The Vatican tries to reduce the revived global threat of nuclear war

Author Lawrence J. Korb recounts his recent trip to a disarmament conference held at the Vatican and describes why the period of progress on nuclear disarmament appears to have ended.

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With the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, many experts felt that the threat of nuclear war had receded. In 1986, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, at a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, almost agreed to eliminate their nuclear arsenals altogether. Of course, they didn’t. They did, however, agree to eliminate all intermediate-range missiles under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), and discussed a possible strategic arms agreement.

The above excerpt was originally published in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Click here to view the full article.

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