Word: inf
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...been sounding less like bluffs and more like promises: if deployment goes ahead on schedule, there will be 1) Soviet "military countermeasures" that would further upset the East-West balance, thus presumably requiring counter-countermeasures on the part of the West; and 2) a Soviet walkout from both the INF and strategic arms reduction talks (START) in Geneva...
...case now. Despite the change in climate and a certain amount of course correction on both sides in recent months, Soviet-American relations are still in a state of drift, and below the surface, they are not drifting toward a summit. On the contrary, over the INF issue alone, they could be drifting toward a crisis. The two tracks of the 1979 NATO decision may end up leading to a spectacular collision, in which arms control crashes into deployment. That could mean the derailment of both enterprises, since an end of the talks could further undercut the already shaky support...
...trouble is that the West Europeans may not be satisfied any longer with an American policy whose principal accomplishment is to establish Soviet guilt for the failure of a negotiation. They want an agreement, and they want more flexibility than the U.S. has shown to date in its INF proposals. That certainly goes for the all-important West Germans...
...only cruise missiles in exchange for dramatic reductions in the European SS-20 force and other Soviet concessions (including an end to Soviet insistence on limiting British and French nuclear forces under an agreement). That was the nub of the now famous walk-in-the-woods formula that chief INF Negotiator Paul Nitze worked out privately with his Soviet counterpart, Yuli Kvitsinsky, a year ago. Both men were overruled by their home offices on the grounds that they had given away too much. The Reagan Administration felt it could not live without the Pershing II. Critics argue that the decision...
...official. Postponement is tantamount to cancellation, and therefore it is not an option at all. The Soviets by now have good reason to conclude that deployment will indeed take place. Yet far from positioning themselves in a way that would allow them to compromise at the last minute in INF, they have continued to drop dark hints of a walkout and a buildup...