The Role of US Nuclear Weapons in the Post-Cold War Era,
Abstract
The nuclear arms race did an about-face in 1991 and became a disarmament race. The Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (STARI') treaty, signed in July 1991, marked the first time the United States and Soviet Union committed themselves to reducing the size of their strategic nuclear arsenals. The announcement of President Bush's initiatives in September 1991 marked an unprecedented step in nuclear disarmament-unilateral warhead reductions coupled with changes to the strategic nuclear alert posture and cancellation of some strategic modernization programs. These initiatives achieved their desired result when President Mikhail Gorbachev reciprocated in October 1991 with his own set of unilateral initiatives. Not to be outdone, President Bush quickly followed with a second set of initiatives in January 1992. By this time the Soviet Union had become the former Soviet Union and its new president, Boris N. Yeltsin, had also proposed a second set of unilateral initiatives. The Washington Summit agreement in June 1992 established the framework for the STARr II agreement signed in January 1993. This new agreement promises to reduce the number of US and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) strategic offensive nuclear weapons to approximately one-third of what they would have been under the STARE agreement.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1994
- Accession Number
- ADA288446
Entities
People
- Richard A. Paulsen
Organizations
- Air University