START II

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START II, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed by George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin in January 1993, which banned the use of MIRVs and hence often cited as De-MIRV-ing Agreement. It followed START I. Although ratified the treaty has never entered into force, in other words never been activated. On June 14, 2002, one day after the U.S. withdrew from the ABM Treaty, Russia withdrew from the START II treaty. The historic agreement started on June 17, 1992 with the signing of a 'Joint Understanding' by the presidents. The official signing of the treaty by the presidents took place on January 3, 1993. [1]. It was ratified by the US Senate on January 26, 1996 with a vote of 87-4. However, the ratification of the treaty was stalled in the Russian Duma for many years. The ratification was postponed a number of times to protest American military actions in Iraq and Kosovo, as well as to oppose the expansion of NATO. As the years passed, the treaty became less relevant and both sides started to lose interest in it. For the Americans, the main issue became the modification of the ABM treaty to allow the US to deploy a ballistic missile defense system, a move which Russia fiercely opposed. On April 14, 2000 the Duma did finally ratify the treaty, in a largely symbolic move since the ratification was made contingent on preserving the ABM treaty, which it was clear the US was not prepared to do. The START II Treaty did not enter into force because the Russian ratification made this contingent on U.S. Senate ratifying a September 1997 addendum to START II which included Agreed Statements on ABM-TMD Demarcation. Neither of these occurred because of U.S. Senate opposition, where a faction objected to any action supportive of the ABM Treaty. On June 14, 2002, one day after the U.S. withdrew from the ABM Treaty, Russia announced that it would no longer consider itself to be bound by START II provisions. The treaty was officially bypassed by SORT treaty, agreed to by presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin at their summit meeting in November, 2001, and signed at Moscow Summit on May 24, 2002. Both sides agreed to reduce operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700 to 2,200 by 2012.