The START-II Treaty signed by US President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin on 3 January 1993 caps a quartercentury of strategic nuclear arms control. Since November 1969, when formal talks first began, the course of negotiations between the two nuclear powers acted as a bellwether of the state of their political and military relations. It took three years to negotiate the SALT-I agreements, which marked the heyday of detente. Growing doubts about detente stalled negotiations on a follow-on agreement for six years. The 1980s failed to produce any strategic arms agreement, reflecting in part the deteriorating US-Soviet relations in the early years of the decade. The START-I Treaty was finally signed on 31 July 1991, after nine years of negotiations. At the time, it was widely regarded as the last arms control accord of its kind. However, within 18 months a follow-on agreement had been negotiated cutting US and Russian forces by twothirds, to 3,000-3,500 on each side.