From Traditional Bilateralism to Universal Multilateralism: 1961–1980

The 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 are often seen as the climax of the Cold War. Its conclusion led to the first bilateral arms reduction decisions and initiated the so-called détente movement between the two superpowers between 1962 and the mid-1970s. But the concerns that launched the conceptualisation of arms control in the United States were first linked to the realisation that the balance of power had shifted after the successful launch of the first Sputnik in 1957. This successful launch of a missile capable of sending a satellite into space but also delivering a nuclear warhead highlighted the vulnerability of American territory to atomic retaliation, and led American strategists to adapt their doctrine.

The Kennedy administration considered it essential to reduce the vulnerability of American nuclear capabilities and began a major modernization of the arsenal: the production of 1,000 Minuteman rockets, launched from silos, and the commissioning of some 40 nuclear submarines, each carrying 16 Polaris rockets, during the 1960s.

This means that the launch of bilateral nuclear arms control would not aim for disarmament but stability and de-escalation in times of crises. The goals of arms control involved, above all, the existence of a reliable system of communication between belligerents and the adoption of counterforce positions allowing for flexibility in the use of conventional and nuclear weapons. Arms control was therefore the counterpart of nuclear deterrence and the exclusive domain of the two big powers.

Arms control was thus seen as the means of preventing direct confrontation between the two protagonists, whether deliberately provoked, the result of a widening local conflict or triggered by accident, misunderstanding or miscalculation.

The first was to avoid the reckless or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons, as the Cuban crisis highlighted. In the United States, devices known as permissive action links (PAL), were put in place for this purpose.

Another example is the establishment of direct communication systems to facilitate crisis management and reduce the risk of nuclear war. The most emblematic example of this policy is the Agreement of 20 June 1963, which provided for a teletype link between Moscow and Washington, often mistakenly referred to as the “red telephone.” Later, the terrestrial relays were doubled by communication satellites (agreement of 30 September 1971).

Agreement was also reached on procedures to prevent the accidental outbreak of nuclear war (30 September 1971). Together, these measures constitute what we now call strategic nuclear risk management, which is still a major component of the P5 countries’ strategic dialogue today.

It is important to understand that it was in this context of bilateral nuclear deterrence management that the two superpowers launched the negotiation of a nuclear non-proliferation treaty in the mid-1960s, generically intended to maintain bilateral strategic stability: On 1 July

1968, a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was opened for signature, which was an agreement between the two superpowers but took into account, to some extent, the aspirations of non-nuclear weapon states. In particular, they obtained that in exchange for their renunciation of nuclear weapons, the major powers would undertake to “pursue negotiations on disarmament in good faith” (Article 6): arms control was again moving towards disarmament.

The launch of the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) process between the United States and the USSR at the end of the 1960s indicated a paradigmatic shift in American and Soviet strategic thinking, with the questioning of the notion of strategic superiority.

To the critics of SALT I, who feared that such an initiative would give the USSR a strategic advantage, Henry Kissinger (then National Security Advisor to President Nixon) replied: “What in the name of God is strategic superiority? What is the significance of it, politically, militarily, operationally, at these levels of numbers? What do you do with it?”

It is this critical new way of looking at bilateral strategic competition that Ronald Reagan would later say: “A nuclear war can never be won, and must never be fought.”

However, the argument that a nuclear war can be won did not disappear in the SALT environment, partly due to the failure of SALT II, but lost its salience in the strategic debate.

The SALT process started when bilateral talks began on November 1969 on strategic offensive armaments and defensive systems. The two sides had a disagreement on the types of weapons to be included in a treaty: the USSR insisted that US nuclear systems in Europe should be included, while the United States wanted them to be dealt with in a different framework, along with short- and medium-range Soviet systems. On May 1971, the United States and the USSR announced that they had reached an agreement on two texts: an interim agreement to limit certain strategic offensive systems and a treaty to limit anti-ballistic missiles (ABM) systems.

For the first time, a legally binding agreement set a ceiling for two categories of armaments: intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and ballistic missiles launched from submarines. Strategic bombers and other nuclear weapons deployed in Europe were not covered.

The ABM Treaty gave concrete expression to the link between the limitation of strategic defensive armaments and the limitation of strategic offensive armaments agreed by SALT. Under this Treaty, signed at the same time as SALT in May 1972, the deployment of a missile defence system on all American and Russian territory was prohibited. This system was authorised only on a single site, either the country’s capital or around an ICBM missile launch site. In this way, a common strategic vulnerability was shared by both States Parties.

The SALT process and the ABM Treaty shaped for the first time the notion of strategic stability in a concrete, coordinated and accountable way between offensive and defensive systems.

As a continuation of SALT I, SALT II brought additional limitations and defined a precise ceiling of tolerated bombers and missile launchers, with destruction of the excess. It also banned the delivery of nuclear weapons into space and the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. But the degradation of the strategic environment prevented the Treaty from entering into force, even though in reality its terms were respected by both parties.

The multilateralization of arms control from the 1960s onwards is inseparable from the global decolonization movement. It is also linked to the accession of new states to the UN international system, in a world that was gradually trying to move away from the polarization between a so-called communist pole and a so-called liberal pole. The number of neutral states increased, many of which have been very active in the field of disarmament ever since. Many non-aligned states participated to the disarmament debates from the end of the 1950s.

The first and most significant process of multilateralization of an arms control negotiation was that of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It started in the second half of the 1960s, when the negotiation was initially confined to a bilateral US-Soviet format. Incidentally, there was no article devoted to the disarmament process in the early versions of the treaty drafted by Soviet and US negotiators. UNGA Resolution 2028 of 19 November 1965 revived the negotiation of a non-proliferation treaty by formulating five principles that the text would have to respect.

Two of these principles formulated an “acceptable balance” between the obligations of nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states, as well as a place for general and complete disarmament “and, in particular, nuclear disarmament.” Nuclear disarmament was then conceived as a second “step” in a process starting with non-proliferation effort. This progress was made possible by the multilateralization of the NPT negotiating round in the mid-1960s.

Other features of this period in the 1960s and 1970s are the advancement of discussions on other universal strategic arms control instruments and the opening of multilateral discussions on the prohibition of chemical and biological weapons. After almost twenty years of a rising public anxiety, a Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water (so-called Partial Test Ban Treaty, PTBT) could eventually be negotiated and entered into force in October 1963.

After the conclusion of the NPT and thanks to a 1968 British initiative to first negotiate a treaty on biological weapons separately from chemical issues, a Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) could be negotiated in the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva from 1969 to 1972. It entered into force in March 1975. It was the launching of this separate dynamic that made it possible to negotiate a convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons in the early 1990s.

In this new arms control dynamic, the UN system played a significant role in contrast to the unsuccessful attempts of the League of Nations in the 1920s and 1930s. Whatever the changes in the name of what would become the Conference on Disarmament between 1960 and 1979 (when it became the current Conference on Disarmament), it grew from the original 10 nations to 31 nations in 1975 (the Conference on Disarmament currently has 65 nations). This growth was not accompanied by a slowdown in conventional action, contrary to what one might spontaneously think.