because no country will trust ALL the other countries \of the world to not have weapons. If there was such a treaty what would prevent one country from developing weapons in secret? Not having a decent sized standing army is not a good way to avoid foreign invasion. If you don't believe me look at History: as Hitler was marching through Europe he avoided Swizterland because every male was required to serve in the army when they turned 18 and when they left they kept their weapon.
 
That's not what I asked for. At least not as a starting point. " a reduction in weaponry and armies overall." That's what I'm talking about

Same logic applies to both and both are fundamentally flawed for the same reason (hence my comment). The only effect of such treaties is to put honest nations at a disadvantage compared with dishonest ones.

although obviously with the utopian objective being the elimination of all armies.

Dystopian, not utopian. All you are achieving is to give tyrannical governments a free hand. "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

The Washington Naval Conference?

Must rank as the most widely-broken treaty of all time. Everybody was breaking it, right from the start. It limits battleships to 35,000 tons and within a decade, somebody is designing a 70,000 tonner. Perfect example of the futility of any sort of arms control agreement.

Also, the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty- local, true, but it is an international treaty limiting the conventional arsenals of both sides.

With the sole effect that everybody's arsenals everywhere else got instantly upgraded and those in the area affected got out of it by moving some units around.

The Hague Comferences in 1899 and 1907 had this as their ultimate goal, although they never went anywhere. If you could somehow get rid of WWI, it's possible that they could have some effect... although continuing peace for years and years and years would probably be the better cause.

It's possible the treaties could have had the effect of limiting weapons used although thats purely hypothetical. More likely that as time went on, they'd have been systematically disregarded (which is more or less what's happening now).

Because no country will trust ALL the other countries \of the world to not have weapons. If there was such a treaty what would prevent one country from developing weapons in secret? Not having a decent sized standing army is not a good way to avoid foreign invasion. If you don't believe me look at History: as Hitler was marching through Europe he avoided Swizterland because every male was required to serve in the army when they turned 18 and when they left they kept their weapon.

Absolutely correct - the idea that disarmament will acheive anything other than the triumph of tyranny is naive in the extreme. Those who champion disarmament are de-facto allies of the totalitarian dictator.
 
FFS, Bill...

If EVERYONE, that is ALL NATIONS, didn't have any armed forces... then none of your points apply.

If everyone knew that nobody was able to invade anywhere else, then nobody could justify having an army. And how can you maintain a dictatorship except by force anyway?
 
I don't think the size of armies or weapon arsenals actually cause wars. For example the Soviets had far more troops than the US did during all of the Cold War. The Russians never choose to use them against the west. Same goes for the ICBMs. It doesn't really matter if you can blow up the world ten times over if you can still do it once.
 
If EVERYONE, that is ALL NATIONS, didn't have any armed forces... then none of your points apply.

That makes no sense at all. All that your hypothetical situation means is that the first nation to rearm walks all over the rest.

If everyone knew that nobody was able to invade anywhere else, then nobody could justify having an army.

Stomping all the nations who can't defend themselves is justification enough for a tyranny. And, if all the other nations are disarmed, who or what is going to stop them.

And how can you maintain a dictatorship except by force anyway?

Who's going to stop them? Say again, those who propose disarmament are the allies of tyranny.

gtrof said:
I don't think the size of armies or weapon arsenals actually cause wars. For example the Soviets had far more troops than the US did during all of the Cold War. The Russians never choose to use them against the west. Same goes for the ICBMs. It doesn't really matter if you can blow up the world ten times over if you can still do it once.

I'd agree with the first part of that; its not the size of armies that causes wars but the lack of them. If no credible defense exists then somebody, somwhere is going to take advantage of the fact. Pacifists and disarmers are too naive to understand that.

As to blowing up the world ten times rather than once, its always good to have a margin of safety built into things. If we can blow up the world ten times over, it means we can lose 90 percent of our strategic arsenal and still blow it up once. :eek:
 
As to blowing up the world ten times rather than once, its always good to have a margin of safety built into things. If we can blow up the world ten times over, it means we can lose 90 percent of our strategic arsenal and still blow it up once. :eek:

Ah prehasp we are a former member of SAC :D

Anyway not saying we should elimnate nukes, its an impossible task, just thought maybe the less of them lying around might be a good thing.
 
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Fine.

It was obviously a fucking stupid idea then.

Well done.

EDIT: Sorry... it just doesn't seem quite so implausible as Bill is making out, I can't really explain why. May well just be me being idealistic... but it's not the infamous sea-mammal we're talking about here! :D
 
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Ah prehasp we are a former member of SAC :D

Curses! Discovered again. :rolleyes:

Seriously, the margin of safety bit is the "assured" part of Assured Destruction that's been U.S. policy since the early 1960s (contrary to popular myth, there's no 'mutual' in there). U.S. policy is that, after absorbing a first strike, we've got enough destructive power left to utterly destroy whoever launched that attack.

Anyway not saying we should elimnate nukes, its an impossible task, just thought maybe the less of them lying around might be a good thing.

The trouble is that "just a few nukes" is like being "just a little bit pregnant". There's no real difference between "a few" and "a lot" (just like there's no real difference between "eight weeks gone" and "eight months gone") the outcome is the same. It's not even clear that proliferation is entirely a bad thing; one could argue that a wider spread of nuclear weapons may actually be a stabilizing influence; India and Pakitan suggest that that may well be the case.

alt hidtorian said:
It was obviously a stupid idea then.

Unrealistic rather than stupid. In a idealized perfect world where there are no bad people, then it would make sense. The problem is, this isn't an ideal world, nor a perfect one and there are a lot of very bad people in it. That's the world we have to live in.

Sorry... it just doesn't seem quite so implausible as Bill is making out, I can't really explain why. May well just be me being idealistic.

It really is that implausible. Imagine Kim Jong Il in North Korea and a totally disarmed South Korea. Do you seriously believe he wouldn't invade and head south? And before you say he wouldn't have an army, with all the assets we have at our disposal, we still have onlya limited idea of what is going on in teh North. Without those assets, we wouldn't know what North Korea was doing until the troops crossed the border - and then its far, far too late.

Sorry, I know it's hard to swallow but this kind of idealism is what puts tyrannies into power and keeps them there. The idea really is that implausible - and thank God it is. Or we would now be living under one of those tyrannies.
 
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but Bill seems to be assuming that any disarmament means total and complete disarmament and so the first guy to find a crossbow in his attic becomes king of the world.

Of course, there are other possibilities.

The obvious one is that the monopoly on force that is currently held by national governments is instead held by a supranational body.

In that arrangement if any nation rearms then the supranational body carries out 'regime change'.
 

Thande

Donor
Wasn't disarmament taken pretty seriously in the 1930s?

Eliminate the Depression and the Nazis' rise to power and you might get somewhere, though there's still the Soviet Union to consider (and fascist Italy could at least rock the boat...)

Of course if you eliminate the Depression, you also eliminate one of the most important reasons why some governments were desperate to cut their military spending, so maybe disarmament wouldn't be as big in that case.
 
What I would suggest is having most nations relying on citizen militias for emergency defense. That way, control of arms is in the people, who usually don't like to fight wars. It also provides a reason for governments to disarm themselves.
 
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but Bill seems to be assuming that any disarmament means total and complete disarmament and so the first guy to find a crossbow in his attic becomes king of the world.

The original position was that (and I quote) "If EVERYONE, that is ALL NATIONS, didn't have any armed forces." so the position was total disarmament.

The obvious one is that the monopoly on force that is currently held by national governments is instead held by a supranational body. In that arrangement if any nation rearms then the supranational body carries out 'regime change'.

So, in this case, you're handing over a monopoly of power to an organization like The League of Nations or the United Nations. Who guards the guards - I'd suggest to you that's an extremely unstable situation that will explode as soon as said organization starts to get delusions of grandeur. Again, this works fine if we lived in a perfect world inhabited by perfect people. We don't and the history of the United Nations is a dreadful warning as to what happens when reality bites.

thande said:
Wasn't disarmament taken pretty seriously in the 1930s?Eliminate the Depression and the Nazis' rise to power and you might get somewhere, though there's still the Soviet Union to consider (and fascist Italy could at least rock the boat...) Of course if you eliminate the Depression, you also eliminate one of the most important reasons why some governments were desperate to cut their military spending, so maybe disarmament wouldn't be as big in that case.

You're spot-on with your depression comment. Without the fear of an economic recession following the end of WW1 and the Great Depression that followed that, there would have been no disarmament - in fact quite the reverse. The Washington Treaty was already falling apart by 1929 with only the US and Uk making any serious efforts to comply with it (and even in their cases they were just going through the motions - take a look at magazine capacities for example, the US "saved weight' by reducing battleship magazine allowance from 100 rounds per gun to 80 - but kept the magazines the same size. Then there were the British tricks with boiler feedwater.........). Without the depression to force things, its likely that the Washington Treaty would have collapsed around 1930/31.

Puget Sound said:
What I would suggest is having most nations relying on citizen militias for emergency defense. That way, control of arms is in the people, who usually don't like to fight wars. It also provides a reason for governments to disarm themselves.

The problem is that regular armies go through armed civilian militias like the proverbial shit through a goose. Militias are fine in irregular warfare and for rear area security etc but for front line fighting they are utterly useless. How do they operate tanks for example? Or artillery? Or aircraft and warships? How do they acquire the command control to actually fight? Without all those good things, they're just a rabble that gets sliced up.

If we treat this as an alt-history problem, I'd suggest that a major disarmament in the 1920s is about the only PoD that could result in a German victory in WW2. The rest of Europe is virtually disarmed, Germany starts rearming and gets a head lead that way. The European countries twitter and whine but take their own time before doing anything and Germany pulls father ahead. In 1939, Germany strikes west at the European countries that are still virtually defenseless. France, Italy, Spain and the rest collapse almost on the spot. Using their industrial and economic resources, Germany then takes out the Eastern European countries, thus setting up the stage for a war against the Soviet Union. By that time, the USSR is rearming but too little, too late.

Remember, the pacifist has always brother to the tyrant.
 
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