A Compromise May Yet Be Possible

The ABM treaty could be the key to a superpower trade-off

Amid the rubble of Reykjavik are the makings of a deal that might have been, and a deal that might yet be. Until now, the idea of a "grand compromise" < has always been an abstraction: the U.S. would curtail the Strategic Defense Initiative in return for significant reductions in the wretched excess of Soviet missiles that helped provoke SDI in the first place. But no one knew exactly how far the Soviets would go to achieve a bargain. There was good news out of Reykjavik: they might go further than even some proponents of the grand compromise had predicted.

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