Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - ABM Treaty

ABM Treaty

As relations between the US and USSR warmed in the later years of the 1960s, the US first proposed an ABM treaty in 1967. This proposal was rejected. Following the proposal of the Sentinel and Safeguard decisions on American ABM systems, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks began in November 1969 (SALT I). By 1972 an agreement had been reached to limit strategic defensive systems. Each country was allowed two sites at which it could base a defensive system, one for the capital and one for ICBM silos (Art. III).

The treaty was signed during the 1972 Moscow Summit on May 26 by the President of the United States, Richard Nixon and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev; and ratified by the US Senate on August 3, 1972.

The 1974 Protocol reduced the number of sites to one per party, largely because neither country had developed a second site. The sites were Moscow for the USSR and Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, since its Safeguard facility was already under construction, for the US.

It was seen by many in the West as a key piece in nuclear arms control, being an implicit recognition of the need to protect the nuclear balance by ensuring neither side could hope to reduce the effects of retaliation to acceptable levels.

In the East, however, it was seen as a way to avoid having to maintain an anti-missile technology race at the same time as maintaining a missile race.

For many years the ABM Treaty was, in the West, considered one of the landmarks in arms limitations. It was perceived as requiring two enemies to agree not to deploy a potentially useful weapon, deliberately to maintain the balance of power and as such, was also taken as confirmation of the Soviet adherence to the MAD doctrine.