Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence

(Martin Jones) #1
were initiated on 17 November 1969. The first round of talks, alter-
nating between Helsinki and Vienna, produced a set of agreements
(SALTI) on 26 May 1972—theAnti-Ballistic Missile(ABM)Treaty
and the Interim Agreement on Strategic Offensive Arms, both of
which restricted the parties in the type and quantity of weapons each
could possess. For example, the Interim Agreement limited the
United States to 1054 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and
the Soviet Union to 1607 ICBMs. The second round of negotiations
resulted in a set of agreements (SALT II) restricting the number of
each side’s strategic weapons. The U.S. Senate did not ratify SALTII
because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistanin 1979, but both
sides observed its major limitations until 1986.
Both SALT I and SALT II provided verification regimes that in-
cluded the use of national technical means, consisting of overhead
reconnaissance, imagery intelligence (IMINT), andsignals intelli-
gence (SIGINT) activities. The agreements specified that neither side
could obstruct monitoring activities. SALT II prohibited the use of
telemetryencryption if it impeded verification compliance with pro-
visions of the treaty.

STRATEGIC ARMS REDUCTION TREATY (START). The first
agreement, START I, signed in 1991 by President George H. W.
Bushand Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, reduced the num-
ber of U.S. and Soviet ballistic missiles by about one-third and
one-half, respectively. Because of the dissolution of the USSR in
1991, implementation was delayed until 1994 when agreements
were reached with former Soviet republics. The second agreement,
START II, signed in 1993 by President George H. W. Bush and
Russian president Boris Yeltsin, proposed more intense reduction
in strategic warheads than START I, but could be implemented
only after START I targets were met. The Russian parliament
eventually ratified STARTII, and the U.S. Senate ratified START
II in January 1996.
The two sides agreed in late 1990s to negotiate STARTIII, which
would address Russian concerns with STARTII. The goal of START
III is further to reduce the strategic arsenals of each party to a level
of 2,000 to 2,500 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. This lower
level supposedly is to assist Russia in avoiding a massive missile

194 • STRATEGIC ARMS REDUCTION TREATY

05-398 (2) Dictionary.qxd 10/20/05 6:27 AM Page 194

Free download pdf