Office Of The Historian, Shared Knowledge Services, Bureau Of Administration Releases Foreign Relations Of The United States, 19891992, Volume XXXI, START I, 19891991

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1989–1992, Volume XXXI, START I, 1989–1991.

This is the second of two volumes in the Foreign Relations series devoted to the START I agreement (the “Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms”), which President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed on July 31, 1991. The volume begins in the last year of the Ronald Reagan administration, during which then-Vice President Bush paid close attention to the ongoing Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in advance of the 1988 presidential election. It proceeds to key moments in 1989 such as the Bush administration’s strategic review of U.S. arms control policies prior to the resumption of the Nuclear and Space Arms Talks in Geneva; meetings between Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; implications of the fall of the Berlin Wall that November; and the Malta Summit in December. Coverage of 1990 includes a U.S. initiative to eliminate land-based mobile missiles as part of follow-on “START II” negotiations; diplomacy amidst a growing crisis in the Persian Gulf; and U.S. and Soviet efforts to conclude outstanding points of contention surrounding air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) and other strategic systems. The volume concludes with a frenetic “endgame” after President Bush declared his intention to travel to Moscow to meet with President Gorbachev in the summer of 1991.

This volume was compiled and edited by James Graham Wilson. The volume and this press release are available on the Office of the Historian website. For further information, contact the Office of the Historian at ....