what was the objective of the détente,SALT I Treaty,"star wars"?

Answer 1

The objective of all three was to prevent the destruction of the US and the world from a nuclear war.

Answer 2

OK

First of all you are talking about three different things.

detente is a policy established by the Nixon Administration. It takes its name from a French word meaning "when one takes the tension off of a loaded crossbow without discharging it". The idea was to make nuclear war less likely by notching DOWN tensions between the US and the USSR across the board.

SALT I was the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. During the Cold War the USA and the USSR both had large nuclear arsenals. They kept growing bigger. The reason was each side needed to have one that was big enough that it could survive the other one launching a first strike.

The idea was this. If you know that you will be nuked back into the stone age by the other sides second strike, you won't launch a first strike. This means each side needed an arsenal that was so large that if the other side were to launch first, there would still be enough nuclear weapons surviving to ensure that the second strike would plaster the guy who launched first.

But the targets of his first strike aren't your cities, the targets of his first strike are your warheads. So if you build another warhead, (so you have a little extra left in case the other guy launches first) the other guy has another target that he has to plan to take out... so he builds another warhead...so now you need another warhead... etc.

The SALT Talks were designed to stop this cycle. They didn't reduce the nuclear arsenals (that came under Reagan at the START , Strategic Arms REDUCTION Talks) but the Salt talks did LIMIT THE GROWTH of the two nuclear arsenals. This was important because the fewer the warheads, the lower the chance of one going off by accident.

"Star Wars" was the name that the Democrats tagged onto President Reagan's STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE. Regan looked at the Arms Race and saw it was insane. Sooner or later something was going to happen and all those missles would be launched. Might be an accident, might be intentional, might be next year, might be 100 years from now, might be lunchtime Tuesday, but sooner or later something was going to pop.

His idea was to get rid of the missiles by making them OBSOLITE. Reagan figured that if the US could figure out how to shoot down the missiles, then it wouldn't matter anymore. If there was an accident, if something went wrong, if a madman got the bomb, whatever, if we could shoot down the USSR's missiles before they got here. We would be safe, but even better nuclear missiles would be obsolite (like crossbows and catipults) and nobody would need them anymore. (Look at it this way, if you want to get rid of the horse and buggy you don't have "Horse and buggy limitation talks" and limit the number of horses and buggies... you invent the automobile and horse and buggy rigs go away. Makes sense see?)

Well this scared two groups of people. It scared the USSR because they knew they couldn't build such a defense. They were afraid we would build it then be able to hit them, but they couldn't hit us back. They knew that if the shoe were on the other foot they would hit us within 20 min of such a system coming on line, so they assumed we would do the same. It scared them. At one point there was even talk of the US and the USSR building the systems together and sharing technology to address this concern.

It also scared the State Department and the folks who worked in Arms Control (the SALT TALKS). For one thing it would make their jobs obsolite. For a second thing, their whole plan was baised on MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction. We don' t launch on the USSR because they will whomp us if we do, they don't launch on us because we will whomp them if they do. (Probem is, this doesn't work if a mad man (who doesn't care if he gets whomped) gets the bomb... like the President of Iran.) MAD kept the peace for over half a century, people were reluctant to move away from something that worked.

Star Wars was a huge fight in Congress for years between the Republicans (who love it) and the Democrats (who hate it, but never can explain why they vote against building a system to protect American Cities from nuclear attack... in fact watching the Dems try to explain why they didn't want to build a system that would protect American Cities from nuclear attack was one of the reasons the Republicans loved Star Wars.). Lots of money got spent on it, but the system never got built. What did get built was a LOT of R&D on telescopes and mirrors and lasers (the new astronomical telescopes owe a lot to Star Wars Research) and the small missile interceptor system that President Bush is trying to get deployed.

Answer 3

Salt I Treaty