The real stake is not any particular treaty, but the continuing mystique of arms control, epitomized by the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war in 1928.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Arms Control Mystique

"Nobody wants a repeat of last year because that was a poor show, and deeply undermines the credibility of the commission, " observed the long-time commissioner for Monaco, Frederic Briand.

BBC: Whale meeting heads for discord

The Kellogg-Briand Pact bans all war.

CNN: Why are we still in 'Vietghanistan?'

To paraphrase the English wit, Samuel Johnson, who described second marriages as "the triumph of hope over experience, " it was absolutely predictable that prohibitions imposed by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1989 Chemical Weapons Convention would be no more successful in creating universally binding international "norms" than was the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, which was supposed to ban all war.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: The Non-Triumph of Hope over Experience