Salt II: Illusion and Reality *

Abstract

Although the SALT II treaty has been signed by President Jimmy Carter, on behalf of the US, and President Leonid Brezhnev, on behalf of the USSR, a fierce debate is raging over whether the US senate should ratify the treaty. This paper joins the debate, but adds a new dimension to it by raising questions which, as if by a tacit agreement between both the advocates and the critics of the treaty, are being kept out of the agenda. Among the gravamens of the charge against SALT in general and SALT II in particular are: that in the processes of negotiation and ratification it creates a political climate which facilitates mounting military expenditures to increase overall destructive capacity - such as the number of strategic warheads, missile accuracy, and mobility, and the variety of modes of launching warheads; that it legitimizes, not only the existing nuclear weapons and its stockpile, but also the race for more and better of the same; that it leaves untouched the real causes of arms buildup; that it provides no more dependable security system than the nuclear deterrent; that it rules out multilateral procedures involving peace-seeking and peace-keeping forces which can work for a security system based on demilitarization, beginning with a reversal of the arms race, first, through a limitation of nuclear weaponry and, then, dismantling of nuclear stockpiles; that it legitimizes and perpetuates the system of great-power dominance; that it enables the two superpowers to hold the world's peoples hostages to their nuclear-weapons policies. The article pleads for a resurgence and reaffirmation of a clear sense of right and wrong so that people can stand up and say simply, ‘making and keeping of nuclear weapons is a heinous crime against humanity, and that war as an institution is unacceptable.’