Dismantling the nuclear weapons legacy of the Cold War

Nuclear arms reduction agreements and parallel commitments since 1987 will remove from active deployment about 27,000 former Soviet Union bombs and warheads. When START I and II are fully implemented, Russia will have eliminated 1,000 strategic delivery vehicles and removed from active deployment 4,500 strategic warheads. Ukraine will give up 176 SS-19s and -24s and 1,240 strategic warheads as well as cruise missile warheads. Kazakhstan will relinquish 104 SS-18s and 1,040 strategic warheads. The 81 SS-25 single-warhead missiles placed in Belarus by the Soviet Union will be withdrawn and probably redeployed on Russian territory. The United States will eliminate over 1,300 strategic delivery vehicles under the START agreements, and will remove from active deployment more than 6,000 strategic warheads. These reductions, in terms of systems scheduled for elimination and the destructive potential they represent, amount to the greatest program of disarmament in human history. The process also signals a change in relations between Washington and Moscow, if only by dramatically reversing the trend to increase nuclear weapons targeted against each other's homeland.