Nuclear Arms Control And Disarmament In The Evolution Of U.S.-Russia Relations: From Détente To Reset

The relationship between Unite States and Russia/Soviet Union has become the most important bilateral relationship in the world for a very long time. Among many factors that have great importance in this relationship, nuclear security factor can not be over looked, not only because it has close ties to power and status of these great countries, moreover, it's about their survival. In the field of nuclear security, the both countries have clashes of different interests, but they also have common benefit. The conflicts and co-operations between them on nuclear disarmament, not only reflect the comparison of their power, but also affects and restrains this bilateral relationship.This thesis commits itself to the discussion of the mutual influence between U.S.-Russia relations and nuclear disarmament. After reviewing the history of bilateral disarmament and bilateral relations, we can find out that:on one hand, with the adjustment and modification of the U.S.-Russia relations, the characteristics of bilateral disarmament also changed. For instance, the present nuclear disarmament treaty shows great differences in its form and content comparing to the ones that occurred in the Cold-War Era, the old ones have strict terms while the present one is more of flexibility, so we can say that nuclear disarmament and the bilateral relationship are basically synchronous; on the other hand, disarmament has retroaction to the U.S.-Russia relations, it can improve the atmosphere of this bilateral relations, it can help them transfer their national resources into addressing the emerging challenge, it can also open a channel for both countries to learn how to cooperate, and influence perception of both sides as well. Thus leaders from the two countries considered nuclear arms control and disarmament as a policy tool in both politics and diplomacy other than just in the field of military, thus it serves directly to the general foreign strategy.After analysis, this essay recognizes that the mode of nuclear disarmament is highly consistent with the characteristics of U.S.-Russia relations, and nuclear disarmament can affect the process of the bilateral relations in return. But we can not just magnify the effect of disarmament. It can influence the U.S.-Russia relations in several aspects. But it can not essentially determine the U.S.-Russia relations. This is an objective view on the function of disarmament.