Thursday marked the expiration of the Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Arms, the last major agreement between Russia and the United States on controlling nuclear arsenals. 

This is not merely the end of yet another international treaty. It effectively draws a line under more than half a century during which the two largest nuclear powers attempted to keep their strategic rivalry within a framework of mutual limitations, transparency and a certain level of trust.

The modern arms control system was born out of fear of the consequences of an uncontrolled arms race. After the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. came within a step of using nuclear weapons, both sides came to realize that technological advances in strategic forces were outpacing political mechanisms for managing them. As well as implementing new rules, new norms had to be created.

The first such step was the 1963 Moscow Treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater. Signed by the Soviet Union, the U.S. and Britain shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, it became the first international agreement to impose real limits on nuclear activity. Most countries worldwide joined the treaty by the mid-1960s.

The next major milestone was the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, which narrowed potential avenues for the arms race by prohibiting the placement of nuclear weapons in space or Earth’s orbit.

Together, these agreements and others builta foundation that made it possible to move toward more complex and technically detailed treaties. They fostered an atmosphere of limited trust, institutionalized dialogue between the superpowers and the principle that even amid intense geopolitical rivalry, states can — and must — establish rules to reduce the risk of global catastrophe.

The first serious step toward limiting the arms........

© The Moscow Times