START I (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the reduction and the limitation of strategic offensive arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 December 1994. The treaty barred its signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads and a total of 1,600 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and 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% of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. Proposed by U.S. president Ronald Reagan, it was renamed START I after negotiations began on START II. Following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Lisbon Protocol bound the successor states Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, to the terms of START, as all four were in possession of former Soviet strategic nuclear weapons. The protocol was signed in May 1992 and effective December 1994. The treaty expired on 5 December 2009. On 8 April 2010, the replacement New START Treaty was signed in Prague by U.S. president Barack Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. Following its ratification by the U.S. Senate and the Federal Assembly of Russia, the treaty went into force on 5 February 2011, extending deep reductions of American and Soviet or Russian strategic nuclear weapons through February 2026. However, on 21 February 2023, Russia suspended its participation in New START but it did not withdraw from the treaty, and clarified that it would continue to abide by the numerical limits in the treaty. On 5 February 2026, New START officially expired.
Proposal
The START proposal was first announced by U.S. president Ronald Reagan in a commencement address at his alma mater, Eureka College, on 9 May 1982, and presented by Reagan in Geneva on 29 June 1982. He proposed a dramatic reduction in strategic forces in two phases, which he referred to as SALT III. The first phase would reduce overall warhead counts on any missile type to 5,000, with an additional limit of 2,500 on ICBMs. Additionally, a total of 850 ICBMs would be allowed, with a limit of 110 "heavy throw" missiles like the SS-18 and additional limitations on the total "throw weight" of the missiles. The second phase introduced similar limits on heavy bombers and their warheads, as well as other strategic systems. The U.S. then had a commanding lead in strategic bombers. The aging B-52 force was a credible strategic threat but was equipped with only AGM-86 cruise missiles beginning in 1982 because of Soviet air defense improvements in the early 1980s. The U.S. had begun to introduce the new B-1B Lancer quasi-stealth bomber as well and was secretly developing the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) project, which would eventually result in the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. The Soviet force was of little threat to the U.S., on the other hand, as it was tasked almost entirely with attacking U.S. convoys in the Atlantic and land targets on the Eurasian landmass. Although the Soviets had 1,200 medium and heavy bombers, only 150 of them (Tupolev Tu-95s and Myasishchev M-4s) could reach North America (the latter only by in-flight refueling). They also faced difficulty penetrating U.S. airspace, which was smaller and less defended. Having too few bombers available compared to U.S. bomber numbers was evened out by the U.S. forces being required to penetrate the Soviet airspace, which is much larger and more defended. That changed in 1984, when new Tu-95MS and Tu-160 bombers appeared and were equipped with the first Soviet AS-15 cruise missiles. By limiting the phasing in, it was proposed that the U.S. would be left with a strategic advantage for a time. As Time magazine put it, "Under Reagan's ceilings, the U.S. would have to make considerably less of an adjustment in its strategic forces than would the Soviet Union. That feature of the proposal will almost certainly prompt the Soviets to charge that it is unfair and one-sided. No doubt some American arms-control advocates will agree, accusing the Administration of making the Kremlin an offer it cannot possibly accept—a deceptively equal-looking, deliberately nonnegotiable proposal that is part of what some suspect is the hardliners' secret agenda of sabotaging disarmament so that the U.S. can get on with the business of rearmament." However, Time pointed out, "The Soviets' monstrous ICBMs have given them a nearly 3-to-1 advantage over the U.S. in 'throw weight'—the cumulative power to 'throw' megatons of death and destruction at the other nation."
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