Strategic Arms Limitation/Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (SALT/START) are the negotiations between the USA and the USSR (latterly Russia) to limit and reduce their arsenals of strategic (that is, intercontinental) offensive nuclear weapons. The first attempts to limit nuclear weapons in the context of the wider UN Disarmament Commission, created in 1952, demonstrated that bilateral negotiations between the superpowers were essential to limit their growing stocks of nuclear weapons.
The first signal to the West that the USSR might not be able to sustain development of its nuclear arsenal came in a speech by PM Georgi Malenkov in March 1954. Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party, denounced him, but adopted his policy line. By 1955 both superpowers had successfully detonated sophisticated thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs with the explosive power of millions of tons of TNT. The USA had the B-47 intercontinental bomber and the B-52 was due in service the following year. In 1957 the USSR countered by launching the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, creating a panic in the USA over the ‘missile gap’. It was in both sides' interest to avoid a cripplingly expensive and potentially cataclysmic arms race, and in 1958 both governments took the first steps in the direction of negotiated arms control. Prior to this there had been ritualistic—and totally unrealistic—calls for ‘general and complete disarmament’ but now the pattern was broken. A ‘conference of experts’—US, Soviet, and British—conferred on monitoring nuclear weapons tests, a little-appreciated turning point in post-war diplomacy. A ban on testing in the atmosphere, under the ocean, and in space was signed in Moscow in August 1963. It remains in force today.
During the period 1957-62 the Kremlin appeared to move towards détente with the West and to try to gain a position from which to dictate to them. Both were probably true. Meanwhile Pres John F. Kennedy had taken office in January 1961. The strategy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) associated with his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, implied that above a certain threshold—reached in 1964-5—additional nuclear weapons were of marginal utility. The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 warned of the dangers of nuclear confrontation but its resolution ended two and a half years of US-Soviet tension and reinforced the view that a nuclear exchange could not be won. Both superpowers now sought a limited détente in the form of the limited test ban and the establishment of the hotline, designed to prevent accidental nuclear war.
In the wake of these tentative attempts to make the world a safer place, in January 1964 the USA suggested a bilateral verifiable freeze on the number and characteristics of both nations' strategic nuclear offensive and defensive vehicles. Meanwhile other developments threatened to upset the fragile strategic nuclear balance. Other nations had fielded nuclear weapons: the UK in 1952, France in 1960, China in 1964. In 1966 the USSR introduced Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defence, followed by the USA in 1967, but discussion between the two superpowers continued. In June 1967 Pres Lyndon B. Johnson met Soviet Premier Aleksey Kosygin in New Jersey for discussions on ABM systems. Johnson and McNamara warned that the USA might be forced to respond in kind to Soviet efforts, setting off a new round in the arms race that would leave both sides worse off than before. On 1 July 1968, at the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Pres Johnson announced that the USA and the Soviet Union had agreed to negotiate limiting and reducing strategic nuclear weapons and ABM defences.
Delayed by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the first series of Strategic Arms Limitation talks (SALT I) finally began in Helsinki in November 1969. Such was the emphasis placed on strategic stability—reflecting US and, to a lesser extent, Soviet doctrine—that the first product of the two different strands of negotiation was a Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Systems, in May 1972, and an Interim Agreement on limiting strategic offensive arms, freezing the number of intercontinental missiles for five years while negotiations continued: SALT II. The thinking was that anti-ballistic missile systems, possibly able to shoot down incoming missiles, were ‘destabilizing’: they upset the delicate balance of terror. This thinking has pervaded opposition to other initiatives such as the SDI of 1983 and the subsequent less ambitious anti-missile programmes which may now have become feasible. SALT I was possible because of increased political confidence between Moscow and Washington. SALT I undoubtedly symbolized détente, but other problems in the shadow of potential global nuclear war—such as Soviet and US ventures in the Middle East—provoked dissent in the USA.
The SALT II negotiations resulted in the Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Weapons, signed in June 1979. The Treaty included reductions in nuclear arms and restraints on the development of new weapons, but it was not ratified by the US Senate, and the arms race continued. However, in December 1987 US President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, calling for the elimination, rather than just the limitation, of an entire class of nuclear weapons delivery systems. The Treaty was ratified by both countries in 1988.
Meanwhile, Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) on long-range arsenals began in 1982, and a treaty (START I) was finally signed in July 1989. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, START I was ratified by all the new (successor) states with offensive strategic nuclear forces: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The last three nations are committed fully to eliminating their nuclear stockpiles, but Russia has retained most of the USSR's strategic nuclear forces, though with greatly reduced resources to maintain them. Two years after the ratification of START I, the USA and Russia signed a second agreement, START II, further reducing each country's arsenal of long-range nuclear weapons to one-third of their 1990 levels. The US Congress ratified START II in 1996, but the Russian Duma (parliament) has, at the time of going to press, yet to agree to do so, for political rather than financial or military reasons. Russia's existing strategic nuclear force is becoming obsolete, and Russia cannot afford to retain the parity with the USA agreed under START I. Indeed, Russia would have much difficulty maintaining parity with the USA at the lower levels of START II, which limits arsenals to single warhead missiles only. Russia would actually have to increase its holdings to achieve the permitted START II levels of 3, 000 to 3, 500 warheads. This lay behind the March 1997 Presidential Summit Declaration committing both sides to negotiate further reductions to between 2, 000 and 2, 500 warheads apiece (START III), once START II has been ratified. With START II thus stalled, US-Russian relations are proceeding under START I.
Other strategic nuclear arms reductions are proceeding outside START, notably those in US tactical nuclear weapons. However, the wider international situation is increasingly complex. The UK and France have maintained their arsenals at a ‘minimum’ nuclear deterrent level. But Israel, too, has nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan both tested multiple, sophisticated nuclear devices in May 1998. and China has said it will only join the strategic nuclear disarmament process ‘at the appropriate time’, related, among other criteria, to when the US States and Russian stockpiles each fall to below 1, 000, implying, perhaps, a future, trilateral START.
The future is further complicated by other, so-called ‘rogue’ nuclear states, by the possibility of non-state nuclear terrorism, and by the spread of other (chemical and biological) weapons of mass destruction. The SALT/START process has proved effective in an essentially bilateral, bipolar context during and after the Cold War. It remains to be seen if mechanisms can evolve to deal with the new challenges of a multipolar, disordered, nuclear, biological, chemical, and information-armed world.
Bibliography
- Blacker, Coit D., Reluctant Warriors: The US, the Soviet Union and Arms Control (New York, 1987).
- Bloomfield, Lincoln P., et al., Khrushchev and the Arms Race: Soviet Interests in Arms Control and Disarmament 1954-1964 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966).
- Freedman, Lawrence, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York, 1989, 1996).
- Gray, Colin, The Soviet-American Arms Race (Lexington, Ky., 1976)
— Sebastian Roberts
