Senior Policy Director John Erath wrote an op-ed in Geopolitical Monitor about arms control throughout history.
Around 1096, the Pope issued a decree banning crossbows as murderous and un-Christian weapons. Although a later Pope clarified that it was still allowable to kill heathens with crossbows, all Christian nations were supposed to refrain from the use of such devices in warfare or suffer eternal damnation. Unsurprisingly, the Pope’s attempt at medieval arms control failed, and Swiss action hero William Tell became a legend. In 12th century Europe, the primary threat to security came from armored warriors, and a crossbow could penetrate the armor of the time. If one wanted to secure one’s castle from being stormed by armored enemies, a few crossbows on the walls would have been an effective deterrent.
Almost one thousand years later, we are still trying arms control by the equivalent of banning crossbows. The Ottawa Convention banned antipersonnel landmines, yet over a million of the things have been sown in Ukraine, with more planted each day. It will come as cold comfort to Syrian villagers or Russian dissidents that the Chemical Weapons Convention made asphyxiating gas and Novichok illegal. There have even been well-meaning attempts to ban nuclear weapons on humanitarian grounds, yet there remain over 12,000 of the world’s most destructive weapons in the hands of nine countries. Just as with the crossbow ban, these efforts at arms control have been ineffective because they do not address the insecurities that have driven the acquisition of murderous weapons. Undoubtedly, there were some medieval Europeans who heeded the Pope and eschewed their crossbows, gaining the knowledge that their place in heaven was secure, but they were likely not those living in castles threatened by well-armed enemies. Similarly, of the dozens of nations which have achieved the diplomatic equivalent of paradise by agreeing to ban nuclear weapons, none are among those that felt compelled to acquire this dangerous technology in the first place. Read more
