S
SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks)
A period ofde ́tentebetween the USA and the Soviet Union (formally, the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—USSR) allowed for the first serious
negotiations onarms controlbetween thesuperpowersto commence in
- A coincidence of different motives made for relatively easy and rapid
progress. The USA wished to avoid an expensivearms racewith the USSR,
in part because it was heavily involved in the financially ruinousVietnam
War. Furthermore it was very much in the USA’s interest to have the USSR
remain relatively passive while it was so heavily engaged in South-East Asia.
The USSR had been seekingnuclear paritywith the USA ever since the
Cuban missile crisisof 1962, and could not hope to achieve this if the USA
was to continue increasing its missile stock. Even given this no agreement
could have been achieved but for a specific fact about strategic nuclear war. At
least according to the US theory ofmutual assured destruction, nuclear
weapons were unlikeconventional armsbecause there was an upper limit to
the number of warheads that could possibly be needed. The USA believed that
its nuclear inventory had already reached such a level, and that adding to it
would not give any added security, so were prepared to agree to some form of
parity with the USSR. The SALT I Treaty (technically the Interim Agreement
on Strategic Offensive Arms), signed in 1972, was, however, very limited
because of verification problems. Neither country was prepared to allow on-
site inspection, so verification had to be limited to what are known as ‘national
technical means’. This essentially meant reconnaissance satellites, which could
do little more than count the total numbers of missile silos or, as SALT I’s critics
put it, ‘holes in the ground’. Very little could be ascertained about the
technology installed in the missiles, and even less about submarine-launched
ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Nevertheless, SALT I brought a degree of stability
by putting an upper limit on the total number of missiles each country could
have, based roughly on existing US force levels. SALT I was always intended as
a temporary holding operation, to be completed in a more ambitious way by a
second treaty, on which negotiations started immediately. TheAnti-Ballistic