The World - News from Feb. 24, 1988

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger called for ratification of the U.S.-Soviet intermediate-range nuclear weapons treaty, saying that the alternative would be unilateral withdrawal of U.S. Pershing 2 and ground-launched cruise missiles from Europe. As it is, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the pact will do nothing to reduce the Soviet Union’s ability to wipe out Europe with nuclear weapons, although the U.S. capacity to retaliate with nuclear weapons based in Europe will be “substantially reduced if not eliminated.” Yet Kissinger said that failure to ratify the treaty “would generate a crisis in the Atlantic Alliance which would, in the end, almost certainly lead to the unilateral withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Europe and undermine the cohesion of the alliance.”