Office of the Historian, Shared Knowledge Services, Bureau of Administration Releases Foreign Relations

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XLIV, Part 1, National Security Policy, 1985–1988. 

This is the first of two parts of the volume National Security Policy, 1985–1988. It covers the Ronald Reagan administration’s efforts to modernize U.S. strategic forces, identify Soviet compliance and noncompliance with existing arms control agreements, and pursue the Strategic Defense Initiative, which President Reagan announced in March 1983 and subsequently made a central objective of his presidency. Documentation in this volume illuminates the administration’s interpretation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in advance of key summits between the President and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during Reagan’s second term. It also documents the internal deliberations leading up to the 1988 ABM Treaty Review in Geneva, the negotiating record of which is included here.  

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.