The second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) was an agreement on the reduction and limitation of offensive arms signed by U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1993. Though the convention never came into force, it would have banned the use of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) on intercontinental […]
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I)
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), signed in 1991, was a bilateral arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. The result of the agreement was the first significant reduction in the number of strategic nuclear weapons in both the U.S. and the Soviet stockpiles. It entered into force in 1994, […]
Notable Nuclear Tests: Tsar Bomba
On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union conducted an atmospheric test of the largest thermonuclear weapon ever created: The Tsar Bomba. Named for its unmatched destructive potential, the “emperor of bombs” yielded a blast of 50 megatons, nearly 2,000 times more powerful than the bomb the United States dropped on Nagasaki. The bomb was so […]
60 Years After the Cuban Missile Crisis, We Should Learn from the Past, Not Manipulate It
By John Erath This week marks the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, generally considered to be the closest the world came to all out nuclear war. Perhaps inevitably, much of the commentary has highlighted supposed parallels to the current situation, specifically Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons in support of its aggression against […]
The Soviet False Alarm Incident and Able Archer 83
At the height of the Cold War, the Soviets designed an early-warning radar system meant to track fast-moving threats to increase the chance of reprisal. On September 26, 1983, however, the system, code-named Oko, malfunctioned. At around midnight, Oko’s alarms rang out, alerting the base of one incoming nuclear missile. The screen read, “LAUNCH,” which […]
