Ken Adelman loves Shakespeare. The Reagan administration thought that the right stage for him would be the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, after its first appointee as Director, Eugene Rostow, became a bit too obstreperous. Rostow was a heavy hitter. Before coming to ACDA, he was Chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger, which beat the drums about the Soviet threat and the follies of arms control. Ken was an unknown quantity. He was tapped from the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where he happily punctured diplomatic hot air balloons and, I suspect, made sufficient time for Broadway plays. We used to car-pool our kids to Sunday school, without talking shop.

Feathers flew when Ken’s playful nature parachuted into the deadly serious world of arms control. He couldn’t resist a good quip, and none came back to haunt him more than predicting that George W. Bush’s military foray into Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” I recommend Ken’s irreverent memoir of the Reagan administration’s arms control diplomacy, The Deadly Universal Embrace (1989), as an antidote to hagiographic treatments.

In my view, the most valuable piece of writing Ken ever did was “Arms Control With and Without Agreements,” which appeared in the Winter 1984/85 issue of Foreign Affairs, just before U.S.-Soviet negotiations were about regain a pulse.

As I recall, Ken got in some hot water for this piece because of its political incorrectness. At a time when the Reagan administration was taking considerable flak that its one-sided negotiating proposals were designed to fail at the negotiating table, Ken was suggesting that treaties weren’t the be-all and end-all of nuclear diplomacy.

Here are the key passages:

Another approach [to formal accords], and to me the most promising of innovative thoughts, is arms control through individual but (where possible) parallel policies: i.e., arms control without agreements (treaties, in particular). In simple terms, each side would take measures which enhance strategic stability and reduce nuclear weapons in consultation with each other – but not necessarily in a formalized, signed agreement. Those measures could be enunciated in national policies and could be confirmed in exchanges, ideally after some understandings or at least discussions with the Soviets. Not all aspects of arms control could or should be so fashioned. But some areas may benefit from less emphasis on the formal process – whether negotiations are on or off, whether one side puts forward a new proposal or another – and far more on the results – whether there is greater stability and fewer nuclear weapons on either or both sides. If the Soviets are willing, we can attain these results together in evolving parallel policies.

Adopting this approach of individual, parallel restraint could help avoid endless problems over what programs to exclude, which to include, and how to verify them. The focus should be on areas or strategic systems of greatest military importance. Arms control without agreements could be easier to discuss with the Soviets and quicker to yield concrete results. Being less formal, such arrangements could be more easily modified if circumstances change than could legally binding treaties.

A decade-long legal framework for U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reductions is now in place. Moscow has indicated it plans to include many neuralgic issues in follow-on treaty negotiations. The Senate demands talks with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons which, if translated into treaty text, could take a very long time. The entry-into-force provision of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is the worst ever negotiated. A fissile material cutoff treaty is a long way off. China is far from ready to enter into treaties that impinge on its strategic modernization programs. The military activities of major powers in space could become far more worrisome over the next decade. Sounds like a promising time to consider useful, stabilizing measures that do not take the form of treaties.