The Limits of Arm Control

Publication Date: July 1983

Publisher: Heritage Foundation (Washington, D.C.)

Author(s): Robert Foelber

Research Area: International relations; Military and defense

Keywords: National security

Type: Report

Abstract:

The aim of strategic arms negotiations is to diminish the chances of atomic war by reducing significantly Soviet and U.S. nuclear arsenals and establishing a balance at the lower level. For more than a decade, teams from the United States and the USSR have been meeting, ostensibly to cut arms. First they produced SALT I, then SALT 11. Though arms control advocates cheered the very fact that superpower arms talks were underway, little arms control has been achieved, despite enormous effort. The main result of the talks has been to assure Moscow's superiority in key and dangerously destabilizing weapons systems.