ABM Treaty

Background

By the late 1960s both superpowers were developing systems to intercept incoming ICBMs. At the 1967 Glassboro summit the U.S. defense secretary, Robert McNamara, argued to Kosygin that ballistic missile defense could itself provoke an arms race and a first strike, but Kosygin rejected the reasoning. The United States first proposed an ABM treaty there, and SALT I opened in November 1969. The fundamental paradox stressed in the Soviet account was that ABM could never be absolute and was more effective against smaller attacks: a side possessing ABM gained an incentive to strike first, and the side lacking it gained a matching incentive, so nationwide ABM heightened the risk of nuclear war and undermined the deterrent logic of mutual assured destruction.

The Treaty

The treaty defined an 'ABM system' as a system to counter strategic ballistic missiles or their elements in flight trajectory, comprising interceptor missiles, launchers and radars, and prohibited deploying ABM systems for the defense of national territory or of an individual region except as expressly allowed. Originally each party could have two ABM complexes, one for the national capital and one for an ICBM silo field, each capped at 100 interceptors and 100 launchers. The two deployment areas had to be at least 1,300 km apart, and no more than fifteen ABM launchers were allowed at test ranges in total. Sea-, air- and space-based and mobile land-based ABM systems were banned, as were launchers able to fire more than one interceptor at a time and fast-reload systems. The treaty barred giving non-ABM missiles, launchers or radars ABM capabilities or testing them in an ABM mode, and allowed early-warning radars only along the national periphery and oriented outward. Verification relied on national technical means without interference or deliberate concealment, a Standing Consultative Commission was established, and the treaty was to be reviewed five years after entry into force and every five years thereafter. Its duration was unlimited, with each party retaining the right to withdraw on six months' notice if it judged extraordinary events had jeopardized its supreme interests.

Protocol and Compliance Disputes

The protocol signed at Moscow on 3 July 1974 reduced the allowed deployment to a single area. The USSR kept the Moscow A-35 system and the United States the Safeguard complex at the Grand Forks ICBM field, and each side could exercise a one-time right to switch areas during a treaty-review year with advance notification. The Russian account also states that the reduction came through an 'additional protocol' in July 1972, but the State Department's treaty text and signing record place the protocol at Moscow on 3 July 1974. In 1983 U.S. intelligence detected construction of the 90N6 'Daryal-U' radar at Yeniseysk-15 near Krasnoyarsk; its capabilities allowed use as part of an ABM system and its interior siting violated the treaty. According to a commander's memoirs it was built against the warnings of air-defense specialists under a cover story about tracking spacecraft; Moscow conceded at least recklessness, and the station was dismantled in 1990–1991. The Russian account also cites a partial U.S. violation: the 'Globus-2' radar transferred to Norway, tested as an ABM element and activated in February 2001, formally a Norwegian space-tracking radar but usable as an ABM radar, argued to breach the spirit if not the letter of the treaty.

Interpretation Disputes and SDI

The Soviet side stressed that the treaty banned only the deployment of strategic ABM systems, not their development and testing, and this point was central to the SDI dispute. When Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative on 23 March 1983, claiming consistency with ABM obligations while seeking to escape mutual assured destruction, Andropov denounced it. At the Reykjavik summit in 1986 Gorbachev demanded that SDI be confined to laboratory testing and that withdrawal be barred for ten years; Reagan refused to treat SDI as a bargaining chip, and the summit, near agreement on abolishing nuclear weapons, collapsed over that issue. The Soviet side initially saw SDI as potentially enabling a U.S. first strike but by 1987 withdrew its opposition, concluding it posed no threat. The Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations adopted a permissive, broad interpretation allowing space-based defense, drawing trenchant criticism from SALT I participants; the Soviet diplomat Valentin Falin criticized the expanded interpretation as having turned everything upside down without meeting a proper rebuff. The Clinton administration restored the narrow, traditional interpretation, and the George W. Bush administration openly acknowledged that its national missile defense plans contravened the treaty.

The Politics of the Negotiation

The Nixon administration valued the treaty because it could check the Soviet strategic nuclear threat. Kissinger told Congress on 15 June 1972 that by setting a limit to ABM defenses the treaty eliminated an area of dangerous defensive competition and reduced the incentive to continue deploying offensive systems. His private position diverged. In 1969 he told Nixon that an ABM ban was 'probably not in our interest' because it would improve Soviet retaliatory capability; he viewed Safeguard partly as a bargaining chip, and he privately acknowledged having 'no military rationale' for ICBM-defense sites. By mid-1971 momentum for sharply limiting ABMs had become irresistible. Because Congress refused to fund a Washington capital-area site, the single-site outcome of the 1974 protocol also reflected that neither side wanted a second site.

After 1991 and Termination

The U.S. State Department held that the treaty continued in force after 1991, and Russia was confirmed as the USSR's successor in January 1992. Belarus and Ukraine were treated as successors at the October 1993 ABM review conference and Kazakhstan shortly after; a 1997 memorandum of understanding established Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine as successor states, with only a single ABM system collectively permitted among them. Article II's definition of 'strategic' left room to argue that theater missile defense systems were permitted, and because such systems could also counter strategic missiles the Clinton administration negotiated amendments from 1993. The 1997 agreement permitted systems with interceptor velocities up to 5 km/s if not tested against faster targets; Russia ratified it on 4 May 2000, but Republican senators opposed it in the U.S. Senate and Clinton never submitted it, so it never entered into force. On 13 December 2001 George W. Bush gave Russia notice of withdrawal under the six-month clause, the first time in the nuclear age that the United States withdrew from a strategic arms treaty, and the treaty lapsed in June 2002. The United States subsequently operated Ground-Based Midcourse Defense based in Alaska and California and deployed sea-based Aegis BMD. Supporters said missile defense was needed against nuclear blackmail by rogue states, while critics including the ABM negotiator John Rhinelander and the former defense secretary William Perry argued that missile defense would feed fears of a U.S. first strike by blunting the retaliatory deterrent and could deal a fatal blow to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Russia ordered a nuclear build-up to counterbalance U.S. capabilities; the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty was signed in Moscow on 24 May 2002; the day after the U.S. withdrawal took effect Russia declared it would no longer abide by START II. Putin later cited the withdrawal among post-Cold War grievances and in 2018 announced new 'super weapons' in response.