Reagan's "Zero Option", and Trump's

A history lesson on why both matter.

by Rod D. Martin
July 27, 2018

In one of the comment threads, a friend demonstrated complete ignorance of Reagan's "Zero Option" and why I keep referencing it. Hence, this history lesson which I wrote for him, and which you need to read:

The Zero Option -- proposed by Ronald Reagan in 1981 -- was a proposal for the elimination of all intermediate range nuclear weapons in Europe, such as the SS-20s that the Soviets had recently deployed and the Pershing II and cruise missiles Reagan and Thatcher were then proposing to deploy in response. The SS-20 gave the Soviets an enormous theatre advantage, and the left in Europe and America responded to this by demanding a "nuclear freeze" which would have preserved that advantage until the end of time (because what Euroweenie or Democrat ever wanted to stand up to Russia until the last year and a half, right?). Reagan and Thatcher, braving leftist protests in the streets of both continents by literally millions of people, deployed our deterrent forc…