Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, known as SALT, were negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union to limit strategic nuclear arms, and they produced two rounds of agreements. They began after the United States learned of a large Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile buildup and of an anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow; President Lyndon Johnson called for talks, and the formal negotiations opened in Helsinki on 17 November 1969. In the first round, President Richard Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an interim agreement on 26 May 1972 in Moscow, the first time the two powers agreed to limit the number of nuclear missiles. The ABM Treaty limited each side to 200 interceptors and two defence sites. The second round, whose framework was agreed at Vladivostok in November 1974, led to the SALT II treaty signed by Jimmy Carter and Brezhnev in Vienna on 17 June 1979, limiting each side to 2,250 delivery vehicles. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter asked the Senate on 3 January 1980 not to consider it, so it was never ratified, though both sides pledged to observe its terms until it expired in 1985.