During the Geneva Security Debate, titled "China's role in multilateral arms control", Ambassador Thomas Greminger stressed, "In this time of growing tensions in great-power relations, arms control agreements have become both more important but also more difficult to reach and maintain. As a matter of fact, most of the arms control architecture built in the latter stages of the Cold War and, since the end of the Cold War, has crumbled and fallen apart."

Against this backdrop, Ambassador Greminger opens the panel by introducing the four key overarching questions of this discussion: Why arms control? What forms of arms control? What role to China? How to engage with China?