Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty

Efficacy

Proposal

In 2001, President George W. Bush set a plan in motion to reduce the country’s missile forces from 6,000 to between 1,700 and 2,200.

Thus the START II treaty was officially bypassed by the SORT treaty, agreed to by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin at their summit meeting in November 2001, and signed at Moscow Summit on 24 May 2002. Both sides agreed to reduce operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700 from 2,200 by 2012.

On 13 June 2002, the U.S. withdrew from the ABM Treaty, and on the following day Russia announced that it would no longer consider itself to be bound by START II provisions. Both countries continued to pursue their objectives: Russia to this day retains 54 MIRV-capable RS-20/R-36M (SS-18 Satan) with 10 warheads each, 40 MIRV-capable RS-18/UR-100N (SS-19 Stiletto) with 6 warheads each and 24 MIRV-capable RS-24 Yars with 3 warheads each. The United States developed Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system to protect from small-scale ICBM attack.

Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have disposed of all their nuclear weapons or transferred them to Russia, while the U.S. and Russia have reduced the capacity of delivery vehicles to 1,600 each, with no more than 6,000 warheads.

A report by the US State Department called "Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments" which was released on July 28, 2010, stated that Russia was not in full compliance with the treaty when it expired on 5 December 2009. The report did not specifically identify Russia's compliance issues.

START II did not enter into force. On 14 April 2000 the Duma did finally ratify the treaty, in a largely symbolic move since the ratification was made contingent on preserving the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) and thereby preserving the long-standing principle of mutually assured destruction (MAD). To be specific, Russian ratification was made contingent on the U.S. Senate ratifying a September 1997 addendum to START II which included agreed statements on demarcation of strategic versus tactical missile defences. Neither of these occurred because of U.S. Senate opposition, where a faction objected to any action supportive of the existing ABM Treaty.

The START proposal was first announced by United States President Ronald Reagan in a commencement address at his alma mater, Eureka College on 9 May 1982, and presented by President Ronald Reagan in Geneva on 29 June 1982. Reagan proposed a dramatic reduction in strategic forces in two phases. The first phase would reduce overall warhead counts on any missile type to 5,000, with an additional limit of 2,500 on ICBMs (intercont. ballistic missle). Additionally, a total of 850 ICBMs would be allowed, with a limit of 110 "heavy throw" missiles like the SS-18, with additional limits on the total "throw weight" of the missiles as well. The second phase introduced similar limits on heavy bombers and their warheads, and other strategic systems as well.

Start I

Negotiations

The historic agreement started on 17 June 1992 with the signing of a 'Joint Understanding' by the presidents. The official signing of the treaty by the presidents took place on 3 January 1993. It was ratified by the U.S. Senate on 26 January 1996 with a vote of 87-4. However, Russian ratification was stalled in the Duma for many years. It was postponed a number of times to protest American military actions in Kosovo, as well as to oppose the expansion of NATO.

As the years passed, the treaty became less relevant and both sides started to lose interest in it. For the Americans, the main issue became the ABM Treaty, which forbade the deployment of a nationwide missile defense system. The United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty in June 2002, a move which Russia fiercely opposed.

START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 December 1994 The treaty barred its signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads a top a total of 1,600 inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers. START negotiated the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, and its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80 percent of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence.

Start I I

It was signed by United States President George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin on 3 January 1993, banning the use of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Hence, it is often cited as the De-MIRV-ing Agreement. It never entered into effect. Russia ratified START II on 14 April 2000, but on 14 June 2002, withdrew from the treaty in response to U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty.

Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty