ty must remain in place. What then, is the United States to do for its self-defense? Instead of working towards a method that uses danger-ous and possible ineffective weapons against dangerous, powerful, destructive nuclear missiles, both the Russians and the Americans must work towards a different approach to maintaining world peace. The obvious solution to this would be to continue to work towards the Bush and Clinton Administrations START I, START II, and START III policies. The START treaties, or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, is, obviously, an agreement between the Russians and the United States to limit the number of offensive nuclear weapons each state could possess. It is a continuation of the SALT, or Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, that were negotiated during the Nixon and Ford Presidencies. CountryBefore STARTSTART I(7/31/1991)START IIa(1/03/1993)START IIb (2003)START III Russia10,78010,6823,800-4,2503,1002,000-2,500U.S.A.12,72011,0803,800-4,2503,5002,000-2,500Totals:23,50021,7627,600-8,5006,6004,000-5,000Instead of just limiting the number of nuclear weapons that each state would be allowed to possess, START actually worked towards reducing the number of missiles. That is, each state would begin a process of disassembling and getting rid of their current stock-pile of nuclear weapons (see table 1). (Winkler 1999, 185)Table 1Source: Nolan 1999, 33The United States and the Russians both, however, must be certain that in no point dur-ing the dismantling of their weapons that they violate the NPT, Nuclear Nonprolifera-tion Treaty. This could occur if one of the non-nuclear states, forbidden by NPT from acquiring nuclear capabilities, somehow got hold of the dismantled pieces of the US or Russian missiles. Violations of this treaty, however, are not uncommon, and sometimes go unpunished. This is because, according to Glenn Chafetz, the states of the nuclear nonproliferation regime tend to ignore violations committed by liber...
