ABSTRACT
In December 1984 President Ronald Reagan announced that the Soviet Union and the United States would return to the bargaining tables to resume the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). The announcement, in conjunction with general public concern about the poor record of strategic arms limitation during the preceding decade, has sparked renewed interest in analyzing the possibilities for effective strategic arms control. US strategic arms limitation policy decision making during the first Nixon administration more closely resembled the propositions of the presidential politics paradigm than did perhaps any other episode in US arms control history. The Reagan administration was divided almost from the beginning about how to proceed with strategic arms limitation negotiations with the Soviet Union. In January, the Reagan administration withdrew the interim proposal and promised to provide a long-term solution by the end of the year.
