ABSTRACT
Signs of a developing Soviet concern over possible accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons were seen during the 1960s. By the late 1960s Soviet writers distinguished among possible technical, psychological, and political causes of "accidental war." In the very first working session of the SALT negotiations, on November 18, 1969, Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Semenov, the chief of the Soviet delegation, raised the accidental war problem as one of great importance. The SALT negotiations in the spring of 1970 plunged into proposals for limiting strategic offensive and anti-ballistic missile systems, and initial US concern that the Soviets might sidetrack the talks into the accidental war area abated. The negotiation of the accident measures agreement involved several areas of common and diverging viewpoints. Negotiation on the accident measures track developed in two phases, from April to August of 1970, and again from April to August of 1971.
