ABSTRACT
US and Soviet policy makers have sought, with varying degrees of success, to negotiate meaningful limitations on important components of their strategic nuclear arsenals. One's views about nuclear arms control are heavily influenced by one's views about nuclear weapons and the likely implications of their use in war. The strategic arms control policies of the Soviet Union can be divided into two analytically distinct phases: from the initiation of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks in 1969 to the collapse of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks negotiations in late 1983, and from 1985 to the present. The history of Soviet arms control policy since the late 1960s is perhaps best understood as a prolonged struggle between these two competing tendencies regarding the nature and predictable consequences of war in the nuclear age. One phase in Soviet arms control policy, coinciding with the coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, seems to be informed by a very different set of core beliefs.
