Meeting at the Hofburg Palace, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II agreement, limiting each side's intercontinental ballistic missiles, bombers, and submarine-launched missiles. Though never ratified by the U.S. Senate after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year, both nations largely observed its terms informally for years.
The signing capped seven years of negotiation building on the original SALT I accord of 1972. Carter and Brezhnev, both visibly aged by their respective political burdens, embraced after signing—a moment photographers captured as a rare gesture of warmth between Cold War rivals.
The treaty capped each side at 2,400 strategic delivery vehicles, aiming to slow a nuclear arms race that had already produced tens of thousands of warheads. Critics on the American right, including a rising Ronald Reagan, argued it conceded too much to Moscow.
When Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in December 1979, Carter withdrew SALT II from Senate consideration, and it never received formal ratification. Yet both superpowers continued to abide by its numerical limits for years, a testament to how arms control could function as tacit understanding even without treaty status.