Waving Goodby to Dr. Strangelove : Greatest arms reductions in the Nuclear Age

Over approximately the next decade the U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals together are scheduled to shrink by more than two-thirds, from 22,500 warheads to fewer than 7,000. Over the next decade, as a result, the threat of mutual and assured annihilation that has for so long hung over the lives of more than half a billion people seems destined to fade away.

No qualifiers are needed in assessing the spectacular sweep and scope of what came to fruition this week after only five months of negotiations. The Washington agreement, which dwarfs the cumulative results of all previous U.S.-Soviet strategic arms accords, represents a huge step into a new age of major-power nuclear responsibility.

Both Russia and the United States will remain nuclear giants, each possessing weapons that within a few minutes can produce more death and destruction than all the previous wars in history combined. But the agreement reached in Washington between President Bush and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin will so radically alter the mix of remaining weaponry, the ability--and whatever temptation might exist--to launch a preemptive nuclear first strike will be all but eliminated.

Each country will, however, retain the means to retaliate if attacked. For the United States, that means continuing to hold on to about 3,500 warheads; for Russia, about 3,000. But with the first-strike option removed, with the most destabilizing of Russian land-based intercontinental missiles scheduled for dramatic downgrading, the nuclear environment is destined to become vastly less threatening.

Russia will give up its most potent weapons, the multiple warheads of its giant SS-18 and SS-24 land-based missiles. Its strategic force in time will total no more than 1,200 land-based warheads, with no more than one warhead on a missile.

The United States will give up the multiple warheads on all its land-based missiles and reduce from eight to four the warheads carried by each missile in its Trident submarine fleet--leaving a total of 1,750 warheads--though the fleet itself won’t be reduced. Verification procedures for these cuts will be the same as those so arduously negotiated under the START treaty.

Yeltsin, apparently overriding opposition within the Russian military, seems to have concluded that not just the arms race but even the effort to maintain the reduced level and approximate nuclear parity envisioned in the START treaty has become unaffordable, politically no less than economically. Bush, for his part, proved willing to move beyond the previous U.S. position opposing any significant changes in American submarine-based missiles. The result is a triumph of common-sense statesmanship that is likely, and justifiably, to be remembered as one of the great positive achievements of the Nuclear Age.