Word: agreement
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...eight years of dealing productively with Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, the Soviets found themselves confronted in January 1977 with a largely unknown quantity. Would this new American Administration finish the work on a Strategic Arms Limitation treaty begun by Nixon and continued by Ford? The SALT I interim agreement limiting strategic offensive arms, signed by Nixon and Brezhnev in 1972, was due to expire in October 1977. Brezhnev and Ford had agreed at Vladivostok in 1974 on the framework of a new treaty to run until 1985: each side would be allowed 2,400 strategic, or intercontinental-range, weapons...
...negotiators zeroed in on an agreement, the policymakers tended to look more and more over their shoulders at Congress. The White House fired off a cable to Geneva ordering the U.S. delegation to insert an asterisk after the first reference to "treaty" in the Joint Draft Text that was being negotiated. The asterisk called attention to a footnote stipulating that the document, in its final form, might be an agreement for approval by a simple majority of both houses instead of a treaty requiring ratification by two-thirds of the Senate. The Soviets never took the asterisk terribly seriously...
...uneasy with the prospect that SALT II?which was supposed to restrain strategic nuclear arms ?might end up, willy-nilly, restricting the development and deployment of some conventionally armed tactical weapons as well. West European strategists and politicians were even more concerned. The West Germans, banned by international agreement from having nuclear weapons, were particularly anxious to have access some day to conventionally armed, ground-launched cruise missiles ? latterday buzz bombs. Throughout SALT
...have left the U.S. free to increase the Minuteman's MIRV load from three to seven, and the lingering Soviet complaint about the protective shelters over the Minuteman silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base, which the Soviets claimed blinded their spy satellites. Vance and Dobrynin might have announced an agreement two weeks ago. But the Soviets were not yet ready to commit themselves to a time and date for the Carter-Brezhnev summit, and the Administration wanted to enhance the impact by making both announcements in the same week. So the two negotiators drew out their final round over three...
...their delivery systems were most powerful and accurate. Soviet land-based missiles, or ICBMS, fall into "heavy" and "light" categories. The 1972 SALT I agreement left the Russians with more than 300 heavies, much bigger than anything the U.S. has or, under the interim agreement, would be allowed to have. The remainder of the Soviet ICBM force is made up of many rockets classified as light, but still bigger than the mainstay of the U.S. deterrent, the Minuteman ICBM...