Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future - Strategic ...

In June 1967, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson raised
the ABM issue in his meeting with Soviet Premier
Aleksey Kosygin in Glasborough, NJ. Johnson said he
could delay a decision to deploy a U.S. defense system
if he could announce that talks with the Soviet Union
on the subject would start shortly. Kosygin repeated
his personal view: “Defense is moral, attack is immoral,”
and reiterated the Russian Politburo’s position
that ABM systems could only be discussed together
with setting limits for offensive weapons. 8
However, Soviet progress in ABM systems and
progress by both sides in testing multiple independently
targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) finally
convinced the Politburo that it was time to start talks.
In October 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon was
informed that Moscow was prepared to start official
negotiations on the subject. Nixon agreed and talks
opened on November 17, 1969, in Helsinki, Finland.
It took another 2 1/2 years to prepare the relevant
treaties for signature. The ABM Treaty was signed
in Moscow on May 26, 1972, the same day as the
first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT-1). The
Brezhnev leadership announced that the ABM and
SALT talks and agreements signified that both superpowers
had reached parity in their strategic capabilities,
even though by the time both agreements were
ready for signing (1971), the Soviet Union had 2,163
strategic warheads deployed, and the United States
possessed 4,632 warheads. 9 SALT-1 did not stop the
nuclear arms race: by 1981, the Soviets increased their
nuclear arsenals nearly fourfold to a total of 8,043 warheads,
while the United States more than doubled its
own numbers to 10,022. 10
It should also be understood that the Soviet leadership
at no time entertained plans to build a national
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