Preface

Structure and Scope of the Foreign Relations Series

This volume is part of a subseries of volumes of the Foreign Relations series that documents the most important issues in the foreign policy of the administration of George H.W. Bush. Directly following Foreign Relations, 1981–1988, Volume XI, START I in the Ronald Reagan subseries, this volume is closely linked to the two volumes in the H.W. Bush subseries devoted to President Bush’s policies toward the Soviet Union, Russia, and the Newly Independent States: Foreign Relations, 1989–1992, Volume III, Soviet Union, Russia, and Post-Soviet States: High-Level Contacts and Volume IV, Soviet Union, Russia, and Post-Soviet States: Policy. It ought to be considered alongside Foreign Relations, 1989–1992, Volume XXVII, Arms Control and Nonproliferation, which includes a compilation on START II, the “deMIRVing” agreement that President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed on January 3, 1993, and whose origins lie within late rounds of the negotiations toward START I, which President Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed in Moscow on July 31, 1991. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, on December 31, 1991, the Bush administration had not yet sent START I to the U.S. Senate for ratification. Documentation on the May 23, 1992, Lisbon Protocol to START I—which incorporated Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan into the treaty and allowed the Bush administration to seek the Senate’s advice and consent—is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1993–2000, Volume XX, Arms Control and Nonproliferation within the Former Soviet Union, December 1991–December 1994.

Focus of Research and Principles of Selection for Foreign Relations, 1989–1992, Volume XXXI, START I, 1989–1991

This volume begins in March 1988, as then-Vice President George H.W. Bush—who had already declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 1988 presidential election—was receiving updates from Reagan administration advisors about the complexities of nuclear arms verification; President Reagan had signed the December 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and aspired—but failed—to conclude a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) agreement by the end of his tenure. On February 2, 1989, President Bush nominated Richard Burt to be the United States Negotiator for Strategic Nuclear Arms. The following month, as part of an overall strategic review, Bush signed off on National Security Review (NSR) 14, “Review of United States Arms Control Policies,” which recommended [Page VIII] the resumption of the U.S.-Soviet Nuclear and Space Talks (NST) and draft instructions for the U.S. START delegation. Following meetings of the Deputies Committee (DC) and Principals Committee (PC), on June 19, President Bush approved U.S. positions on START which included, inter alia, approaches to fundamental limits, nondeployed missiles, air breathing systems, mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and counting and verification procedures in advance of the June 21 resumption of the NST in Geneva.

The focus of research and selection in this volume was to document how U.S. policymakers and negotiators worked with their Soviet counterparts to overcome these and other outstanding matters to reach a START agreement that built upon the December 1987 joint U.S.-Soviet statement from the Washington Summit establishing basic counting formulas. Principles of selection include the documentation related to the development of and substantive changes to U.S. negotiating positions; summations of the rounds of negotiation in Geneva; and forward—or backward—movement toward an agreement, whether in Moscow, Washington, or elsewhere. These themes are brought out in documentation such as agency memoranda and position papers, records of National Security Council (NSC) meetings, National Security Directives (NSD), reporting telegrams from the U.S. delegation in Geneva, and records of the so-called “Gang of Eight” informal NSC meetings that President Bush convened and the NSC’s interagency “Ungroup” on arms control matters. Key moments included Secretary of State James Baker’s hosting of Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Eduard Shevardnadze in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in September 1989—a visit in which the Soviets dropped a longstanding insistence on linkage between a START agreement and a U.S. nonwithdrawal commitment to the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; summits between Bush and Gorbachev in Malta, Washington, and Moscow; and U.S. and Soviet experts group meetings led by Under Secretary of State Reginald Bartholomew and Soviet negotiator Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev. Memoranda of conversation and minutes for these meetings are included in this volume.

Key figures, who are represented in the documents selected for the volume, include Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Arms Control Arnold Kanter and his successor John Gordon; U.S. START Negotiator Richard Burt and his successor Linton Brooks; and James Timbie of the Department of State. Also included here is documentation on the domestic and congressional expectations for a “peace dividend” as the Cold War wound down. On February 22, 1990, Senators John Warner and Sam Nunn informed Bush that the remaining components of the decade-long U.S. strategic modernization effort—consisting of rail-based garrison Peacekeeper (MX), the small ICBM (“Midgetman”), large quantities of the B–2 bomber, and sustained funding of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—would not survive [Page IX] in Congress without a major arms control breakthrough. This led to Bush’s March 20, 1990, proposal to Gorbachev to consider eliminating mobile MIRVed missiles in START and eliminate all land-based MIRVs in follow-on START II negotiations. The following year, in the aftermath of the January 1991 Persian Gulf War and the simultaneous steep decline of the Soviet economy, President Bush instructed his national security team to sprint toward a START I agreement in advance of an anticipated summer summit in Moscow. The negotiations were successfully concluded on July 29, 1991, in time for Bush and Gorbachev to sign the treaty in Moscow on July 31. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty on October 1, 1992, and it entered into force on December 5, 1994.

Acknowledgments

The Office of the Historian wishes to thank the interagency declassification personnel who conducted the review of this volume, including those at the Department of State, Office of Information Programs and Services (IPS), the FRUS Coordination Team at the Central Intelligence Agency, the OSD, Records and Declassification Division (RDD) at the Department of Defense, and the Directorate of Records, Access and Information Security Management at the National Security Council.

The editor wishes to acknowledge the assistance of officials at the George H.W. Presidential Library, especially Simon Staats; and the National Security Council, especially Tom Lutte. The History Staff of the Center for the Study of Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency was accommodating in arranging full access to the files of the Central Intelligence Agency; Sandy Meagher was helpful in providing access to Department of Defense materials. The editor also thanks the staff at the National Archives and Records Administration facility in College Park, Maryland, for their valuable assistance. The editor wishes to extend special thanks to Ed Ifft at the Department of State.

James Graham Wilson collected and selected documentation and edited the volume under the supervision of Kathleen Rasmussen, then-Chief of the Global Issues and General Division. The volume was reviewed by Kathleen Rasmussen and then-Historian of the Department of State Stephen Randolph. Chris Tudda coordinated the declassification review under the supervision of the Carl Ashley, Team Lead of the Declassification Coordination Team. Matthew R.G. Regan did the copy and technical editing under the supervision of Mandy A. Chalou, Team Lead of the Editing and Publishing Team. Both the declassification review and the technical editing were conducted under the supervision of John C. Powers, Director of the Declassification Coordination, Publishing, and Digital Initiatives Division.