Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

1 7.0

A series of talks between the United States and the Soviet Union to limit nuclear weapons

proper noun

: Conversaciones sobre la Limitación de Armas Estratégicas

At the same time that the United States held Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union, the Chinese continued to demand satisfaction of their three conditions, and there seemed little support from either Congress or the public to end relations with Taiwan (table 3).
SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks)

Examples

The 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention attempted to eliminate classes of weapons; they were followed by the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks, which focused instead on increasing strategic stability between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Academic text (2000)
That was why the first achievement of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks was the treaty banning all but one antiballistic missile system on each side.

Academic text (2000)
Increasingly, the two superpowers pursued bilateral arms control measures, such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Anti-Ballistic Missile.

Academic text (2006)
In proposing START negotiations in 1982, President Reagan highlighted this significant difference of approach in the subtle contrast between the label "START" (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) and "SALT" (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks).

Academic text (1991)
The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), inaugurated under President Lyndon B. Johnson and completed during Richard M. Nixon's tenure in office, culminated in May 1972 in two agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Academic text (1991)
In 1969, the first round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the United States and the Soviet Union opened in Helsinki, Finland.
The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks aimed to limit nuclear arsenals and promote stability between superpowers.
During the Cold War, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks represented a critical effort to control the arms race.

Synonyms

SALT

vsStrategic Arms Limitation Talks

31 7.2

A series of talks between the US and the Soviet Union to limit nuclear weapons

is the same negotiations but written as the full formal title not the abbreviation

Surface Forms

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks main

Morphology

strategic + arms + limitation + talks

All components ('strategic' + 'arms' + 'limitation' + 'talks') combine compositionally: 'talks' = negotiations, 'limitation' = restrictions, 'arms' = weapons, and 'strategic' qualifies the type, so the phrase denotes negotiations to restrict strategic weapons. Although it is a formal historical name, its meaning is directly derivable from the constituents and follows normal noun-modifier patterns that are common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the words would understand it.

Etymology

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks literally says what happened: strategic means 'long-range', arms means 'weapons', limitation means 'to limit', and talks means 'meetings'. Imagine two countries sitting at a table agreeing to 'limit' their biggest nuclear weapons, and that picture explains why the name refers to the 1969 Cold War negotiations to reduce those arms.