Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

• 1. Introduction

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  The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks began in Helsinki in November 1969, at a moment when the United States already held 1,054 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 656 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Two nuclear superpowers sat across a table, each capable of destroying the other many times over, trying to agree on rules for a game neither wanted to play to its end. The question hanging over every session was whether two rival nations could actually trust each other enough to stop building weapons. What followed was more than a decade of negotiations, two major treaties, one Senate rejection, and a chain of agreements that stretched all the way into the twenty-first century. How did talks that began in Finland reshape the entire architecture of nuclear arms control? And what stopped the second treaty from ever becoming law?

• 2. The Arms Race Problem

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  By 1967, the United States had stopped adding to its missile stockpile. The total sat fixed at 1,054 ICBMs and 656 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, but a quieter revolution was already underway. Missiles were being equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, known as MIRVs. A single MIRV-tipped missile could carry several nuclear warheads, often mixed with dummy decoys, all aimed at different targets. That combination made existing anti-ballistic missile defenses both difficult to operate and enormously expensive. The Soviet Union had deployed an anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow in 1966. The United States, recognizing the same threat, announced its own ABM program in 1967, designed to shield twelve ICBM sites. The two sides were now racing not only to build missiles but to neutralize each other's defenses, a spiral that made the arms race harder to contain with each passing year.

• 3. Negotiating SALT I

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  Negotiations formally opened on the 17th of November 1969, with the American side led by Gerard C. Smith, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Sessions rotated between Helsinki and Vienna, and the talks hit a prolonged deadlock before the first real result came through in May 1971, when the two sides agreed on limiting ABM systems. Robert McNamara played a significant role in shaping the American approach, arguing that avoiding ABM deployment on both sides was essential, and that sustained communication and deterrence theory were the only reliable tools for managing tension. His critics pointed out that limitation strategies were already struggling under the weight of political pressure, with both countries continuing to build new ballistic missiles throughout the process. The breakthrough finally came in Moscow in 1972, when President Richard Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed both the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement on limiting strategic offensive arms. Nixon described the result as something his predecessors had been unable to achieve, and he linked the arms control agreement explicitly to his broader strategy of detente. However, historian David Tal later argued that this linkage policy rested on the flawed assumption that the Soviet Union wanted the agreement more than the United States did.

• 4. What SALT I Actually Did

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  SALT I, signed on the 26th of May 1972, froze the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at their existing levels. New submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers could only be added if an equivalent number of older ICBM or SLBM launchers were dismantled first. The treaty also capped the combined NATO and United States SLBM-capable submarine fleet at 50 vessels, with no more than 800 SLBM launchers between them. If that number were exceeded, the Soviets were permitted to respond by expanding their own arsenal by the same amount. The ABM provisions limited each country to a single deployment site protected by an anti-ballistic missile system, a rule designed to stop both sides from investing in large-scale missile defense. The United States eventually built one ABM site in North Dakota, the Safeguard program, to protect a Minuteman missile base. That base grew increasingly vulnerable as Soviet missile technology advanced. Beyond weapons counts, the two sides also agreed to a set of basic principles: each recognized the other's sovereignty, accepted the principle of noninterference, and committed to promoting economic, scientific, and cultural ties. The agreement opened the path toward the Washington Summit of 1973 and set the stage for the next round of talks.

• 5. SALT II and Its Limits

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  Talks toward a second agreement ran from 1972 to 1979, and SALT II went further than its predecessor in one important way. It was the first nuclear arms treaty to propose actual reductions in strategic forces, with both sides agreeing to cap all categories of delivery vehicles at 2,250. The treaty banned new missile programs defined as those with any key parameter more than five percent better than missiles already in service. That rule effectively blocked further development of new fixed ICBM launcher types. Both sides would also be limited to 1,320 MIRVed ballistic missiles and long-range missiles combined. The United States retained its most essential programs, including the Trident missile and cruise missiles that President Jimmy Carter favored because they were too slow for a first-strike role. In exchange, the Soviet Union was allowed to keep 308 of its heavy ICBM launchers, the SS-18 type. A major step toward the final agreement came at the Vladivostok Summit Meeting in November 1974, when President Gerald Ford and General Secretary Brezhnev agreed on the basic framework. Carter and Brezhnev signed the finished treaty on the 18th of June 1979 at a ceremony held in the Redoutensaal of the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.

• 6. Afghanistan and the Treaty's Fate

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  Six months after the Vienna signing, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. That invasion destroyed any chance that the US Senate would ratify SALT II. Carter withdrew the treaty from Senate consideration in January 1980. The United States had also discovered that a Soviet combat brigade was stationed in Cuba, and Carter claimed the unit had arrived recently. The historical record showed otherwise: the brigade had been in Cuba since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The Supreme Soviet did not ratify the treaty either. The agreement expired on the 31st of December 1985 and was not renewed. Despite the lack of ratification, both sides continued to honor its terms until 1986. SALT II was ultimately superseded when START I was completed in 1991, a new framework that proposed limits on multiple-warhead capacities and placed stricter restrictions on each side's total nuclear arsenal. A successor to START I, known as New START, was eventually ratified in February 2011.