THE COLD WAR record demonstrates the worth of hand-in-hand arms control, with Moscow and Washington proceeding by negotiation, reducing nuclear risks and costs in tandem and verifying the results in mutual confidence. The post-Cold War record, however, is producing disenchantment. Both sides find themselves armed with more weapons than they believe their security warrants, more nuclear capability than they can comfortably pay for and, in Russia's case, more than it can confidently keep operative and safe. Traditional arms control is losing its relevance to both countries' national needs.

In Russia, the scene is alarming. The Nunn-Lugar program to dismantle old Soviet weapons is working, though it is painfully underfunded. But the remaining heavy multiple-warhead land-based missiles are rusting out. Not only are maintenance funds short. Funds are lacking to build the more stable single-warhead missiles meant to replace the heavies once Moscow joins Washington in ratifying START II. The Duma has held back from ratification of this agreement, which would take warheads down by half from the current 6,000 level. Only now is the Duma moving toward early ratification on the basis that START II offers Moscow its best chance to reduce American forces to a level Russia can afford to match.

In the United States, Republican-legislated restrictions on unilateral arms reductions compel the Pentagon to buy a mix of nuclear weapons that it finds ill suited to changing strategic conditions and that prevent it from buying the overall mix of weapons it wants.

There are other ways in which American forces need to be reviewed. For one, the Pentagon has been slow to adjust to post-Soviet strategic conditions by taking nuclear weapons off a Cold War hair trigger. For another, American strategists remain cool to taking a fresh look at their longtime refusal to pledge not to use nuclear weapons first. The American attitude made sense when the Soviets prepared a huge tank attack on Western Europe. But now the American stress on the continuing utility of nuclear weapons may just weaken Washington's effort to keep other countries from going nuclear.

Now economic pressures are forcing the pace of decision-making. NATO's meeting next spring to prepare a "new strategic concept" will draw these issues into the public dialogue. The United States has to be sensitive to Russian requirements of defense and pride, but it cannot mortgage its policy to the turgid style and nationalist bent of Kremlin politics. The United States also must listen closely to its European allies -- not to be bound by them but to see how European and American concerns can be joined.

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