ABSTRACT
The Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov says that ‘negotiations on disarmament are possible only on the basis of strategic parity’, an idea that seems to have wide concurrence. By the early 1960s the agenda for arms control was already well established. As early as 1963, the USSR and the US signed an agreement establishing a ‘hot line’ between their capitals for rapid and direct communication between the governments in time of crisis. Also in 1963 the United States, the USSR and the United Kingdom signed and ratified, and invited other nations of the world to do the same, a Limited Test Ban Treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, open to signature by all nations, prohibited the placing of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in space orbit. The general political situation also poses difficult problems for arms control in the 1980s.
