Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union—the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. The two rounds of talks and agreements were SALT I and SALT II.

Negotiations commenced in Helsinki, Finland, in November 1969. SALT I led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an interim agreement between the two countries. Although SALT II resulted in an agreement in 1979, the United States chose not to ratify the treaty in response to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, which took place later that year. The agreement expired on December 31, 1985 and was not renewed.

The treaties led to the STARTs, or Strategic Arms Reduction, Treaties, which consisted of START I (a 1991 completed agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union) and START II (a 1993 agreement between the United States and Russia, which was never ratified by the United States), both of which proposed specific capacities on each side's number of nuclear weapons. A successor to START I, New START, entered proposal and was eventually ratified on February 2011.