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From: tbray@mprvaxa.UUCP (Tim Bray)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: A question about the "Freeze"
Message-ID: <491@mprvaxa.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 14-Mar-84 19:45:40 EST
Article-I.D.: mprvaxa.491
Posted: Wed Mar 14 19:45:40 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Mar-84 00:26:54 EST
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Why the "zero option" died while the freeze looks good...

The issue here is one of credibility.  As one might have expected,
the Russians denounced the zero option as an extremely unbalanced
proposal, given the actual strategic nuclear balance in Europe and
bearing in mind the non-US nuclear deterrent resources.

That the Russians feel this way is no surprise.  However, when 
large sections of the European political establishment started 
saying much the same thing people started to wonder.  And when
the arms-control and political-science experts started publishing
stories supporting some part of this position in everything to
the left of National Review, the ball started rolling.

But when you get right down to it, the problem is Reagan.  Nobody 
believes that RR believes disarmament possible or is willing to do
anything meaningful towards it.  I mean, would YOU really negotiate
disarmament with someone you believed was the centre of "an empire
of evil"?  And when you listen to the foreign-policy geeks in his
administration start going on about limited nuclear war, the credibility
of any disarmament option put forward by these people must be 
seen as questionable.

Tim Bray