op_elbaradei1_ SERGEI SUPINSKYAFP via Getty Images_nuclear ukraine SERGEI SUPINSKYAFP via Getty Images

A Farewell to Nuclear Arms

The Reykjavik summit in 1986 should remind us that palliative nuclear-disarmament measures are not enough. The world wlll be truly safe only when the Bomb ends up beside the slave trader’s manacles and the Great War’s mustard gas in the museum of bygone savagery.

MOSCOW – Twenty-five years ago this month, I sat across from Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland to negotiate a deal that would have reduced, and could have ultimately eliminated by 2000, the fearsome arsenals of nuclear weapons held by the United States and the Soviet Union.

For all our differences, Reagan and I shared the strong conviction that civilized countries should not make such barbaric weapons the linchpin of their security. Even though we failed to achieve our highest aspirations in Reykjavik, the summit was nonetheless, in the words of my former counterpart, “a major turning point in the quest for a safer and secure world.”

The next few years may well determine if our shared dream of ridding the world of nuclear weapons will ever be realized.

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