ABSTRACT
The negotiations on the limitation of strategic arms, which were concluded in two agreements, SALT I and SALT II, marked a major change in the history of arms control negotiations, or at least this is how it was presented and how it seemed to contemporaries and scholars. Caps were put on the number of major nuclear arm systems such as anti-ballistic missiles, land- and sea-launched strategic ballistic missiles, missiles carrying Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) war heads and strategic bombers. SALT was arms versus arms, stopping the investment in arm systems that were considered as obsolete, for the sake of new and more innovative arms systems, without being seen as weak. The real issue is the trust a president has in the people he chooses to be in his cabinet and administration. There were those in the United States that saw SALT as a real means to diminish the threat of nuclear conflagration.
