U.S. AND RUSSIAN-SOVIET NUCLEAR TREATIES
In October 1963, U.S. President Kennedy signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits nuclear testing in the atmosphere, underwater, and in outer space. In June, 1963, President Kennedy dedicated what he would call one of the most important speeches of his life, at American University's commencement ceremonies, to making his case for the treaty. Deadlock ensued until early July, 1963, when Premier Khrushchev signaled his willingness to agree to a ban that would exclude underground testing. In effect, this meant the Soviet Union would agree to a test ban in the atmosphere, outer space, and under water environments. This was the position that the Western Powers had long favored as an alternative to a more comprehensive (underground environment) ban. This opened an opportunity for a three-power meeting among the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union on July 15, 1963, in Moscow. The negotiations in Moscow, reflecting the long deliberations that had gone on for nearly a decade, took relatively little time as the treaty was signed by representatives of the three governments only 21 days later.
In July 1968, the United States, Soviet Union and United Kingdom signed the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It promised that major powers: 1) would work towards disarmament, wouldn’t transfer nuclear weapons to states that didn’t have them, and 3) would share nuclear technology for peaceful civilian purposes. The agreement was made in part to address fears that arose after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963. The NPT Treaty (full title Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons) went into effect in 1970 to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and promote the peaceful uses of nuclear energy over a period of twenty-five years. In May 1995, it was extended indefinitely. Only thirteen countries have not joined the NPT. As of 2005, this treaty had been signed by 188 countries.
SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty I) was signed by Presidents Richard Nixon and Leonard Brezhnev in May 1972. The first agreement to limit the number and type of nuclear weapons systems, it reduced the number of "deployed" strategic warheads (weapons on long-range missiles and heavy bombers) to 7,000 and 8,000. After the agreement was signed the United States kept about 15,000 nuclear weapons. The Pentagon kept 3,000 to 5,000 "undeployed" weapons as a "hedge" against potential future threats. The Soviet Union increased its number of nuclear weapons from about 3,000 in 1972 to 12,000 in 1990.
The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was also signed in 1972. It aimed to reduce the risk of first strike by limiting missile defense systems. The idea was that no country would launch a first strike if it knew it could not defend itself from a retaliatory strike. The ABM Treaty agreement limited deployment of United States and Soviet anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems. A protocol signed in 1974 limited each party to a single ABM system deployment area. In 1996 the United States and Russia negotiated to modify the terms of the treaty in order to permit testing of technology against non-intercontinental delivery systems.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was signed in December 1987 by Reagan and Gorbachev. It was the first agreement to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. It mainly affected U.S. h15-based Pershing missiles and similar Soviet missiles aimed at European targets. Soviet missiles were decommissioned between August 1988 and June 1991 as part of this treaty. The INF Treaty eliminated United States and Soviet land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Most of the Soviet missiles were deployed inside the Soviet Union; all of the United States missiles were in Belgium, Italy, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), and Britain.
Arms Control After the Soviet Union Break-Up
During his first term in office, Boris Yeltsin continued the tradition, begun by Mikhail Gorbachev, of holding regular summit meetings with United States presidents. The second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) was a product of a 1993 summit with President George H.W. Bush. Western experts saw the drastic nuclear arms reductions of START II as a way for Russia to cut military expenses without sacrificing national security, at a time when nuclear parity was an increasingly expensive proposition. But as Russia's conventional military forces deteriorated and funding declined in the mid-1990s, nuclear strike capability assumed a more prominent place in national security planning. Therefore, by late 1996 Russian authorities were demanding greater limitations on sea-based nuclear warheads, in which the United States has a distinct advantage; greater latitude for deployment of land-based missiles, in which Russia is strongest; and revision of the START II restrictions on the multiple-warhead weapons that Russia considers its most formidable threat. [Source: Glenn E. Curtis, Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
In October 1996, United States secretary of defense William Perry met strong resistance when he tried to convince the State Duma and Ministry of Defense officials in Moscow that START II ratification would benefit both sides. At the same time, Russia also delayed finalizing an agreement on classification of anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs), indicating continuing sensitivity about the prospect of the United States building a missile interception system that would negate much of Russia's nuclear strike capacity. Early in 1997, Western defense experts began formulating a START III proposal that might leapfrog the START II deadlock by eliminating at least some of the most serious obstacles. But the largest obstacle was the NATO issue: already in 1995, nationalists and many moderates in the State Duma refused to even consider START II without assurances that NATO would not move eastward, and this linkage remained in early 1997.*
In the early stages of Yeltsin's second term, high-level diplomatic contact with the West was fitful and unproductive. In September a Moscow visit by German chancellor Helmut Kohl, Yeltsin's most vocal supporter among Western leaders, failed to bridge the two countries' differences on sanctions on Iraq (which Russia opposed), NATO expansion, and conditions for expanded German investment in Russia. In late December, the first foreign leader to confer with Yeltsin after his convalescence was China's prime minister Li Peng rather than a Westerner. At that time, Russia and China signed new bilateral agreements on cooperation in banking, nuclear power plant construction, and the sale of two naval destroyers to China. In early 1997, visits by Kohl and French president Jacques Chirac to Moscow produced no breakthrough on the NATO expansion issue.*
The Helsinki summit, the first such meeting since April 1996, yielded agreements on a range of economic matters; Russia was promised an increased role in the G-7, whose annual meetings were to be renamed the Summit of the Eight, and Yeltsin received United States commitments for enhanced investment and integration of Russia in global markets and support for much-coveted entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1998. Yeltsin pledged renewed support for passage of START II in the State Duma, and he supported a START III agreement that would further reduce strategic arms. The two presidents pledged support for ratification of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, which faced stiff opposition in the legislatures of both countries. Yeltsin also unexpectedly accepted an understanding of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) that would allow the United States to continue developing a limited ABM system.*
As of June 1997, Yeltsin had not made a renewed effort to gain State Duma ratification of the START II agreement, although he had promised President Clinton at the Helsinki summit that he would do so. At Helsinki the United States had eased some terms of START II to improve the treaty's prospects for passage in the Duma. [Source: Glenn E. Curtis, Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
START I
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) is the name of two treaties. START I, signed in July 1991 by the Soviet Union and the United States, significantly reduced limits for the two parties' intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and their associated launchers and warheads; submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers and warheads; and heavy bombers and their armaments, including long-range nuclear air-launched cruise missiles.
START I (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I) I was signed by Presidents George N.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. It called for the reduction of nuclear weapons of both countries to about half. of their strateic nuclear warheads (around 6,000 warheads each). Russia met the terms of START I largely by eliminating missiles it inherited from Belarus, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In May 1992, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine agreed to dismantle their nuclear weapons and return them to Russia. The United States had about 7,000 warheads as of 2001.
Russia ratified START I in November 1992. That treaty limited the United States and Russia to 1,600 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles — ICBMs) and 6,000 nuclear warheads each. (The actual number was between 7,000 and 9,000 because of the treaty's counting rules.) The treaty also set a limit of 4,900 ballistic missile warheads and 1,100 warheads mounted on mobile ICBMs. The number and configuration of bombers also was prescribed. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
Lisbon Protocol is an agreement that implemented the first phase of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The protocol is an amendment to the START agreement by which Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakstan undertook the Soviet Union's obligations under START I.
START II
START II, signed in January 1993 by Russia and the United States, further reduced strategic offensive arms of both sides by eliminating all ICBMs with multiple-warhead independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs) and reducing the overall total of warheads for each side to between 3,000 and 3,500. START II was ratified by the U.S. Senate in January 1996 with a vote of 87-4. Russia ratified it April 2000, but in June 2002, withdrew from the treaty in response to U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty.
START II was signed by Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in January 1993. It mandated a ceiling of between 3,000 and 3,500 deployed strategic weapons on each side and abolished multi-warhead missiles. START II was ratified in the U.S. Senate in 1996. Hardliners in the Duma (the Russian legislature) repeatedly blocked ratification claiming it would undermine Russian security. The treaty was not ratified by the Russian Duma until 2000 and still had not gone into affect as of August 2001 because of conditions attached by the Duma that had not been met by the United States.
START II was based on the limitations of START I and aimed to eliminate heavy ICBMs and ICBMs with multiple warheads, and the reduce total number of warheads from the nominal START I level of 6,000 to an actual figure between 3,000 and 3,500. START II called for two phases of reduction, the first of which would begin in 2000. At the end of the second phase, new reductions would be complete in all three delivery modes: land-based ICBM, submarine, and bomber. *
In March 1993, the Supreme Soviet (later in 1993 renamed the State Duma) began discussion of START II. The debate over ratification of the treaty continued sporadically for three years and showed no signs of reaching a resolution as of mid-1996. Opponents of the treaty described it as another Western effort to penetrate Russia's national security; treaty backers, including Yeltsin, argued that maintaining the nuclear force at START I levels was financially impossible for Russia, so the much lower START II level matches Russia's capabilities while holding the United States far below its potential. In any case, most of the 2,500 warheads that START II would eliminate were outmoded and scheduled for retirement by the mid-1990s. According to Western experts, in 1996 Russia had the financial resources to deploy only about 500 single-warhead ICBMs, although more than 900 were permitted under START I at that point. Also, Russia's failure to ratify START II encouraged the United States to deploy an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system that would negate much of Russia's nuclear potential. The matchup of potential United States ABM capabilities with existing Russian nuclear strike capabilities became a key consideration in the START II ratification debate. *
Nevertheless, beginning in 1995 the question of NATO expansion overshadowed other aspects of the START II debate; the more anti-Western State Duma that was seated in January 1996 made the impending expansion of NATO a primary argument against START II ratification. Some Russian treaty supporters concurred that the treaty should not be ratified unless NATO expansion plans were shelved. *
Break up of the Soviet Union and Nuclear Weapons
In the 1990s, after the break up of the Soviet Union, Russia's status as a nuclear power raised two major issues. First, the deactivation of nuclear weapons in Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union caused a series of problems that affected primarily the civilian population. Second, the rate and conditions for reduction of Russia's nuclear arsenal were matters of heated debate among military and civilian policy makers in the mid-1990s. Some experts have argued that the nuclear treaties between the U.S. and Russia have made Russia's atomic weapons less secure because they have been handed over from military to civilian control. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
The break up of the Soviet Union in 1991changed geopolitical equation of the treaties. Where there was one country with nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union, now there were several. All battlefield nuclear weapons were returned to Russia in 1992 but Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan retained thousands of warheads for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Under pressure form the United States and other countries, Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed to turnover their arsenals to Russia. Stanislav Shushkevich, the first leader of Belarus, told National Geographic, “We had 81 mobile missiles, sufficient to eradicate Europe and the United States. But who were we defending from? So I thought the sooner they were out of the country the happier we could be.”
The Ukraine looked at the issue differently. It chose to keep its 1,240 strategic nuclear weapons as deterrence against Soviet aggression and a means of bargaining with the West for financial aid. In the end it bowed to international pressure and returned its weapons to Russia in 1993.
Nuclear Disarmament Under Bush and Putin
In May 2002, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush signed an arms reduction treaty to cut the number of warheads on long range missiles in their arsenals by two thirds by 2012. This meant the U.S. was willing to reduce its arsenal from 7,000 to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads and Russia was willing to reduce its arsenal to between 900 and 1,700 warheads. In 2003, the Duma decded to put off indefinitely ratifying the U.S.-Russia nuclear arm treaty because of the United States invasion of Iraq. The United States Senate also stalled in ratifying the agreement.
Initially the deal was based on trust and friendship between Bush and Putin. Later it was decided to create a formal treaty. Russia would have probably reduced its arsenal even without an treaty because it no longer has the money to maintain it. Russia and the United States disagreed on a U.S. proposal to mothball rather than destroy many of the warheads and on Russian insistence that the treaty be legally binding. Discussions ignored short-range weapons.
Putin pushed the START II treaty and the United-Nations-sponsored Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty through the Duma. The United States Senate failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1991.
U.S. ABM Withdrawal?
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) is a 1972 agreement limiting deployment of United States and Soviet anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems. A protocol signed in 1974 limited each party to a single ABM system deployment area. In 1996 the United States and Russia negotiated to modify the terms of the treaty in order to permit testing of technology against non-intercontinental delivery systems.
In December 2001, the United States formally announced its intention to withdraw from the ABM pact. After being elected as the U.S. president, George Bush announced plans for the U.S. to build a missile defense system, apparently in violation of the 1972 ABM treaty. Bush declared that the ABM treaty was dated and the United States needed a missile defense system for protection from rouge states like Iran and North Korea. The later has developed a multiple-stage ballistic missile and nuclear weapons.
Critics felt that withdrawal from the ABM treaty would undermine the MAD (mutually assured destruction strategy). Putin expressed his objection to the plan. In 2002, the Duma condemned the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty by a vote of 326-3. In July 2001, Bush and Putin agreed to link discussions of missile defense with disarmament The has been some discussion of the United States and Russia cooperating on missile defense.
A United States anti-ballistic missile system designed to halt missiles fired from North Korea was scheduled to go online in early 2005. In 2004, the Russian government said that it was developing an entirely new nuclear missile system—in part as a response to the development of a ABM system by the U.S.—but didn’t provide any details of what the system would be like. The system is said to be designed to penetrate ABM systems. The announcement of the plan appeared to be to send a message that the Russia was not going take U.S. development of the ABM system lying down. It is not clear whether Russia can even afford to build a new nuclear weapons system.
START III and the Status of U.S.-Russian Nuclear Treaties
START III a proposed nuclear disarmament treaty between the United States and Russian. It mandates a ceiling of 1,500 deployed strategic weapons on each side. Even if START III is negotiated and ratified there will still be between 2,000 and 2,500 U.S. warheads aimed at Russian military targets and around the same number of Russian ones pointed at the U.S. .
In November 2004, it was announced that Russia and the United States destroyed about 1,000 missiles each in accordance with the START treaties. This theoretically meant that Russia had reduced its nuclear arsenal by 1,000 units to 5,000 warheads (but it had over 7,000 in 2014). The Russian nuclear defense at that time was so old and so poorly maintained there were doubts about whether the missiles would hit their targets and the bombs would go off in the event they were used.
Despite all these treaties and talk of disarmament is the United States spends $25 billion to maintain and operate is nuclear arsenal. Russia spends much less but would probably spend as much if it could. Construction and research still takes place on weapons that have been banned by the treaties as a "hedge" against future uncertainty in Russia and elsewhere in the world.
Peace Dividend and Star Wars
The peace dividend brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union helped the United States economy by reducing the defense budget and budget deficient. In 1998 the United States defense budget was 3 percent of the GNP ($266 billion) down from 6 percent in 1988 (a savings of $260 billion). Between 1990 and 1998 the number of United States army divisions was reduced from 18 to 10; the navy combat fleet dropped from 546 to 357 ships; and active air force tactical wings (72 planes) shrunk from 24 to 13.
At Reykjavik in 1986, Gorbachev was ready to strike a deal on nuclear weapons until the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, Star Wars) was brought up. In March 1983, U.S. President Reagan had announced plans for the SDI, a space-based missile system against nuclear attacks, dubbed Star Wars by the media. Concerns about Star Wars turned out to be largely unfounded. Reagan biographer Lou Cannon wrote; “Reagan did not know enough about nuclear weapons systems to formulate a policy to accomplish his objects.”
The United States launched SDI in part because of concerns that the Soviets were building powerful particle beam weapons at the P-NUTS site in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. Satellite photographs of a nuclear reactor connected to 60-foot metal spheres and tubes was viewed as evidence that the Soviets were working on a weapon that could harness the energy of a nuclear explosion and shoot it out of tube in the form of man-made lightning bolts, measured in the billions of volts, that were capable of obliterating missiles in the sky.
In 1992, Western scientists visited P-NUTS and found the satellite photographs had been misinterpreted. The Soviet particle beam program was very small and preliminary testes met with failure. The obstacles of creating such a weapon were way beyond the capability of both Russian and American scientists.
In 2004, a very comprised and limited version of a SDI missile system was installed in Alaska. In July 2004, the first 55-foot-long anti-missile missile was placed in a silo in the foothills of the Alaskan range, 107 miles southeast of Fairbanks.
Image Sources:
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, U.S. government, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated May 2016