Verification: How Much is Enough?

This classic volume, originally published in 1985, is now available again in electronic form.

The level of anxiety and suspicion between the USA and the USSR had rarely been higher than it was in 1985. Many advocates of arms control believed that effective verification would reduce tensions and lessen the risk of war. This book analyses the two main issues of verification. One is technological: what are the capabilities of various verification techniques and what is their potential? The devices and methods then employed by the two major nuclear powers and by international organizations to monitor the compliance of states with arms control or disarmament treaties are examined. The second issue is political: how did US and Soviet approaches compare, what were the roles of domestic and bureaucratic politics, and on what criteria could a workable standard of adequacy be based? In short, how much is enough? Although the study concludes that a number of significant arms control measures could already be adequately verified, modern weapons were becoming more mobile and it was becoming easier to conceal them. There was a danger that the ability to hide weapons would outstrip the ability to find them. Verification cannot promise to detect all violations; a workable standard of adequacy in verification must derive from the ability to detect militarily significant violations.

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Front matter: Title, Preface, Contents

1. Introduction
2. The technology of verification
3. The politics of verification
4. Technology and politics
5. Conclusion

Index

The whole book can also be downloaded as a single PDF file.

Allan S. Krass was Professor of Physics and Science Policy at Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts, and senior analyst of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, Massachusetts. This book was written during a sabbatical year at SIPRI.

Verification: How Much is Enough?
By Allan S. Krass

271 pp.
ISBN 0-85066-305-9 hardback

Published for SIPRI by Taylor and Francis Ltd, London
1985