News Analysis Ever since the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union, and later the United States and Russia, have worked to both limit the overall number of nuclear weapons as well as the type of nuclear weapons each side deployed. Progress was steady, though often characterized as one of two steps forward and one step back. U.S. concerns over Russia’s compliance with past arms control agreements, China’s plans to substantially expand its nuclear arsenal, the developing quasi-military alliance between Russia and China, and the development of hypersonic missile technology are now threatening to potentially upend past agreements and will make negotiating future nuclear arms control treaties far more difficult. US-Soviet-Russian Nuclear Arms Control Agreements Between 1972 and 2011, the United States negotiated eight nuclear arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and, after 1989, with Russia. SALT I and START I limited the number of nuclear warhead delivery …