In 1982, under the administration of President Ronald Reagan, a new series of negotiations, the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), succeeded the negotiations that had led to the SALT Treaties of the 1970s. In July 1991, the START I Treaty was signed in Moscow by President George Bush and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. In January 1993, the START II Treaty was also signed in Moscow, by Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Both treaties involved substantial reductions; even so, START I brought the level of strategic warheads down only to about the level prevailing when SALT II was signed, and START II would bring it down to the level when SALT I was signed.
The START I Treaty, signed just months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, could only be ratified by Russia and the United States after agreements were reached with Ukraine and Belarus, also successors to the Soviet Union, that those states would relinquish Soviet strategic nuclear arms on their territory and commit themselves to join the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons as nonnuclear weapons states. The START I Treaty then went into effect in December 1994. Under this treaty, the United States reduced its ballistic missile warheads by about one‐third, and Russia by about one‐half, to totals (not specified) of about 8,000–10,000 for each side.
The START II Treaty is more ambitious, not only providing for considerably deeper reductions but also for the elimination of all MIRV warheads on land‐based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Overall, each side would be limited to no more than 3,500 strategic warheads. Bomber nuclear weapons are also counted on a more realistic basis, and hence its warhead levels were real rather than nominal.
At present, the START II Treaty has yet to be ratified by Russia, not so much owing to its terms (although some Russians object to the need to scrap all existing land‐based MIRV missile systems due to uncertainties with respect to continued U.S. observance of the ABM Treaty and a general deterioration of U.S.‐Russian relations). In addition, the START I reductions, and still more the prospective additional large START II reductions in Russian ICBM systems, pose a heavy burden in dismantling and destroying such systems under START procedures intended to assure verification.
Further reductions in Russian strategic forces, and to a much lesser extent U.S. systems, will proceed even without ratification of START II, given the inevitable obsolescence and the lack of ready replacements. But the elimination of land‐based MIRV systems, especially in Russia, and the large reduction in submarine‐launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), especially in the United States, will not take place for some years unless START II is ratified or until there is at least tacit agreement to proceed as though it had been ratified (as occurred with the SALT II Treaty).
[See also Arms Control and Disarmament; Arms Race: Nuclear Arms Race; INF Treaty.]
Bibliography
- Kerry M. Kartchner, Negotiating START: Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and the Quest for Strategic Stability, 1992
