Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
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Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) 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.
Negotiations commenced in Helsinki, Finland, in 1973.
SALT I led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an
interim agreement between the two powers. Although
SALT II resulted in an agreement in 1979, the United
States chose not to ratify the treaty in response to the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which took place later
that year. The US eventually withdrew from SALT II in
1986.
Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev signing a joint communiqué on the
SALT treaty in Vladivostok, November 24, 1974
The treaties then led to START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which consisted of START I (a 1991 agreement
between the United States, the Soviet Union) and START II (a 1993 agreement between the United States and
Russia). These placed specific caps on each side's number of nuclear weapons.
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 of the Soviet Union and the United States was 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 defense
by ABM systems increasingly difficult and expensive.
One cause 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 both 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.[1] A number of agreed statements were
also made. This helped improve relations between the U.S. and the USSR.
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
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SALT II
SALT II was a controversial experiment of negotiations
between Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev from 1972
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, led by representatives from
both countries. 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.
Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signing SALT II treaty, June 18,
1979, in Vienna.
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 Multiple independently
targetable reentry vehicles (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.
However, the 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 United States Senate 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 [2]"
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 invaded Afghanistan, and in September of the same year, the Soviet
combat brigade deployed to Cuba was discovered. (Although President Carter claimed this Soviet brigade had only
recently been deployed to Cuba, the unit had been stationed on the island since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.)[3]
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
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
Notes
[1] http:/ / www. atomicarchive. com/ Treaties/ Treaty8. shtml
[2] http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=dEsVgSRaxoUC& pg=RA1-PA144& lpg=RA1-PA144& dq=biden+ gromyko& source=web&
ots=cWCzLGgSYN& sig=hYQaq7VtRKut4ARvZTeKWACrX7Y& hl=en& sa=X& oi=book_result& resnum=1& ct=result
[3] Gaddis, John (2005). The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin. pp. 203.
Bibliography
• Burr, William (ed.), The Secret History of The ABM Treaty, 1969-1972, National Security Archive Electronic
Briefing Book No. 60, The National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., 8
November 2001, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB60/index.html
• Clearwater, John Murray, Johnson, McNamara, and the Birth of SALT and the ABM Treaty, 1963-1969
(Dissertation.Com, 1999) ISBN 978-1581120622
• Garthoff, Raymond L., "Negotiating SALT," Wilson Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 5, Autumn 1977, pp. 76-85, http://
www.jstor.org/stable/40255284
• Garthoff, Raymond L., Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, 2nd ed.
(Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1994), esp. pgs. 146-223
• Haslam, Jonathan and Theresa Osborne, SALT I: The Limitations of Arms Negotiations. U.S.-Soviet Talks Leading
to the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, 1969-1972, Pew Case Studies in
International Affairs, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., 1987
• Mahan, Erin R. and Edward C. Keefer (eds.), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXII,
SALT I, 1969–1972 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2010), http://history.state.gov/
historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v32
• Newhouse, John, Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973)
• Payne, Samuel B. The Soviet Union and SALT (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980)
• Savel'yev, Alexander' G. and Nikolay N. Detinov, The Big Five: Arms Control Decision-Making in the Soviet
Union (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995)
• Smith, Gerard C., Doubletalk: The Story of SALT I by the Chief American Negotiator (New York: Doubleday,
1980)
• Smith, Gerard C., Disarming Diplomat: The Memoirs of Ambassador Gerard C. Smith, Arms Control Negotiator
(Toronto, Ontario: Madison Books, 1996)
• Talbott, Strobe, Endgame: The Inside Story of Salt II (New York: Harpercollins, 1979)
External links
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Text of SALT I (http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/salt1.html)
Text of SALT II (http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/salt2-1.html)
Text of SALT II (cont.) (http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/salt2-2.html)
Text of the treaty from the U.S. Department of State (http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/5195.htm)
NuclearFiles.org (http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/treaties/strategic-arms-limitation-two/
trty_strategic-arms-limitation-two_1979-06-18.htm) Text of SALT II 1979
• Arms Control Today: U.S.-Soviet/Russian Nuclear Arms Control (http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_06/
factfilejune02.asp), June 2002.
• Soviet Violations (http://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/552706) from the Dean Peter
Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives (http://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/552494/
browse?type=title)
• Annotated bibliography on the SALT treaties from the Alsos Digital Library (http://alsos.wlu.edu/adv_rst.
aspx?keyword=(salt&creator=&title=&media=all&genre=all&disc=all&level=all&sortby=date&
results=10&period=15)
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Article Sources and Contributors
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Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors
File:Ford signing accord with Brehznev, November 24, 1974.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Ford_signing_accord_with_Brehznev,_November_24,_1974.jpg
License: Public Domain Contributors: White House Photograph Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Library. Photographer: David Hume Kennerly
File:Carter Brezhnev sign SALT II.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Carter_Brezhnev_sign_SALT_II.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: Photo Credit: Bill
Fitz-Patrick
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