A Path to Disarmament

The bilateral and multilateral negotiations to reduce the arsenals of death do not give much ground for hope. Reykjavik and its aftermath are a slender thread on which to hang the framework of peace.

The best that can be anticipated even if the tentative strategic weapons agreement is consummated, is a 25-percent reduction in the strategic forces in the first five-year period of the “ten-year millennium”—if, that is, the superpowers can agree on a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) formula. (The 25-percent estimate, rather than the commonly accepted one of 50 percent, is put forward in a careful analysis by Jack Mendelsohn in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, December 1986.) This will still require the part...