abstract
| - The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were two rounds of bilateral talks and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union—the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. The two rounds of talks and agreements were SALT I and SALT II. Negotiations commenced in Helsinki, Finland, in November 1969. SALT I led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an interim agreement between the two countries. Although SALT II resulted in an agreement in 1979, the United States chose not to ratify the treaty in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which took place later that year. The United States eventually withdrew from SALT II in 1986. The treaties led to START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which consisted of START I (a 1991 completed agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union) and START II (a 1993 agreement between the United States and Russia, which was never ratified), both of which proposed specific capacities on each side's number of nuclear weapons. A successor to START I, New START, entered proposal and was eventually ratified on February 2011.
|