The Moscow Agreements and Strategic Arms Limitation

Abstract

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which began in November 1969 and are still in progress, are the most important formal arms control negotiations of the post-1945 era. Previous negotiations have been of two kinds. Either they have been sterile polemical exchanges, lacking in seriousness — like the canvassing of rival schemes for general and complete disarmament. Or, in cases where serious discussion and bargaining have taken place, they have concerned subjects which — like the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 or the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 — are important in themselves but marginal to the central issue of the nuclear confrontation of the superpowers.

Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence, No.15 (1973).