U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control history is central to global security today and started in the middle of the twentieth century. It started with the first atomic test at Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1945 during the Manhattan Project. The world was revolutionized overnight with the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which slaughtered over one hundred thousand civilians and forced Japan to surrender. They ushered in a new era, where war crimes were unthinkable.
The Soviet Union reacted quickly to its nuclear test in Kazakhstan, which shocked American intelligence, and set out to battle to produce ever more lethal weapons. Hydrogen bombs hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb were detonated by the United States in the early 1950s, soon followed by the Soviets. These displays of technology attested to technological superiority, but so did a history of medical exposure to radioactive poison and risk from testing sites.
When the nuclear arms race grew fierce, it had to be controlled. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established in Vienna to promote civilian nuclear science and monitor nuclear installations, but applications for the military never lagged far behind the intellect. The Soviet 1957 test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, followed by the Sputnik 1 launch, infuriated American leaders and created NASA and even more zeal for the development of missiles.
Nuclear testing became commonplace by the late 1950s. The United States, the Soviet Union, and the nd United Kingdom exploded over a hundred bombs within a single year. France and numerous other nations soon joined them, bringing security to a more complicated world. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war when Soviet missiles were found in Cuba by American spies. Following thirteen sleepless nights, there was mutual comprehension to pull back missiles and establish a direct telephone link between Washington and Moscow, an umbilical cord to the handling of future crises.
This brush with disaster created arms control. The Limited Test Ban Treaty restricted nuclear explosions in the air, outer space, and the oceans, which was a manifestation of fear of fallout. The 1968 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is a cornerstone of arms control into which the overwhelming majority of states entered into renouncing nuclear weapons, though the next five—India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and South Sudan—were out of reach of the regime.
Détente and milestone treaties were felt during the 1970s. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) produced SALT I and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that limited missile silos and submarine-launched missiles. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, however, ended it all, suspended SALT II negotiations, and prompted the U.S. to boycott the Moscow Olympics.
The Reagan administration first expanded the nuclear capability of the United States but subsequently went on to introduce sweeping proposals like the zero option and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a plan to deploy a shield of missiles in space. They surprised Soviet leaders and resulted in summits close to removing offensive nuclear weapons, although disagreements on missile defense prevented full-fledged agreements from being signed.
But all continued. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty abolished whole classes of ground-based missiles and implemented strict verification practices. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union provided a window for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which demanded deep reductions in nuclear arms.
The post-Cold War era also saw new challenges. The post-Soviet nations of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan had inherited the nuclear capability, but Russia had promised to forgo it and become a non-nuclear signatory of the NPT. Billions were pledged by the U.S. to cover denuclearization. Despite this, efforts to move ahead with reducing arsenals under START II, as well as other agagreementsere confronted with political as well as technological challenges.
In the early 2000s, America withdrew from the ABM Treaty and proceeded to develop missile defense systems against rogue-state threats, which were perceived by Russia as suspicious. Cooperative initiatives like the early-warning centers never materialized. Arms control remained high on the agenda despite the failures. The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) or the Moscow Treaty bound both countries to further cuts, although its inadequacies were universally criticized.
New focus from the Obama administration again came in the New START treaty, with enforceable limitations on intercontinental nuclear missiles. Further tensions, including regional conflicts and political competition, tested further cooperation. Withdrawal notifications for the INF Treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies were issued by the Trump administration with concern over compliance.
Most recently, with New START set to expire in a matter of days, the Biden administration renegotiated with Russia to renew it for five additional years and preserve the only remaining limit on their strategic stockpiles. The nuclear arms control history between the U.S. and Russia attests to the abiding fear of unbridled competition as well as the fitful, but occasional, hope that even on the eve of nuclear war, cooperation can be obtained.