Arms Control and Disarmament

After Reykjavik, the documents show that the American side actively suppressed Ronald Reagan’s nuclear abolition ideas, while the Soviet side worried that Reykjavik was “as high” as the US would ever go, when Gorbachev expected this to be the beginning of a whole new era of nuclear arms reductions. With hindsight, the tentative agreements–even breakthroughs–that the two leaders reached at Reykjavik on 50% cuts in strategic weapons, on intermediate range missiles, and on nuclear testing would create an “arms race in reverse” that would culminate the next year with the first-

Reagan believed that there could be no arms control without progress on human rights and in private meetings put pressure on the Soviets to make reforms. Gorbachev believed in opening his society and reforming the country. Human rights issues became a major subject in negotiations and at every summit and ministerial meeting. Soviet internal documents show that American quiet pressure was effective.

Soviet and American transcripts of conversations in the Hofdi House show real “Shakesperean passions” as Gorbachev described his experience of negotiations. The Soviet and U.S. leaders came very close to achieving their shared dream of nuclear abolition but the spirit of SDI hanging over them prevented the agreement. Gorbachev could not trust Reagan’s promises. The record of the last session of the summit is almost heartbreaking as both Reagan and Gorbachev feel the weight of the missed opportunity.

Washington, D.C., August 31, 2026 - The “fundamental reevaluation” that took place in the Kremlin under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev not only encompassed the political, ideological, and economic spheres but also included fundamental changes in military doctrine, according to declassified U.S.

Washington, D.C., October 26, 2023 - In early August 1977, Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev wrote to President Jimmy Carter to inform him that the Soviet Union had detected a nuclear weapons test site in South Africa and to ask that the U.S. and other governments take “energetic efforts” to prevent the emergence of a new nuclear weapons state. Within days, the U.S.

Washington D.C., January 30, 2023 – The George H.W. Bush administration was reluctant to embrace the “relations of deep mutual trust and alliance” proposed by the newly independent Russian Federation and its leader, Boris Yeltsin, in early 1992, according to declassified U.S. documents published today by the National Security Archive.

Washington, D.C., December 10, 2021 – As the United States engages in strategic stability talks with Russia and seeks similar talks with China, it is worth looking back to the origins of the concept and its early usage in the late 1950s and 1960s. Today, the National Security Archive posts selected White House and other high-level records that speak to “strategic stability’s” past – and continuing – impact on evaluations of new strategic systems and the risks of escalating the nuclear arms race.

Washington, D.C., October 14, 2021 – The Pentagon’s plan for a trillion-dollar spending program to build new ICBMs, submarines, and bombers has met pushback from critics in and out of Congress who worry about excessive military spending.  Some argue that ICBMs are destabilizing and that fewer land-based missiles and bombers and continued investment in submarine-launched ballistic missiles would reduce the U.S.’s vulnerability to nuclear attack.