Episode 300 GEORGE H. W. BUSH 1991 The Start 1 Treaty

George H.W. Bush 1991 The Soviet Coup

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In this episode we look back at several important situations developing all at once. The Soviet Union is in trouble. Economically the situation is getting dire as Gorbachev comes to the economic summit to ask for help. As the G-7 includes the Soviets for the very first time.
This is just after a fairly small, and not so celebratory May Day in the Soviet Union. It used to be the event every year where the Soviets displayed their military muscle and its high brass stood up over seeing it all from the balcony. Missiles and troops would march by under portraits of Lenin, and whomever the Communist Party Leader was at the time, be it Khrushchev or Brezhnev. But this time it was sparsely attended under heavy security, and it had none of the trappings of old.
If that was not bad enough for the Communist superpower, its largest Republic, the Russian Federation, was in the midst of holding its very first election for President, in what would be its first completely free election with real choices for leadership. the front runner was not the Kremlin's choice, it was a renegade natural politician who had already bolted the Communist Party and was busy trying to get control of various power sources from the Soviet leadership and put it under Russian control His name was Boris Yeltsin and he was on the verge of being catapulted onto the World Stage.
Finally the START 1 Treaty was being negotiated and it would be a further thawing of the Cold War but one that had the hardline Communists worried that their control was rapidly fading away. The Treaty was defined here by a use of Artificial Intelligence (our first use of that) here:
START I, or the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I, was an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union to reduce the number of long-range nuclear weapons. The treaty was signed in Moscow on July 31, 1991 by George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev.
The treaty's main limits included: 1,600 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, 6,000 accountable warheads, 4,900 ballistic missile warheads, 1,540 warheads on 154 heavy ICBMs, and 1,100 warheads on mobile ICBMs.
The treaty also required the parties to:

• Exchange data on the number and location of their strategic delivery vehicles
• Allow each other to conduct inspections
• Ban the encryption and exchange of telemetric data that tracked ballistic missiles during test launches
  
• The START I treaty was part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), which began in 1982 and lasted for three decades. The START II treaty was agreed upon in 1993, but never came into force.

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Chapitres

1. START Treaty ushered in a new nuclear age - Voice of America (00:00:00)

2. Intro Music (00:03:47)

3. ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings May 1, 1991 May Day in the Soviet Union (00:04:10)

4. Host Randal wallace talks about START 1 and the growing issues in the Soviet Union (00:06:17)

5. ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings June 4, 1991 a New Ambassador to the Soviet Union , Seeds of chaos and START 1 (00:08:06)

6. ABC World News Tonight with Carole Simpson June 9, 1991 Economic issues in the Soviet Union and the coming election coverage (00:12:42)

7. Host Randal wallace talks about the G-7 Summit and Gorbachev coming to see the leaders (00:16:32)

8. ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings July 15, 1991 The Russian elections (00:16:54)

9. Host Randal Wallace talks about President Bush putting pressure on Soviet Leader Gorbachev for a summit meeting to get an agreement. (00:19:19)

10. ABC World News tonight with Carol Simpson July 16, 1991 President Bush putting pressure on Gorbachev for a meeting at July's end (00:19:48)

11. Host Randal Wallace introduces the G-7 Summit (00:21:36)

12. ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings coverage of the G7 Summit July 15, 1991 (00:22:31)

13. Host Randal Wallace talks about the economic situation in the Soviet Union (00:31:31)

14. ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings July 16, 1991 The G7 Economic Summit (00:32:24)

15. Host Randal Wallace introduces the START 1 Treaty signing (00:37:51)

16. ABC News coverage of the signing of the START 1 Treaty by Mikhail Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush - July 31,1991 (00:43:19)