The resulting set of agreements (SALT I) included the Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM) Treaty and the Interim Agreement and Protocol on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Weapons. Both were signed by President Richard M. Nixon for the United States and Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, for the U.S.S.R. on May 26, 1972 at a summit in Moscow. Negotiations began in November 1969 in Helsinki, Finland. [1] SALT I resulted in the anti-ballistic missile treaty and an interim agreement between the two countries. Although SALT II reached an agreement in 1979, the U.S. Senate decided not to ratify the treaty in response to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which took place later that year. Nor has the Soviet legislature ratified it.
The agreement expired on December 31, 1985 and was not renewed. Both agreements were accompanied by a series of “consensual declarations” agreed and paraphrased by the heads of delegations. When both agreements were submitted to the U.S. Congress, they were also accompanied by joint agreements and unilateral declarations made during the negotiations. These should clarify specific provisions of the agreements or parts of the negotiating protocol. The three groups of points are reproduced here with the texts of the agreements. Initial efforts to halt the growth of strategic weapons at the multilateral level and the application of global systems have failed. In January 1964, the United States proposed a revised freeze on the number and characteristics of the strategic nuclear offensive and defence vehicles of the United States and the Soviet Union, which should be negotiated bilaterally, in the Geneva Disarmament Committee (ENDC). The Soviet Union did not accept this proposal because of the superiority of the United States in terms of number of weapons. When the United States proposed in 1966 and 1967 that both sides refrain from the use of missile defence (ABM), the Soviet Union proposed to include strategic offensive weapons in the debate on strategic defence weapons. This proposal was adopted by the United States, and on July 1, 1968, at the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, President Johnson announced that the United States and the USSR had reached an agreement to negotiate restrictions and reductions in both strategic offensive and defence systems.
Nixon was proud to have reached an agreement through his diplomatic capabilities that his predecessors failed to reach. Nixon and Kissinger planned to link arms control to détente and other pressing issues through what Nixon called the “link.” David Tal argues: SALT I, the first series of Arms Limitation Strategic Lectures, which was extended from November 1969 to May 1972. During this period, the United States and the Soviet Union crafted the first agreements to impose borders and restrictions on some of their central and essential weapons. In a contract to limit anti-ballistic missile systems, they pushed to end looming competition in defense systems that threatened to encourage offensive competition at even higher heights. In an interim agreement on some measures to limit strategic offensive weapons, the two nations took the first steps to verify the rivalry in their most powerful ground and sub-American nuclear offensive weapons. The agreements are linked not only in their strategic implications, but also in their relations with future negotiations on the restrictions of strategic offensive weapons. An official statement from the United States stressed the crucial importance it attaches to achieving broader restrictions on strategic offensive weapons.
