Pass the SALT

For all the many and different cars I have owned from age seventeen (the iconic VW Beetle) to age seventy (the less iconic VW Golf), in between I had a "Saab story" and the only car I ever slapped with a bumper sticker. It was during the so-called "cold war" between the US and then USSR. Up for negotiation was the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). Self-explanatory, yet hotly debated between the two major superpowers following years of a mad build-up of weapons of mass destruction.

Pass the SALT followed me everywhere, eliciting lots of attention, which is why I have never subjected myself and my cars to another bumper sticker since. I am thinking about this because today we are right back where we started in 1972.

Back in the Nixon era, believe it or not, his administration was in favor of arms limitation and a reduction in nuclear weapons. His counterpart, Brezhnev, represented the Russian Communist party.

Then, like now, I attended rallies on brewing issues du jour. This particular one felt more urgent than say, building the Seabrook nuclear plant on the coast, because it mattered globally when- pre-internet- we had yet to grasp the full implications of the word global.

Fortunately for everyone of us, the two parties passed SALT which effectively insured limitation on building nuclear weapons for the next thirty years! This treaty was re-negotiated in the intervening years, using other acronyms, while strengthening the original treaty for another twenty plus years. That brings us to to the twenty-first century and back to the beginning:

With New START set to originally expire on February 5, 2021, Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin negotiated a five-year extension in January 2021, just days before the treaty was set to expire. While proposals to extend the treaty informally fluctuated in Fall 2025, there has been no credible attempt by either Putin or Trump to extend the current nuclear arms control regime.*

As of February 5, 2026, for the first time in over fifty years, there is NO treaty in place banning or barring nuclear weapons globally which we now understand means the whole world and everyone in it! We need more than a catchy bumper sticker to call this out.

With the emergence and rapid (ongoing) buildup of China’s nuclear arsenal, our military planners will now debate how many systems and weapons the United States will need to maintain mutual assured destruction (MAD), not with one but two nuclear powers. *

MAD! Indeed . . . and we all should be mad about this major issue du jour that deserves our (and the media's) full attention. Look up everyone. "The sky is falling"!

Daybreaking over the San Sebastian River in St. Augustine, Florida

To learn more:

*https://michaelmcfaul.substack.com/p/the-tragic-end-of-the-new-start-treaty

https://armscontrolcenter.org/statement-on-the-expiration-of-the-last-treaty-restricting-the-worlds-two-largest-nuclear-arsenals-new-start/