the.com/disarmament
Trusting your enemy enough to hand them the receipt for your weapons.
means The reduction or elimination of a nation's military weapons and forces, usually through treaty or agreement.
from Built from 'dis-' (undoing) plus 'arm,' which traces back to Latin 'arma' meaning weapons or tools of war — the same root that gives us 'army' and 'armor.' The word itself is a fairly modern assembly, rising to prominence in the 19th and 20th centuries as nations began formally negotiating to unbuild what they'd built up, turning 'arming' into a process with an undo button.
- origin
- from arms race fatigue, not goodwill
- nuclear version
- NPT signed 1968, nukes still rising
- verification problem
- counting warheads requires trusting the counted
- irony
- usually proposed loudest by the already-armed