Term Paper

Nuclear weapons are the most destructive technology ever developed. From the day fission was discovered in 1938, the problem of controlling this technology has been of central importance to the human race. The world, in which this discovery was made, confused by war and paranoia made the transition from theoretical possibility into actuality inevitable. We are very fortunate that these weapons have not been used, although in some cases we have come very close. We are also fortunate that the powers involved see that we need control practices and have had conferences on disarmament for some time. The question of disarmament has been discussed at the international level ever since the end of the First World War. Between 1918 and the outbreak of the Second World War two attempts towards disarmament were the Geneva protocol of 1925, prohibiting the use in war of gases and of bacteriological methods of warfare and the Briand - Kellog Pact of 1928 which outlawed war. With the coming of nuclear weapons and the terrible destruction which they could bring about, the whole issue of disarmament became considerably more important. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks or SALT Talks was a start to arms control in early 1980’s with the Ronald Reagan administration and has survived but under different names, till today. What was the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks? What came about from the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks? What did the talks lead into and what are the results of the TALKS today? The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, in a brief description, refers to two rounds of bilateral talks and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union. Both of which are the Cold War superpowers with an abundant amount of nuclear weapons. On the issues of armament control and the disarmament of nuclear and associated weapons in each country. There were two rounds of talks and agreements, SALT I and SALT II. The negotiations where held in Helsinki, Finland in 1969. SALT I led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and to an interim agreement between the two super powers. SALT II resulted in an agreement in 1979 between the United States and Soviet Union but the United States decided not to ratify the treaty because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which took place later in 1979. The US eventually withdrew from SALT II in 1980’s. The treaties then led to START, Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which consisted of START I. START I was a 1991 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. START II was a 1993 agreement between the United States and Russia. Both START agreements were to get specific caps on each super power’s numbers of nuclear weapons. SALT I is the common name for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement, also known as Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. SALT I stopped the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at the existing levels. SALT I also provided for the addition of new submarine launched ballistic missile, SLBM, launchers only after the same number of the older intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBM, and SLBM launchers had been completely dismantled and destroyed. The strategic nuclear forces of the United States and the Soviet Union were changing in late 1960’s. The United States's total number of nuclear missiles had been static since about 1967 at plus or minus 1,054 ICBMs and 656 SLBMs .Although there was the increasing number of missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle, or MIRV, warheads being deployed. MIRV's carried multiple nuclear warheads, often with dummies, to confuse anti-ballistic missile systems, making MIRV defense by anti-ballistic missile systems increasingly difficult and expensive. One clause of the treaty required both countries to limit the number of missile sites protected by an anti-ballistic missile system to two each. The Soviet Union had deployed such a system around Moscow in the mid 1960’s and the United States announced an anti-ballistic missile program to protect twelve ICBM sites in 1967. A modified two tier Moscow anti-ballistic missile system is still used today. The United States only built one anti-ballistic missile site to protect Minuteman bases in North Dakota where the Safeguard Program was created. Because of the system's expense and limited effectiveness, the Pentagon disbanded and did away with the Safeguard Program in 1975. Negotiations from SALT I lasted from November 17, 1969, until May 1972 in a series of meetings beginning in Helsinki, Finland with the United States delegation headed by Gerard C. Smith, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. SALT I sessions alternated between Vienna and Helsinki. After a long heated deadlock, the first result of SALT I came in May 1971, when an agreement was reached over anti-ballistic missile systems. Further discussion brought the negotiations to an end on May 26, 1972, in Moscow. Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev signed both the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union on certain measures with respect to the limitation of strategic offensive arms. A number of agreed upon statements were also made. These other agreements helped to improve relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. SALT II was second set 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. SALT II was a continuation of the progress made by the SALT I talks, led by representatives from the United States and Soviet Union. SALT II was the first nuclear arms treaty which assumed actual reductions of strategic forces to 2,250 of all the different categories of delivery types and or vehicles on both sides. SALT II helped the United States to discourage the Soviet Union from arming their third generation ICBMs of SS-17, SS-19 and SS-18 types with many more Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, MIRVs. In the late 1970’s the Soviet Union’s missile design bureaus, had developed experimental versions of these missiles equipped with anywhere from 10 to 38 thermonuclear warheads each. The Soviets secretly agreed to reduce Tu-22M production to thirty aircraft per year and not to give them an intercontinental range. It was exponentially important for the United States to limit Soviet Union efforts in the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces, INF, and rearmament area. The SALT II Treaty banned new missile programs. A new missile would be defined as one with any key parameter of 5% better than in currently deployed missiles, so both sides were forced to limit their new strategic missile type development. Although, the United States preserved their most important programs like the cruise missiles. President Carter wanted to use the cruise missiles as his main defensive weapon as they were too slow to have first strike capability. On the other hand, the USSR could exclusively retain 308 of its “so called” Heavy intercontinental ballistic missile launchers of their 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 a response to the refusal of the United States’ Senate to ratify the original treaty. Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met with the Soviet Union Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko, to try an educated him about American concerns and interests. Senator Joseph Biden secured several changes that neither the United States Secretary of State nor President Jimmy Carter could obtain. Six months after the signing, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and in September of the same year, a Soviet Union combat brigade deployed to Cuba was discovered U.S. intelligence. Because of these new developments, the treaty was never formally ratified by the United States Senate. However the terms that had been discussed and agreed upon were, nonetheless, honored by both the United States and Soviet Union until 1986 when the Reagan Administration withdrew from SALT II after accusing the Soviets of violating the pact. After the United States withdrew from the SALT II agreements, new discussions took place and this lead into the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty or START, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The first START proposal was presented by United States President Ronald Reagan in Geneva on 29 June 1982. Reagan proposed a dramatic reduction in strategic forces in two phases, which he referred to as SALT III at the time. The first part would reduce overall warhead counts on any missile type to 5,000 with an additional limit of 2,500 on intercontinental ballistic missiles. However, a total of 850 intercontinental ballistic missiles would be allowed, with a limit of 110 "Heavy Throw" missiles like the SS-18, with additional limits on the total "Throw Weight" of the missiles as well. The second part would introduce similar limits on heavy bombers and their warheads, and other strategic weapon systems. Continued negotiation of the START agreements were delayed several times because United States agreement terms were considered non-negotiable by the pre-Gorbachev Soviet rulers. President Ronald Reagan's introduction of the Strategic Defense Initiative program in 1983 was viewed as a threat by the Soviet Union, and the Soviets withdrew from setting a timetable for further negotiations. Because of the withdraw, a dramatic nuclear arms race proceeded during the 1980s, and essentially ended in 1991 by nuclear parity preservation at a level of more than ten thousand strategic warheads on both sides. This treaty also stated that the United States and Russia would have 6,000 fighter aircraft, 10,000 tanks, 20,000 artillery pieces and 2,000 attack helicopters. The treaty was signed on July 31st, 1991 and enacted into work on December 5th, 1994. The treaty would bar the Soviet Union and United States from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads upon a total of 1,600 ICBMs, submarine launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers. START negotiated the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, and its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80 percent of all strategic nuclear weapons in existence at the time. START negotiations proposed by United States President Ronald Reagan, was renamed START I after negotiations began on the second START treaty. The START II negotiations got off to a slow start and some agreements were met but the Soviet Union refused to ratify the treaty and thus the two sides lost interest in the treaty. Later the United States would become more interested in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and this would lead into the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty or SORT. In 2001, President George W. Bush set a plan in motion to reduce the country’s missile forces from 6,000 to between 1,700 and 2,200. Thus the START II treaty was officially bypassed by the SORT treaty. Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin at their summit meeting in November 2001 agreed on the SORT treaty and signed it at the Moscow Summit on May 24th, 2002. Both sides agreed to reduce operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700 from 2,200 by 2012. On June 13th, 2002 the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and on the following day Soviet Union announced that it would no longer consider itself to be bounded by START II provisions. Both countries continued to pursue their own objectives. Formally Soviet Union now known as Russia to this day retains 40-75 MIRV-capable R-36M2 missiles with 10 warheads each and plans on improving them. The United States also developed Ground Based Midcourse Defense , GMD, systems to protect from small scale intercontinental ballistic missile attacks. The final treaty in line from the first SALT talks in the 1980’s is the New START or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The New START treaty replaced the SORT treaty which was due to expire in December 2012. Under the terms of the New START treaty, the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers will be reduced by half. The treaty limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 which is down nearly two thirds from the original START treaty and a 10% lower than the deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty. However the total number of deployed warheads could exceed the 1,550 limit by a few hundred because only one warhead is counted per bomber, regardless of how many it actually carries. The treaty will also limit the number of deployed and non-deployed intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 800. The number of deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments is limited to 700. The treaty also allows for satellite and remote monitoring, as well as 18 onsite inspections per year to verify the limits. These obligations must be met by both sides within seven years from the date of the treaty enters into force. The treaty will last ten years with an option to renew it for up to five more years upon agreement of both the United States and Russia. The treaty will enter into force when the United States and Russia exchange instruments of ratification, following approval by the U.S. Senate and the Federal Assembly of Russia. However, the United States began implementing the reductions even before the treaty was ratified. The New START treaty was signed on April 8th, 2010 in Prague and after ratification entered into force on February 5th, 2011. It is expected to last at least until 2021 with probability of renewing it or perhaps creating even a better treaty. From the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks to the latest New START treaty, the United Sates has had a long history of arms control any way you look at it. Nuclear weapons are the most destructive technology ever developed. From the day fission was discovered in 1938, the problem of controlling this technology has been of central importance to the human race. We are very fortunate that these weapons have not been used, although in some cases we have come very close. I feel that as long as we the human race has weapons of mass destruction, we will have the need for armament control and treaties between counties so that we do not destroy ourselves. We are also fortunate that the powers involved see that we need control practices and have had conferences on disarmament for some time. The treaties discussed in this paper show the United States and Soviet Union, evolving from having a rudimentary outlook on arms control to a more mature and maturing outlook today. We can only hope that with time more maturity will come but as long as there is armament to control we will always have the need for new and better treaties.

References 1. U.S.-Russia nuclear arms treaty finalized". USA Today/The Associated Press. 5 . http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/-start-treaty.htm. Retrieved April 1, 2012 2. Department of State – New START Treaty, treaty between the united states of America and the Russian federation on measures for the further reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms, April 8, 2010 3. Smith, Gerard C., Disarming Diplomat: The Memoirs of Ambassador Gerard C. Smith, Arms Control Negotiator 1998 4. Payne, Samuel B. The Soviet Union and SALT Cambridge, Mass. Press, 1989 5. Fain III, W. Taylor "Chronology: US-Soviet summits, 1943-1991" US Department of State Dispatch, August 14, 2009 6. "Joint News Conference of President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in Helsinki, Finland September 9, 1990" 7. Johnston, Gordon. "Revisiting the cultural Cold War," Social History, Aug 2010, Vol. 35 Issue 3, pp 290–307