SALT I and the Era of Détente
Nixon and Brezhnev signed the first strategic arms agreements in Moscow in May 1972. The negotiations had run for nearly three years and produced two documents of very different character. The interim agreement froze the number of intercontinental and submarine-launched launchers at existing levels for five years, which was a ceiling on quantity and said nothing about the warheads on each — and both sides were then fitting multiple independently targetable warheads to single missiles, so the number of weapons rose sharply under an agreement limiting missiles. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was the substantial one. It limited each side to two ABM sites, later one, on the reasoning that a defence against missiles destabilises deterrence: if either side believes it can survive a retaliation, the other has an incentive to strike first, and both then build more offensive weapons to overwhelm the defence. Codifying mutual vulnerability is a strange thing for two governments to do and it worked for thirty years. Verification was by national technical means — satellites — which both sides undertook not to interfere with, and that provision quietly legitimised reconnaissance from orbit. The agreements are the centrepiece of détente, along with the Basic Principles, trade, and the Helsinki process that followed. SALT II was signed in 1979 and never ratified after Afghanistan, and both sides observed it anyway. The United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002. The word détente also covered a good deal that was not agreed. Both sides went on arming their proxies in Africa, the Middle East and Asia throughout, and the relationship collapsed within seven years over Afghanistan.
- Year: 1972 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
