The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that led to the signing of the SALT I Treaty in 1972 were documented in exhaustive detail in the latest volume of the official State Department publication Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS).
The new FRUS volume (pdf), which is more than 1000 pages long, covers internal deliberations over U.S. arms control policy and strategy in the Nixon Administration, and the development, refinement, negotiation and ultimate approval of the SALT I Treaty.
“You cannot put large missiles into small holes,” said Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev “very irritably,” according to the transcript of a May 23, 1972 discussion on possible modification of existing missile silos. “It is more complicated than that,” responded national security advisor Henry Kissinger.
Declassification review of this FRUS volume began in 2004 and was completed in 2010. It resulted in the withholding of 1 document in full, excisions of a paragraph or more in 9 documents, and excisions of less than a paragraph in 60 documents, as noted in the Preface.
If this proposed rule were enacted it would have deleterious effects on government workers in general and federal researchers and scientists, specifically.
When we introduce “at-will” employment to government employees, we also introduce the potential for environments where people are more concerned about self-preservation than service to others.
There is no better time to re-invigorate America’s innovation edge by investing in R&D to create and capture “industries of the future,” re-shoring capital and expertise, and working closely with allies to expand our capabilities while safeguarding those technologies that are critical to our security.
Russia currently maintains nearly 5,460 nuclear warheads, with an estimated 1,718 deployed. This represents a slight decrease in total warheads from previous years but still positions Russia as the world’s largest nuclear power alongside the United States.