The revolutionary START Turns 30: Assessments and Prospects

... collapse of the USSR: Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine acceded to the current Russian–American treaty and committed to eliminating nuclear weapons on their territories to accede to the NPT as non-nuclear states. To a certain degree, the Treaty’s key achievement lies not solely in asserting arms control but in ensuring that all subsequent treaties resulted in progressively greater reductions in strategic nuclear arms. The comprehensive control system developed as part of START I ensured sufficient mutual confidence in compliance with the Treaty and laid the foundations for subsequent agreements,...