Nuclear dialogue between Washington and Moscow

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia is suspending its participation in the START-3 treaty, the latest deal that limits the size of Russia’s and the United States’ nuclear arsenals.
For half a century, Washington and Moscow have maintained a dialogue on limiting the size of strategic nuclear forces. The United States and the USSR, and later its successor, Russia, are the only states that have concluded agreements that provide not only for the reduction of nuclear arsenals, but also for their regular inspections.
Nuclear weapons originated in the United States and were first used in 1945 against Japan.
After the end of World War II, Washington had a nuclear monopoly, but in 1946 it proposed that doomsday weapons be placed under UN control so that nuclear energy would only be used for peaceful purposes. . Once the UN established a control system, the United States was supposed to give up its nuclear arsenal. The project was called the Baruch Plan, after an American diplomat. The USSR torpedoed the vote on the plan at the UN Security Council.
In 1949, the USSR tested an atomic bomb, created from American secrets stolen at a time when the two states were military allies. It was the beginning of an uncontrolled nuclear arms race: the two superpowers constantly increased the number of charges and their carriers. The United States and the USSR looked at each other with growing distrust. The risk of the cold war degenerating into a “hot” conflict has always been real. However, it was initially obvious that this was the road to the abyss.
There was a growing understanding in Washington and Moscow that limiting nuclear arsenals was in the interests of both countries. In 1963, after the Caribbean crisis, which demonstrated how high the risk of starting a full-scale nuclear war was, the first step was taken – the American-Soviet-British nuclear test ban treaty was sign.
Nuclear diplomacy was a unique project for the USSR, which had never before participated in agreements to limit certain types of weapons – the United States had such experience. It is important to emphasize that the vast majority of initiatives in this direction have come from Washington and have been put forward by presidents belonging to the two main political parties in the country.
The USSR, which had lagged the United States for most of the nuclear race, had long overstated its power. It was a deliberate bluff, intended to mimic the existence of nuclear parity. So, at parades in Moscow, they showed dummies, calling them super-powerful missiles, and the Soviet leadership greatly exaggerated the number and performance characteristics of strategic weapons.
The process of direct bilateral negotiations between Washington and Moscow began in 1967, a few weeks after the Six Day War and at the height of the Vietnam War. Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin offered a meeting with Democratic President Lyndon Johnson.
The US delegation has proposed a plan to limit both strategic nuclear weapons and strategic missile defense systems. One of the most serious problems was that in the USSR at that time the civilian leadership had no control over the development of nuclear weapons: it was the prerogative of the military, for whom the disclosure of information on the main secrets was impossible.
The first agreement between Washington and Moscow, limiting the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers, was concluded a quarter of a century after the start of the nuclear race. By this time, the situation had changed significantly – mainly due to the development of technical intelligence. At first, the U2 spy planes, which could fly over the territory of the USSR at an extremely high altitude, provided valuable information about Soviet military nuclear facilities. On May 1, 1960, such a plane was shot down over Sverdlovsk, and flights were halted. . However, the United States, and a little later the USSR, had reconnaissance satellites.
In 1972, a breakthrough was made when Republican President Richard Nixon arrived in Moscow and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Interim Agreement on Certain Measures in the Field of Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (SALT-1), which froze the number of ballistic missiles for five years. This agreement turned out to be one of the key moments of “détente” in relations between the United States and the USSR, which lasted until 1979 – the beginning of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan .
Nevertheless, in less than a decade, it was possible to complete the work and sign the Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (SALT-2), which limited the number of carriers of nuclear weapons. It was signed by Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Brezhnev. The US Senate refused to ratify the treaty. It never came into force, but both countries informally complied with its terms.
The reason for the Senate’s displeasure was the development of Soviet technology to mount multiple nuclear warheads on a missile: this significantly altered the balance of power. Moreover, SALT-2 did not provide for bilateral inspections.
Republican Ronald Reagan, who replaced Carter, criticized SALT II. In turn, during his presidency, the United States also created and deployed similar systems and launched a project to create a missile defense system, the Strategic Defense Initiative. The project was potentially capable of depriving the USSR of the ability to strike American territory.
This, together with the most serious problems of the Soviet economy, which was forced to spend gigantic funds to maintain a nuclear arsenal, became the reason for success in the field of arms reduction.
In 1987, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty: the first and so far the last time in history that a decision was made to eliminate an entire class of weapons. Unlike previous agreements, also for the first time, the missile destruction process was to be monitored by inspectors. A lover of Russian proverbs, Reagan regularly used the expression “Trust, but verify”.
The process continued and became the basis for the signing of bilateral agreements – START-1 in 1991, which continued START-2 in 1993, in 2002 – the Moscow Treaty and in 2010 – START-3. All of these treaties had a positive, but not lasting, effect on relations between the two countries.
However, there has been a backlash. In 2002, Republican President George W. Bush announced that the United States was withdrawing from the ABM treaty, signed 30 years earlier, so that it could defend itself against Iranian and North Korean missiles. Russia took this decision negatively and, in response, withdrew from the START-2 treaty.
In 2012, Russia defiantly refused to participate in the Nunn-Lugar program, in which the United States funded the disposal of weapons of mass destruction. In 2013, Russian leader Vladimir Putin rejected Democratic President Barack Obama’s proposal to further reduce nuclear arsenals.
Russia also began to violate the terms of the treaties it signed. For example, in 2019 the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty after Russia created and fielded an intermediate-range cruise missile.
All these years, Russian leaders and Russian propaganda have regularly threatened Western countries and the United States with nuclear weapons. Due to Russian aggression against Ukraine, relations between Washington and Moscow have deteriorated significantly.
In 2023, the United States accused Russia of violating the terms of the last of the existing bilateral agreements – START-3: Moscow refuses to allow access to its facilities to American inspectors.
At the start of 2023, there are nine nuclear-weapon states in the world. They are armed with about 12,700 nuclear warheads, about 90% of which fall on the United States and Russia. This is several times less than during the Cold War.
Russia remains the only country in the world capable of destroying the United States with nuclear weapons. The United States is the only country in the world capable of destroying Russia. Currently, the United States and Russia are bound by only one of these treaties – START-3, the future of which is unknown.