WASHINGTON (Chatnewstv.com) — The State Department on Tuesday released a collection of declassified historical records detailing the final, complex negotiations for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), the landmark accord that ushered in deep cuts to U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals.
The documents are contained in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1989–1992, Volume XXXI, START I, 1989–1991, the second of two volumes dedicated to the treaty signed by President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow on July 31, 1991.
In recommending the treaty for ratification, Secretary of State James Baker told President Bush that the agreement was vital to American security.
“I believe that this Treaty, by significantly limiting and reducing strategic offensive arms, will reduce the risk of war and therefore enhance the national security of the United States,” Baker wrote.
The newly released volume documents a series of critical breakthroughs that paved the way for the agreement, including the Bush administration’s strategic review of arms control policies in 1989 and the implications of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
A critical diplomatic turning point detailed in the records occurred after Secretary of State James Baker met with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The Soviet side dropped its longstanding insistence on linking the START agreement to the U.S. commitment to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, a concession that removed a major obstacle to the talks.
The records confirm that the final push to agreement in the summer of 1991 was “frenetic”.
U.S. START Negotiator Linton Brooks described the breakthroughs in Washington just before the signing ceremony in Moscow as the “greatest four days in the history of arms control.”
Brooks also noted the treaty’s historical significance, saying it embodied achievements of
“equality, deep reductions, stability, predictability, and transparency,” and had an “unprecedented scope and complexity.”
The treaty contains the “most extensive and intrusive inspection regime ever included in an arms control agreement,” granting parties the right to conduct 12 types of on-site inspections and exhibitions, as well as continuous monitoring at mobile missile assembly facilities.
Upon initialing the text, Soviet Ambassador Yu. K. Nazarkin emphasized the future importance of the agreement, stating the treaty would serve as the
“foundation for the further development of the U.S.-Soviet relationship.” He added that its implementation would “require, but ultimately free, great economic resources.”
The U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms on October 1, 1992, and it entered into force on December 5, 1994.
The volume was compiled and edited by James Graham Wilson. The documents are available on the Office of the Historian website.
The volume can also be accessed here.
