ABSTRACT
The management of the United States (US)-Soviet nuclear relationship has been as much preoccupied by the question of constraining the deployment of military forces-in-being and preventing conflicts that could arise out of miscalculation and misperception as it has with the formal limitation of weapons systems as such. The discussion of "confidence-building measures" in US-Soviet relations is intended to reveal an aspect of the strategic collaboration of the two states that escapes the usual focus on nuclear arms control. In the political context of the time, as US-Soviet relations were moving closer to detente, the September 1971 US-Soviet Agreement represented an important step in the effort to devise a regime of crisis management and crisis avoidance in the superpower relationship. Since the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union and the US have focused increasing attention on joint and individual development of measures that could reduce the risk of nuclear war through accident or miscalculation to the minimum.
