Verification in the Cold War

Take a drive down memory lane!

Stop and see the sights! 

Text Box: 1991- START includes “12 types of on-site inspections and exhibitions as well as detailed provisions for data exchanges, notifications, telemetry, monitoring and other cooperative measures.”  It sets precedents in monitoring.Text Box: 1988- The INF Treaty is the first to include on-site inspections.  It also increased data exchanges, and for the first time transparency became a possibility.Text Box: 1985- Mikhail Gorbachev comes to power and decides that the Soviet Union should pursue glasnot, or openness.Text Box: 1979- SALT II is the first treaty with active cooperation.  Both sides  promise to exchange information on strategic missile launchers and “functionally related observable differences (FRODS)” in certain weapons.Text Box: 1972- SALT I is the first treaty to include verification by NTMs.  Since both sides wanted to keep secret the methods by which they obtained information, details about NTMs were left out.Text Box: 1963- The Limited Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, oceans, and space, is agreed to by both the Soviet Union and the U.S. because they could verify through NTMs.  Verification is not explicitly stated in the treaty though.Text Box: 1945- The Baruch Plan, designed for international control of energy does not bear fruit because the U.S.S.R. dislikes the strict inspections, which the U.S. wants.

 

Krass, Allan S.  "Arms Control Treaty Verification."  Encyclopedia of Arms Control and
    Disarmament.  Richard Dean Burns, Ed.  Vol. 1.  New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
    1993.

Back to Index