START Agreement Reached

The United States and Russia made big news on Friday when American President Obama and Russian President Medvedev announced an agreement on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. The bilateral arms reduction treaty is a follow-up to the START I agreement, which was signed between the US and the USSR in July 1991, just months before the latter country fell. That agreement expired in December 2009.

Information about the announcement can be found on the White House blog. According to the post, the new treaty will limit arsenals to:

• 1,550 deployed warheads, which is about 30% lower than the upper warhead limit of the Moscow Treaty;
• 800 deployed and non-deployed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers, submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear weapons; and
• 700 for deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear weapons.

There are several excellent government sources that provide information on international strategic arms control. As they often do, the Congressional Research Service provides a good introductory overview, found here. The State Department provides relevant arms data under the treaty.

For a bit of historical analysis, the Congressional Budget Office issued an in-depth analysis of the original START agreement in October 1991, just a few months after the agreement was signed. A PDF of that report can be found here; a hard copy can also be found in Fenwick Library Government Documents.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and other committees will likely hold hearings on the new treaty in the near future. Many hearings have been held over the years; Fenwick Library possesses many of these hearings on microfiche, for example here, here, here and here. Additional hearings on strategic arms control can be found via GPO Access (1995 and later) or LexisNexis (Mason only).

Full text of the original treaty can be found on the State Department's website. The State Department's Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation also provides a legal analysis of the treaty.