Winter Thoughts on the Freeze

Pursuing a halt to the arms race is like unraveling a ball of snarled string. Half a dozen promising strands hang loose. You take up first one, then another, untwisting, disentangling—will this be the thread that finally releases the whole clump? Again, frustration. SALT II, START, MX, the freeze, Euromissiles; by the end of 1983, it seemed that each possibility had ended in yet another unyielding knot. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its clock hands closer to midnight. The Administ...