START-1 Jubilee

This Sunday, 31, July marks the 25th anniversary of the signing by President Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR and President Bush Sr. of the USA of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is now known as START-1.

The path towards START was arduous. In the early 1970s, the two sides, seeking if not to stop but at least to contain the nuclear arms race, took advantage of the period of detente to sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT-1)^[i]. SALT-1 did not actually envisage reductions in the existing strategic defence and offensive potential, but banned any increase in the number of strategic carriers (in particular, the number of launch silos). The ABM Treaty prohibited development of a national anti-ballistic missile system and allowed, as an exception, to deploy a small local system to defend the capital or a ballistic missile position area. Under the agreement, the USSR created an ABM for Moscow, which is still functioning. Interestingly, the American analogue, the Safeguard system, which covered the deployment area of Minuteman ballistic missiles, virtually never functioned, having been de-activated six months after it was made operational by decision of the House of Representatives Committee as being costly and potentially ineffective. With hindsight, however, we know that the US would get its own back by withdrawing from the Treaty.

Negotiations on a logical follow-up to the arms limitation treaty continued throughout the 1970s. During this time, START-1 expired and the USSR and the USA had to declare separately that they would continue to adhere to it. The new START-2 treaty, signed in 1979^[ii], not only limited the quantity and quality of strategic nuclear weapons, but also provided for phasing them out. Yet the process of its ratification by the US Senate was suspended because of the start of the war in Afghanistan. Although the treaty never legally came into force, on the whole the two sides adhered to its provisions and it had a positive impact by holding back the arms race at the final stage of the Cold War.

Photo credit: openrussia.org

U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty in the East Room at the White House in 1987.

After Ronald Reagan was elected President of the USA and the last serious aggravation of US-USSR relations occurred, the USA, very worryingly for the USSR, threatened to build a global ABM system. Theoretical studies were carried out for this under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) programme but the USA did not withdraw from ABM, expecting to do so after working out the concept for the missile shield and completing the initial stages of its development.

Simultaneously, a crisis was brewing over the deployment by both sides of new ballistic and cruise medium-range missiles on mobile launchers in Europe. After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR, policy gradually shifted from confrontation to detente. The signing in December 1987 of the Treaty eliminating medium and shorter-range missiles (INF Treaty) marked a breakthrough because the two sides, for the first time, scrapped a whole class of nuclear weapons that they both had ready in large numbers.

Photo credit: www.defence.ru

The Don-2N radar is a key part of the Russian A-135 anti-ballistic missile system designed for the defence of the capital against ballistic missiles.

The talks on reducing strategic means of delivery and their warheads met with heavier going. Although the two sides agreed on cuts in principle, the USSR sought to link this to ending the work on SDI or at least a temporary commitment not to withdraw from the ABM. The USA, however, believing that it had the USSR on the back foot, refused to make any commitments in this field. In 1989, the USSR agreed not to link offensive arms reduction talks with American research in the field of missile defence.

As a result of the Soviet concessions, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed in Moscow on 31 July 1991. This was arguably one of several dates suggested as marking the end of the Cold War between the USSR and the USA, especially considering that the provisions of START 1 clearly favoured the USA in some details. Thus, the treaty limited deployment areas of mobile missile complexes and the number of warheads, whereas, at that time, only the USSR had such wheel- and rail-mounted complexes (American analogues were being developed but the programmes were abandoned in 1991-92). On the other hand, no limitations were imposed on sea-launched cruise missiles, in which the USA had the edge^[iii]. Officially, the common ceiling of 1600 carriers and 6000 warheads was fixed but, because of the way warheads on strategic bombers were counted, the real ceiling was higher and the USA's ceiling was higher than that of the USSR^[iv]. Yet, in reality, the two sides made bigger cuts than required.

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PARCS radar, Concrete, ND

The Treaty did not limit further development of US missile defence; the organisation in charge of SDI development was not shut down by Bush Sr. or by succeeding presidents. After being renamed twice, it now functions as the Missile Defense Agency. As a result of its activities, the USA withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002.

In spite of its unequal provisions (they could not be any different in the summer of 1991), START 1 was of big influence on the process of nuclear arms reduction. Crowning the policy of detente, it did not contribute to peace and stability inside the USSR: within two and a half weeks, the August 1991 coup would take place and, six months later, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would be dissolved. That process and serious US fears that nuclear weapons would spread uncontrollably throughout the world, led to the signing of an additional "Lisbon Protocol" in May 1992, whereby the newly-independent Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan handed over all their nuclear weapons to Russia as the legal heir to the USSR and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear powers.

Photo credit: TIME / Peter Turnley

George Bush Sr. and Mikhail Gorbachev signing START-1, 1991

As for START 1, the two sides would abide by its provisions. Its continuation could be a radical START 2, which would ban multiple warheads on ballistic missiles and thus dramatically diminish their first-strike potential. The USA’s withdrawal from ABM Treaty prompted Russia, however, to scrap START 2. The interim SORT^[v] and the currently effective START 3 signed subsequently were less rigorous and had to do mainly with quantitative reduction of arsenals, while making minor changes to their composition. START 3 is effective until 2021 (with a possible five-year extension) and voices are already being heard about the need to start working on a new agreement. The talks will certainly be made more difficult by deteriorating political confrontation between the USA and Russia. Luckily, it is a far cry from what it was in the mid-1980s, though. A more serious problem is that the sides seem to have reached a "comfort" level: further cuts of strategic nuclear forces increase the role of ballistic missile defence and tactical nuclear weapons of other nuclear powers to a level that can no longer be ignored.

A simple cut by a further “X%” would not do and diplomats of the near future face a task at least as challenging as that in the last century, when Soviet and American experts were discussing the then revolutionary idea that stockpiling of nuclear weapons had somehow to be stopped.