Strategic offensive arms & Asian security

When the Soviet Union and the United States signed the INF Treaty in Washington last December and later saw it enter into force during the fourth Soviet-US summit in Moscow, what they found on top of their arms control agenda was a 50 per cent reduction of strategic offensive arms, the pivotal issue in Soviet American relations.
That such an agreement is crucial to both of the world's major nuclear powers is only too evident. For not only can they thus improve bilateral relations, they also can achieve a better international environment and stabilise the situation in different parts of the world.
Both superpowers have maintained a balance in strategic arms during the past 15 years, albeit at a mind bogglingly high level. Indeed, they have at the present time a total of more than 4,500 carriers and nearly 25,000 nuclear warheads, an indication that the USSR and the USA have obviously gone too far in their drive to achieve a strategic balance in a massive arms build up, and that the quantity of arms, however well balanced, can not only be halved-something that the USA and the USSR are trying to achieve - but can even be slashed drastically, by much, much more than half.