"I think the installation of missiles was a first step toward nuclear parity."

Beijing remains far from nuclear parity with the United States.

It was also responsible for the arms race, as both nations struggled to keep nuclear parity, or at least retain second-strike capability.

The Soviet Union achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States.

One ominous note: If China did steal American technology, it could take a great leap toward nuclear parity.

Without nuclear parity, Eastern Europe and the third world, the Soviet Union will be revealed as nothing more than an empty economic entity.

The Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States by the early 1970s, after which the country consolidated itself as a superpower.

Matching tests soon followed from its neighbor and enemy Pakistan, causing some critics to say India had lost its conventional military advantage to nuclear parity.

To regain military and nuclear parity with the Soviets, Reagan set out to rebuild the military at a pace unparalleled in our peacetime history.

Mr. Yeltsin also got a chance to cut strategic arms, save money and preserve Moscow's cherished nuclear parity with the United States.

But Western diplomats suggest that the military-defense complex, the still-powerful industrialists who have spent their lives building Soviet-American nuclear parity, may raise more troubling objections.

Striking a deal, even if it means swallowing modifications to the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, may be the only way for Moscow to maintain nuclear parity with Washington.

LeMay gradually became convinced that Nixon planned to pursue a conciliatory policy with the Soviets and accept nuclear parity rather than retain America's first-strike supremacy.

The Soviet Union could now afford to achieve nuclear parity with the United States in terms of raw numbers, although for a time, they appeared to have chosen not to.

But as nuclear parity becomes the first order of the day and conventional power projection capabilities expand, Soviet departures from Western attitudes in the realm of war become more visible and telling.

Nixon and Kissinger sought to readjust to new realities through the policy of détente, accepting Russian nuclear parity and satisfying Western Europe's desire for a relaxation of tensions.

Mr. Mandelbaum and Mr. Talbott argue that were it to succeed, S.D.I. would undercut the nuclear parity the Russians have worked so hard to achieve.

Malinovsky built the Soviet army into the most accomplished and powerful force in the world by achieving nuclear parity with the United States and by modernizing the army's huge conventional force.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States, and surpassed it by the end of that decade with the deployment of the SS-18 missile.

Due to these facts, a dramatic nuclear arms race proceeded during the 1980s, and essentially ended in 1991 by nuclear parity preservation at a level of more than ten thousand strategic warheads on both sides.

The first Soviet nuclear test was in 1949, and the Soviet Union grew toward nuclear parity with the United States until each nation had the power to destroy the other in an instant.

Part of the Russian resistance stems from the fact that to keep nuclear parity with the United States, Moscow would have to destroy the multiple-warhead missiles and then build more single-warhead missiles, which it cannot afford.

At this time, the USSR achieved rough nuclear parity with the United States; meanwhile, the Vietnam War both weakened America's influence in the Third World and cooled relations with Western Europe.

Moreover, the Soviet Union could not afford to build any reasonable counterforce, as the economic output of the United States was far larger than that of the Soviets, and they would be unable to achieve "nuclear parity".

"One of the most important changes in international affairs in recent years had been the increase in stability of nuclear deterrence, and the emergence of what is, in effect, nuclear parity between the United States and the Soviet Union.