Word: zeroed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...European governments will go along with elimination of intermediate- range missiles because they have little choice: they committed themselves to the zero option when Reagan proposed it in 1981 and nobody thought the U.S.S.R. would ever accept. But their fear is that scrapping both intermediate- and shorter-range missiles would be a step toward the total denuclearization of Europe...
...seemed less than reassured. Leaving the session, Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti admitted "there is fear of global denuclearization without adequate countermeasures," although his government made it plain that it supported the new approach. A French TV news analyst summed up a strong current of opinion in his country: "Zero option, yes. Double zero and triple zero, no." British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, during her visit to Moscow three weeks ago, told Gorbachev that a "world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us." Canadian Foreign Minister Joe Clark said he had found "obvious...
Some U.S. experts, notably former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, also worry about a lessening of the American commitment to defend Europe. Says Kissinger: "The so-called zero option . . . has little utility for arms control; it does represent an important step in decoupling Europe from the U.S. politically." To other Americans, this fear is exaggerated. They point out that plenty of American nuclear weapons, carried by bombers or launched by submarines, would be left for the defense of Europe. The independent British and French nuclear forces, which are not involved in the INF negotiations, would be left intact. Further, these...
...arcane, often confounding world of nuclear diplomacy, the zero option seems refreshingly simple: the U.S. and the Soviet Union would define a certain category of weapons in a certain region of the world, then wipe clean that particular corner of the slate. In the history of a slogging, controversial enterprise that has so often meant merely regulating the bloated arsenals of the superpowers rather than reducing them, the idea sounds innovative and bold. It would appear to be not just arms control but a big step toward real disarmament. Where now there are hundreds of weapons, soon there would...
...zero option has had a bizarre, irony-ridden career. Born as a slogan of the European left in the late 1970s, kidnaped and turned to their purposes by Reaganaut hard-liners in 1981, now adopted and turned to his own use by Mikhail Gorbachev, it may come to maturity at a summit later this year as the first arms-control agreement in nearly a decade -- but also as the object of intense opposition...