The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold War superpowers dealt with arms control in two rounds of talks and agreements: SALT I and SALT II. Negotiations commenced in Helsinki, in November 1969. SALT I led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an interim agreement between the two countries. Although SALT II resulted in an agreement in 1979 in Vienna, in response to the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the US Senate chose not to ratify the treaty. The Supreme Soviet did not ratify it either. The agreement expired on December 31, 1985, and was not renewed, although both sides continued to respect it. The talks led to the STARTs, or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, which consisted of START I, a 1991 completed agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, and START II, a 1993 agreement between the United States and Russia which never entered into effect, both of which proposed limits on multiple-warhead capacities and other restrictions on each side's number of nuclear weapons. A successor to START I, New START, was proposed and was eventually ratified in February 2011.
SALT I Treaty SALT I is the common name for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement signed on May 26, 1972. 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. SALT I also limited land-based ICBMs that were in range from the northeastern border of the Continental United States to the northwestern border of the continental Soviet Union. In addition, SALT I limited the number of SLBM capable submarines that NATO and the United States could operate to 50 with a maximum of 800 SLBM launchers between them. If the United States or NATO were to increase that number, the Soviets could respond with increasing their arsenal by the same amount. The strategic nuclear forces of the Soviet Union and the United States were changing in character in 1968. The total number of missiles held by the United States 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. MIRVs carried multiple nuclear warheads, often with dummies, to confuse ABM systems, making MIRV defense by ABM systems increasingly difficult and expensive. Both sides were also permitted to increase their number of SLBM forces but only if they disassembled an equivalent number of older ICBMs or SLBM launchers on older submarines. One of the terms of the treaty required both countries to limit the number of deployment sites protected by an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system to one each. The idea of that system was to prevent a competition in ABM deployment between the United States and the Soviet Union. 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. After 1968, the Soviets tested a system for the SS-9 missile, otherwise known as the R-36 missile. A modified two-tier Moscow ABM system is still used. The United States built only one ABM site to protect a Minuteman base in North Dakota where the "Safeguard" Program was deployed. That base was increasingly more vulnerable to attacks by the Soviet ICBMs because of the advancement in Soviet missile technology. Negotiations lasted from November 17, 1969, to May 26, 1972, in a series of meetings beginning in Helsinki, with the American delegation headed by Gerard C. Smith, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Subsequent sessions alternated between Vienna and Helsinki. McNamara played a significant role with working to reduce the arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union. There were two distinct ways in which he worked to govern the nuclear threat. First, he thought there was a need to avoid the deployment of an ABM system from both countries. To do this, the second thing he believed was the only way to limit the tension was to have many negotiations and discussion about deterrence, holding each other responsible for keeping peace through full communication. One problem that he ran into was that limitation strategies weren't working and open to full of critiques, and the U.S. alongside Soviet continued to make new ballistic missiles. The US nuclear arsenals was far too large at that point in history to even pose for arms limitation at that point. 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 in Moscow in 1972, when U.S. President Richard Nixon and Soviet General Secretary 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. The two sides also agreed to a number of basic principles regarding appropriate conduct. Each recognized the sovereignty of the other; agreed to the principle of noninterference; and sought to promote economic, scientific, and cultural ties of mutual benefit and enrichment. Nixon was proud that his diplomatic skills made him achieve an agreement that his predecessors had been unable to reach. Nixon and Kissinger planned to link arms control to détente and to the resolution of other urgent problems through what Nixon called "linkage". David Tal argues:
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
