Doppelter Boden: Die SALT-Verhandlungen 1963–1979 by Arvid Schors (review)

This is the most comprehensive story of the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) talks published to date. Arvid Schors, a young historian at the University of Freiburg, has used all available evidence: documents from U.S. and other Western archives, volumes with both U.S. and Soviet documents, information in academic works by other authors, and memoirs by participants in the SALT process. The fact that he gains his insights mostly from U.S. sources inevitably results in asymmetries of content. The largely divergent approaches of politicians, diplomats, and scholars in the United States and their disagreements on aims and methods are discussed in great detail, in contrast to similar information on decision-making in Moscow, which is much sparser. In addition, the detailed insight on the negotiating processes is based largely on U.S. sources. Until August 2015, when vast quantities of important documents were made available at the Russian State Archive of Recent History, few Soviet primary sources were available on the topic, and these were mostly published in translation. Schors wants to make his readers feel the original taste of the SALT processes as much as possible by quoting extensively from his sources in their original language (inserted into German sentences). This paradoxically results in Soviet leaders and military men delivering their statements in English, a language most were unable to speak.

Much attention is given to the formative period of 1963–1968, when the United States began to take an interest in a common effort by the two opposing world powers to reduce, and hopefully eliminate, the risk of nuclear war. U.S. officials thus began to work out the concept of arms control based on the idea that antagonism would be defused by agreed armament. President Lyndon Johnson made this a crucial element of U.S. policy but failed to persuade leaders in Moscow that this was the right direction to take. Only after Richard Nixon took the reins in Washington and chose Henry Kissinger to be his national security advisor did negotiations with the USSR start. At this point, pragmatic motives prevailed, including domestic considerations. The Soviet side was cautious as well. Head negotiator Vladimir Semenov was well aware that his mission entailed high personal risk: He might go too far either in accepting arms control or in seeking to avoid this outcome so carefully that he would fail as a negotiator. His opposite number, Gerard Smith, was also in an uncomfortable position, suspected by Nixon of seeking arms control at the expense of U.S. national security. As a way to control negotiations directly, the president authorized Kissinger to start back-channel talks with Soviet Ambassador Anatolii Dobrynin. Despite all handicaps, Smith and Semenov managed to build trust with each other and to reach agreement, if only on a limited scale. Although major issues were left out or papered over by merely formal compromise, the SALT 1 and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaties signed during Nixon's May 1972 visit to Moscow would not have been possible without their stubborn commitment and effort.

One major problem left unsolved in 1972 was parity of both launchers and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, which the USSR had avoided by refusing to accept maximum numbers. When, as a result largely of the Watergate scandal and Nixon's subsequent resignation, a period of uncertainty in negotiations ensued, no progress was made for an extended period of time. Only when the new President Gerald Ford took the initiative was agreement reached on a declaration of intent with Soviet Communist Party Secretary-General Leonid Brezhnev in Vladivostok in November 1974. The effort then stagnated again as a result of U.S. domestic criticism that the proposed maximum limits allowed the USSR to get what it wanted, thus fueling rather than capping the arms race. After Jimmy Carter took over in early 1977, he wanted to make a new start by radically revising what had been so far agreed. This attempt ended in...