SALT II treaty

SALT II treaty
Name	SALT II treaty
Long name	Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms
Date signed	June 18, 1979
Location signed	Vienna
Signatories	Jimmy Carter, Leonid Brezhnev
Date effective	Not formally entered into force
Condition effective	Provisions informally observed until 1986
Languages	English, Russian

SALT II treaty

The SALT II treaty was a 1979 arms control agreement negotiated between the United States and the Soviet Union intended to limit strategic nuclear delivery systems and reduce the risk of nuclear competition following earlier accords such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the SALT I agreement. It emerged from a sequence of Cold War diplomacy involving leaders and institutions including Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Leonid Brezhnev, Jimmy Carter, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the United States Senate, and it shaped subsequent accords like the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The treaty’s negotiation, technical provisions, verification arrangements, and political fate intersected with crises such as the Soviet–Afghan War and events involving figures like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Andrei Gromyko.

Background and Negotiation

Negotiations grew from the multilateral framework of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks initiated under the administrations of Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev and continued through meetings in venues such as Geneva, Vienna, and Helsinki. Delegations included negotiators from the United States Department of State, the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and technical experts from the National Security Council, Pentagon, and the Soviet General Staff. The process was informed by intelligence assessments from the Central Intelligence Agency and the KGB and by academic analysis from institutions like the Brookings Institution and the RAND Corporation. Key personalities included James Schlesinger, Paul Nitze, Andrei Gromyko, and Anatoly Dobrynin, whose interactions reflected détente-era diplomacy and were shaped by domestic politics in the United States and the Soviet Union.

Provisions and Limits

The agreement sought to cap numbers and types of strategic offensive arms, addressing systems such as intercontinental ballistic missile, submarine-launched ballistic missile, and heavy bomber forces. It established quantitative limits on deployed warheads, delivery vehicles, and throw-weight categories comparable to prior understandings from the SALT I agreement and subsequent frameworks that led toward the START I architecture. The treaty text specified ceilings for categories of ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers and introduced counting rules for multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, a concept relevant to programs overseen by the Soviet Ministry of Defense and the United States Air Force. Negotiators codified definitions to address systems like the MIRV and constrained qualitative modernization initiatives tied to programs at entities such as Lockheed Martin and Tupolev design bureaus.

Signing, Ratification, and U.S. Political Response

Leaders Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signed the agreement in Vienna on June 18, 1979; implementation depended on ratification by the United States Senate and parallel acceptance in the Supreme Soviet. In the United States, the ratification effort encountered opposition from senators aligned with figures such as Edward Kennedy and Henry M. Jackson, and debate involved testimony from officials including Cyrus Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 prompted President Jimmy Carter to withdraw the treaty from Senate consideration and to implement punitive measures involving NATO consultations, an Olympic boycott decision affecting the 1980 Summer Olympics, and increased defense postures advocated by voices like Ronald Reagan and George Shultz.

Implementation and Compliance

Although the Senate did not ratify the treaty, both the United States and the Soviet Union declared many of its provisions as informally observed through the early 1980s, managing deployments consistent with ceilings during a period of renewed strategic competition. Compliance monitoring relied on national technical means managed by agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and military commands including the Strategic Air Command and the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. Implementation intersected with modernization programs like the Trident system and the Soviet R-36 family, leading to negotiations over counting rules and conversion measures involving the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the United Nations’s de facto role in confidence-building.

Technological and Verification Measures

Verification relied heavily on national technical means encompassing satellite reconnaissance, overflight intelligence collected via platforms pioneered by programs like Corona and Lacrosse, signals intelligence from the National Security Agency, and telemetry sharing protocols proposed during talks. On-site inspection concepts, data exchanges, and notification procedures were discussed to address challenges posed by deception techniques and by advances in multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle technology developed by producers such as Boeing and NPO Mashinostroyeniya. The verification architecture influenced later verification arrangements in treaties like the START I treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention, and drew on verification theory advanced by scholars affiliated with Harvard University and Princeton University.

Impact and Legacy

SALT II shaped strategic stability debates and informed later accords including START I, the START II discussions, and the New START negotiations. It influenced defense procurement choices by contractors and bureaus such as General Dynamics, Tupolev, and Roscosmos predecessors, and affected doctrines debated within institutions like NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The treaty’s legacy is visible in arms control scholarship at centers such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and in policy shifts under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, as well as in post-Cold War arms control carried out by the Russian Federation and the United States.

Criticisms and Controversies

Controversies included debate over counting rules, the ambiguity of ceilings for MIRVed warheads, and the adequacy of verification measures in light of advances by design bureaus such as Yuzhnoye Design Office and OKB-1. Critics from the United States Senate and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation argued the treaty favored Soviet modernization programs, while Soviet hardliners contended Western systems undermined strategic parity and referenced historical grievances linked to the Yalta Conference and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact era balance of power. The political fallout from the Soviet–Afghan War and the 1980 United States presidential election turned SALT II into a symbol of the limits of détente and accelerated alternative pathways to arms control resolution.

Category:Cold War treaties Category:Nuclear arms control