The United States and Strategic Arms Limitation during the Nixon-Kissinger Period: Building a Stable International System?

Abstract The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) played a key role in U.S.-Soviet relations in the early 1970s. This article reassesses some aspects of the SALT process in the light of important evidence that has become available in recent years. The key question is whether U.S. policy in the SALT negotiations was rooted in strategic stability theory—that is, in the idea that both major powers should work out an arrangement that would guarantee the survivability and effectiveness of both sides’ strategic nuclear forces, thereby reducing whatever incentive either of them might have to strike first in a crisis. The notion that U.S. policy on SALT was rooted in that theory is essentially a myth—although a myth that had important political consequences. The SALT process of the 1970s, as shaped by decisions made during the administration of Richard M. Nixon, helped pave the way for the hardening of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in the early 1980s—scarcely the result supporters of nuclear arms control had been hoping for a decade earlier.