Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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However, two weeks before Vance met Gromyko in Geneva, the Soviet delegation took a big step backward: the Kremlin would still accept an upper limit of 5%, but now it wanted no limit at all on "downsizing." Gromyko improved slightly on that position, offering to settle for plus 5%, minus 20%. Vance replied that the U.S. would hold firm to a lower limit of 5%. At issue was whether the Soviets would be free to proceed with one or more new, smaller, more fuel-efficient, more accurate ICBMs under the guise that they were merely modified versions of old ICBMs...
...family?another Christmas without SALT. Ralph Earle and the permanent negotiators based in Geneva were ordered to go back to work until they resolved the remaining problems. Earle raised the July SS-18 test, plus the similar one that had taken place in December, with the newly promoted Soviet chief negotiator, Victor Karpov, who had taken Vladimir Semyonov's place. Karpov first seemed to acquiesce in the American position that a repetition of the encryption used in either of those tests after SALT II was in force would be a violation of the treaty. Then, in February, he told Earle...
...wanted to conclude a SALT II treaty with the Carter Administration after all. Then, during the week of Feb. 26, Dobrynin delivered an encouraging message to Vance: the Kremlin would accept a 10% to 12% limit on the downsizing of ICBMs. Vance held out for 5%, but the Soviets were moving in the right direction. The Secretary of State took Dobrynin to see Carter in the Oval Office. The President told the ambassador that despite disagreements over Indochina, Afghanistan, Iran and other trouble spots, the U.S. and the Soviet Union must salvage SALT and improve bilateral relations. A few days...
That left Vance and Dobrynin faced with only a pair of mostly symbolic problems involving the American Minuteman ICBM: a loophole in the warhead freeze that would 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...
...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...