Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

by William P. Rogers, 1969

In 1968 both the Soviet Union and the United States began the building of limited antiballistic missile sites. At the same time, both nations expressed willingness to discuss limiting nuclear arsenals and the new defensive systems. When President Richard Nixon took office in 1969 he determined to go ahead with Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between the two powers. To negotiate from what he considered a position of strength, he prevailed upon Congress to pass a new ABM program. The SALT talks themselves began at Helsinki, Finland, on November 17 and continued for about 130 intermittent meetings there and in Vienna, Austria. Progress in the conferences seemed negligible, but when Nixon visited Moscow in 1972, a two-part arms agreement was signed limiting the ABM and ICBM potential of both nations. In the speech from which the following selection is taken, Secretary of State William P. Rogers outlined what the U.S. hoped to achieve in the SALT conferences. The address was made before a meeting of Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired, on November 13, 1969, four days before the SALT negotiations began.

Next Monday in Helsinki the United States and the Soviet Union will open preliminary talks leading to what could be the most critical negotiations on disarmament ever undertaken. The two most powerful nations on earth will be seeking a way to curb what to date has been an unending competition in the strategic arms race.

The Government of the United States will enter these negotiations with serious purpose and with the hope that we can achieve balanced understandings that will benefit the cause of world peace and security. Yet we begin these negotiations knowing that they are likely to be long and complicated and with the full realization that they may not succeed.

While I will not be able to discuss specific proposals tonight, I thought it might be helpful to outline the general approach of our Government in these talks. ...

The present situation-in which both the United States and the Soviet Union could effectively destroy the other regardless of which struck first-radically weakens the rationale for continuing the arms race.

Competitive accumulation of more sophisticated weapons would not add to the basic security of either side. Militarily, it probably would produce little or no net advantage. Economically, it would divert resources needed elsewhere. Politically, it would perpetuate the tensions and fears that are the social fallout of the nuclear arms race.

So a capacity for mutual destruction leads to a mutual interest in putting a stop to the strategic nuclear arms race.

Nonetheless, technology advances remorselessly. It offers new opportunities to both sides to add to their offensive and defensive strategic systems. Both sides find it difficult to reject these opportunities in an atmosphere of rivalry and in the absence of a verifiable agreement. It raises temptations to seek strategic advantages. Yet, now such advantages cannot be hidden for long, and both sides will certainly take whatever countermeasures are necessary to preserve their retaliatory capability.

This is the situation in which the two sides now find themselves. Where national security interests may have operated in the past to stimulate the strategic arms race, those same national security interests may now operate to stop or slow down the race. The question to be faced in the strategic arms talks is whether societies with the advanced intellect to develop these awesome weapons of mass destruction have the combined wisdom to control and curtail them.

In point of fact, we have already had some successes in preliminary limitations:

• -We have a treaty banning military activities in Antarctica.

• -We have a treaty banning the orbiting of weapons of mass destruction in outer space and prohibiting the establishment of military installations on the moon or other celestial bodies.

• -We have reached agreement with the Soviet Union on the text of a treaty forbidding the emplacement of weapons of mass destruction on the ocean floors, about to be considered at the United Nations General Assembly.

These are agreements not to arm environments previously inaccessible to weapons. Manifestly, there are fewer obstacles to such agreements than there are to agreements controlling weapons already deployed or under development.

But even in already "contaminated" environments there have been two important control agreements:

• -We have negotiated and ratified a Test Ban Treaty prohibiting the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, under water, and in outer space.

• -We have negotiated, and are prepared at any time to ratify simultaneously with the Soviet Union, a Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

It should be pointed out, though, that the main objective of a Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is to prevent nonnuclear powers from acquiring atomic weapons. The treaty does not restrain any of the present nuclear powers from further development of their capabilities. The nonnuclear countries therefore tend to look upon the treaty essentially as a self-denying ordinance.

Accordingly, during the negotiations they insisted upon assurances that the nuclear powers would seriously pursue strategic arms negotiations. We concurred and incorporated a paragraph in the treaty which would require us to do so. I mention this to underscore two point:

• -First, that the disarmament agreements previously concluded have widely been regarded as confidence-building preliminary steps which hopefully might lead to more meaningful agreements on strategic arms.

• -Second, when the United States and the Soviet Union ratify the NPT, they will agree to undertake negotiations in good faith for a cessation of the nuclear arms race.

However, given the complexity of the strategic situation, the vital national interests involved, and the traditional impulses to seek protection in military strength, it is easy to be cynical about the prospects for the talks into which we are about to enter.

Nonetheless, some basis for hope exists.

First is the fact that the talks are being held at all. The diplomatic exchanges leading up to these talks were responsible in nature. And the talks themselves will require discussion of military matters by both sides in which the veil of secrecy will have to be, if not lifted, at least refashioned. These factors lead us to the hope that the talks are being entered into seriously.

Second is the matter of timing. Previous disparity in nuclear strength has been succeeded by the situation of sufficiency, of which I have already spoken. And because this condition will continue for the foreseeable future, the time, then, seems to be propitious for considering how to curb the race in which neither side in all likelihood can gain meaningful advantage.

Third is a mutuality of interest. Under present circumstances an equitable limitation on strategic nuclear weapons would strengthen the national security of both sides. If this is mutually perceived-if both sides conduct these talks in the light of that perception-the talks may accomplish an historic breakthrough in the pattern of confrontation that has characterized the postwar world. ...

The United States approaches the talks as an opportunity to rest our security on what I would call a balanced strategy.

In pursuit of this balanced strategy of security we will enter the Helsinki talks with three objectives:

• -To enhance international security by maintaining a stable U.S.-Soviet strategic relationship through limitations on the deployment of strategic armaments.

• -To halt the upward spiral of strategic arms and avoid the tensions, uncertainties, and costs of an unrestrained continuation of the strategic arms race.

• -To reduce the risk of an outbreak of nuclear war through a dialogue about issues arising from the strategic situation. ...

But there are also other stakes in these talks that come closer to home. On both sides of this strategic race there are urgent needs for resources to meet pressing domestic needs. Strategic weapons cannot solve the problems of how we live at home or how we live in the world in this last third of the 20th century. The Soviet Union, which devotes a much larger proportion of its national resources to armaments than do we, must see this as well.

Who knows the rewards if we succeed in diverting the energy, time, and attention-the manpower and brainpower-devoted to ever more sophisticated weapons to other and more worthwhile purposes? ...

To that end this Government approaches the strategic arms limitations talks in sober and serious determination to do our full part to bring a halt to this unproductive and costly competition in strategic nuclear armaments.

"SALT" redirects here. For other meanings of the word salt or acronym "SALT", see salt (disambiguation).

Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev signing a joint communiqué on the SALT treaty in Vladivostok, November 23, 1974.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks refers to two rounds of bilateral talks and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union-the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. There were two rounds of talks and agreements: SALT I and SALT II. A subsequent treaty was START.

The first ever negotiations started in Helsinki, Finland, in 1969. They were held during Apollo 12's flight - four months after astronauts from Apollo 11 had returned safely home. Primarily Focused on limiting the two countries' stocks of nuclear weapons, the treaties then led to START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). START I (a 1991 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union) and START II (a 1993 agreement between the United States and Russia) which placed specific caps on each side's number of nuclear weapons.

Contents 1 SALT I 2 SALT II 3 USA/USSR arms limitation treaties 4 See also 5 External links

SALT I

SALT I is the common name for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement, also known as Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. SALT I froze the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels, and provided for the addition of new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers only after the same number of older intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and SLBM launchers had been dismantled.

The strategic nuclear forces niche of the Soviet Union and the United States were changing in character in 1968. The U.S.'s total number of missiles had been static since 1967 at 1,054 ICBMs and 656 SLBMs, but there was an increasing number of missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) warheads being deployed. MIRV's carried multiple nuclear warheads, often with dummies, to confuse ABM systems, making MIRV defence by ABM systems increasingly difficult and expensive. One clause of the treaty required both countries to limit the number of sites protected by an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system to two each. The Soviet Union had deployed such a system around Moscow in 1966 and the United States announced an ABM program to protect twelve ICBM sites in 1967. A modified two-tier Moscow ABM system is still used. The U.S. built only one ABM site to protect Minuteman base in North Dakota where the "Safeguard Program" was deployed. Due to the system's expense and limited effectiveness, the Pentagon disbanded "Safeguard" in 1975.

Negotiations lasted from November 17, 1969 until May 1972 in a series of meetings beginning in Helsinki, with the U.S. delegation headed by Gerard C. Smith, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Subsequent sessions alternated between Vienna and Helsinki. After a long deadlock, the first results of SALT I came in May 1971, when an agreement was reached over ABM systems. Further discussion brought the negotiations to an end on May 26, 1972 in Moscow when Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement Between The United States of America and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Certain Measures With Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. A number of agreed statements were also made. This helped improve relations between the USA and the Soviet Union.

Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev sign SALT II treaty, June 18, 1979, in Vienna.

SALT II

It was a controversial experiment of negotiations between Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev from 1977 to 1979 between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which sought to curtail the manufacture of strategic nuclear weapons. It was a continuation of the progress made during the SALT I talks. SALT II was the first nuclear arms treaty which assumed real reductions in strategic forces to 2,250 of all categories of delivery vehicles on both sides. SALT II helped the U.S. to discourage the Soviets from arming their third generation ICBMs of SS-17, SS-19 and SS-18 types with many more MIRVs. In the late 1970s the USSR's missile design bureaus had developed experimental versions of these missiles equipped with anywhere from 10 to 38 thermonuclear warheads each. Additionally, the Soviets secretly agreed to reduce Tu-22M production to thirty aircraft per year and not to give them an intercontinental range. It was particularly important for the US to limit Soviet efforts in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) rearmament area. The SALT II Treaty banned new missile programs (a new missile defined as one with any key parameter 5% better than in currently deployed missiles), so both sides were forced to limit their new strategic missile types development although US preserved their most essential programs like Trident and cruise missiles, which President Carter wished to use as his main defensive weapon as they were too slow to have first strike capability. In return, the USSR could exclusively retain 308 of its so-called "heavy ICBM" launchers of the SS-18 type.

An agreement to limit strategic launchers was reached in Vienna on June 18, 1979, and was signed by Leonid Brezhnev and President of the United States Jimmy Carter. In response to the refusal of the U.S. Congress to ratify the treaty, a young member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, met with the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko, "educated him about American concerns and interests" and secured several changes that neither the U.S. Secretary of State nor President Jimmy Carter could obtain.

Six months after the signing, the Soviet Union deployed troops to Afghanistan, and in September of the same year senators including Henry M. Jackson and Frank Church discovered the so-called "Soviet brigade" on Cuba^{[citation needed]}. In light of these developments, the treaty was never formally ratified by the United States Senate. Its terms were, nonetheless, honored by both sides until 1986 when the Reagan Administration withdrew from SALT II after accusing the Soviets of violating the pact.

Subsequent discussions took place under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

USA/USSR arms limitation treaties

• Partial or Limited Test Ban Treaty (PTBT/LTBT): 1963. Also put forth by Kennedy; banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater and in space. However, neither France nor China (both Nuclear Weapon States) signed.
• Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): 1968. Established the U.S., USSR, UK, France, and China as five "Nuclear-Weapon States". Non-Nuclear Weapon states were prohibited from (among other things) possessing, manufacturing, or acquiring nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. All 187 signatories were committed to the goal of (eventual) nuclear disarmament.
• Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM): 1972. Entered into between the U.S. and USSR to limit the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against missile-delivered nuclear weapons; ended by the US in 2002.
• Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties I & II (SALT I & II): 1972 / 1979. Limited the growth of US and Soviet missile arsenals.
• Prevention of Nuclear War Agreement: 1973. Committed the U.S. and USSR to consult with one another during conditions of nuclear confrontation.
• Threshold Test Ban Treaty: 1974. Capped Nuclear tests at 150 kilotons.
• Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF): 1987. Eliminated tactical ("battlefield") nuclear devices and GLCMs from Europe.
• Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty I (START I): 1991. This was signed by George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev; reduced the numbers of U.S. and Soviet long-range missiles and nuclear warheads from 10,000 per side to 6,000 per side.
• Mutual Detargeting Treaty (MDT): 1994. U.S. and Russian missiles no longer automatically target the other country; nuclear forces are no longer operated in a manner that presumes that the two nations are adversaries.
• Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty II (START II): 1993. Will reduce the numbers of U.S. and Russian long-range missiles and nuclear warheads from 6,000 per side to 3,500-3,000 per side. (START III proposed for 2007).
• Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) 1996. Prohibits all nuclear test explosions in all environments; signed by 180 states, and ratified by 148. The United States has signed, but not ratified, the CTBT.
• Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT/Moscow Treaty (2002)). Established bilateral strategic nuclear arms reductions and a new "strategic nuclear framework"; also invited all countries to adopt non-proliferation principles aimed at preventing terrorists, or those that harbored them, from acquiring or developing all types of WMD's and related materials, equipment, and technology.

See also

• START
• Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
• Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
• Threshold Test Ban Treaty
• Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

External links

• Text of SALT I
• Text of SALT II
• Text of SALT II (cont.)
• Text of the treaty from the U.S. Department of State
• NuclearFiles.org Text of SALT II 1979
• Arms Control Today: U.S.-Soviet/Russian Nuclear Arms Control, June 2002.
• Annotated bibliography on the SALT treaties from the Alsos Digital Library

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