A Farewell to Arms Control

By Scott Ritter

"Scott Ritter, a former U.N. weapons inspector and the author of “Waging Peace,” mourns the passing of the United Nations agency charged with monitoring Iraq’s WMD program. That agency suffered a political assassination recently to save the Bush administration any lingering embarrassment. With the closure of UNMOVIC, Ritter writes, the world has lost perhaps its last best hope for meaningful arms control and inspection.....

This capability is now forever lost with the demise of UNMOVIC, proof positive that the real problems confronting the world’s collective peace and security continue to be undermined by an American administration willing to exact any price in order to win cheap political points. Americans rightly measure the cost of the Iraq war in terms of dead and wounded American service members. Some even spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties. But scant few will reflect on the potential harm done to future generations of Americans, and others around the world, as we bid a silent farewell to meaningful arms control."