Word: draft
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...times or the fashions, A. Philip Randolph overcame opposition simply by being himself. The first national labor leader among American blacks, he forged the Pullman porters into a powerful union and pushed two Presidents into conceding crucial rights by threatening a march on Washington and resistance to the draft. Relatively inactive for many years before his death at 90 last week in Manhattan, Randolph seemed remote and perhaps irrelevant to younger civil rights leaders, but there are scarcely any nonviolent tactics in the whole arsenal of protest that he did not employ...
...negotiators zeroed in on an agreement, the policymakers tended to look more and more over their shoulders at Congress. The White House fired off a cable to Geneva ordering the U.S. delegation to insert an asterisk after the first reference to "treaty" in the Joint Draft Text that was being negotiated. The asterisk called attention to a footnote stipulating that the document, in its final form, might be an agreement for approval by a simple majority of both houses instead of a treaty requiring ratification by two-thirds of the Senate. The Soviets never took the asterisk terribly seriously...
Much more serious was another typographical feature of the Joint Draft Text. The U.S. and Soviet definitions of cruise missiles were set apart from each other, and from the mutually agreed treaty language, by brackets. Brackets signified disagreement. The Russians had long maintained that range limits on ground-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles in the protocol and restrictions on the number of air-launched versions per aircraft in the treaty should apply simply to "armed" cruise missiles; there should be no distinction between nuclear-armed cruise missiles and conventionally armed ones. The reason: it was extremely difficult...
...plan would have rolled back some Soviet programs and slowed down others, while leaving the American arsenal intact, although it would have been coupled with an offer to sacrifice some American weapons still on the drawing board. As Aaron later put it, "We would be giving up future draft choices in exchange for cuts in their starting lineup." Brown seconded the idea, adding that there might also be a limit on the number of missile tests each side could conduct in a year. Such a limit would further inhibit the Russians from improving their rockets...
Brzezinski then directed NSC Staffer William Hyland, a veteran Government Sovietologist and former close aide to Kissinger, to draft negotiating instructions for Vance. Hyland produced what became known as "the comprehensive proposal." It would have held Soviet MlRVed ICBMS to 550, a level equal to the number of MlRVed ICBMS on the American side, cut the Soviet heavy force in half, from about 300 to 150, and allowed the U.S. to deploy all forms of cruise missiles with ranges up to 2,500 km (1,550 miles)?a much higher range limit than the Soviets had said they would...