Soviet-American Strategic Arms Limitation and the Limits of Co-operative Competition

Abstract

ABSTRACT The United States and the Soviet Union concluded two sets of strategic arms limitation talks – SALT I and II – during the 1970s. Drawing on recent revisionist scholarship, this analysis assesses the success of SALT I and SALT II’s relative failure and I by framing Soviet-American strategic arms control in the 1970s as an exercise in co-operative competition, the pursuit of competitive strategies through nominally co-operative means. Whilst SALT I achieved a temporary balance between the co-operative and competitive elements of arms control, SALT II’s demise was in large part due to the fundamental contradictions at the heart of both superpowers’ use of strategic arms limitation as an instrument of co-operative competition. The analysis concludes by assessing the implications of this analysis for strategic arms control in a new era of great-power rivalry.