Word: zeroed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cancel it altogether. The simplicity and boldness of the scheme appealed to Reagan, and it had the advantage of seeming to give some of the noisier Europeans what they wanted. Pacifists and critics of NATO in Schmidt's Social Democratic Party had called for the Null-Losung, the "zero solution," although for them, along with "ban the Bomb" and "zone of peace," it was part of the vocabulary of European neutralism. Thus Perle was able, in a single catchy phrase, to appeal to both European leftists and the conservative new American President...
...Today's zero option is quite different from the 1981 version. Back then the U.S. was starting from zero and offering to stay there if the Soviets came down to zero as well -- dismantling an entire class of weapons already deployed, in exchange for NATO's altering future plans. As members of the Administration themselves admitted at the time, it was like asking the Super Bowl champs to trade their All-Pro front line for two future-round draft choices. The result, predictably and perhaps intentionally, was no deal...
That feature of the plan has raised old worries at home and abroad. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Congressman Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, have resurrected the fear that the zero option may be decoupling. Some Europeans are concerned that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and other leaders have invested so much political capital in forcing through the deployments despite domestic opposition that it would be awkward for them now to feign enthusiasm for the total removal of the missiles...
Largely for these reasons, the Reagan Administration was in something of a quandary about how to react. Having originally proposed the zero option in 1981 and hung tough on it through '82 and '83, the Administration felt it could not say no now that Gorbachev was finally saying...
Thus, with some of his aides swallowing hard, Reagan may go to the summit and the treaty-signing table in the fall having to contend with criticism that he is selling short the political and military interests of the West. As the . final irony of the zero option, that criticism may be coming from the paragons of the arms-control establishment, whose own efforts to manage the nuclear peace Reagan himself opposed so vigorously during the era of detente...