Word: inf
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Soviets' apparent surprise, the Administration responded with a qualified yes, but it defined the agenda differently. National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane said that the U.S. would also insist on discussing ways to reopen the dual talks on Strategic Arms Reduction (START) and Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF), which the Soviets abandoned late last year after NATO began deploying U.S. missiles in Europe. Although this was partly a political ploy, it made sense. Satellites are part of each nation's nuclear capability. Antisatellite weapons or space-based missile defenses would affect the nuclear balance, and it is difficult...
...situation in START is different from that in the INF talks in two key respects. First, parity still exists at the level of strategic weapons, and proposals in that area must there fore be seen by both sides as equitable in their impact on existing and projected weapons systems; the "front loading" of Soviet concessions in START is harder to justify than in INF (not to mention harder to negotiate). Second, in START, it is the U.S. rather than the Soviet Union that has been hanging tough with an intransigent and unrealistic position...
...they are confronted with the reality of four more years of Reagan, along with the reality of more American missiles in Europe, they will realize their stonewalling has failed and negotiate a compromise in INF. At the same time, they will return to START in order to secure meaningful limits on American cruise missiles and other new strategic weapons that worry them. So goes the analysis inside the Administration...
That optimism may be pre science or wishful thinking. A second Reagan Administration might be ready to try to engage the Soviets in a meaningful compromise in INF...
...NATO deployments in exchange for elimination of all SS-20s throughout the U.S.S.R.); it was inching toward a reasonable compromise whereby the NATO deployments would be scaled back in exchange for a reduction in European SS-20s, with more lenient treatment for SS-20s in Asia. In the INF talks, the major obstacle was, and remains, Soviet intransigence...