495. Editorial Note
On May 25, 1978, Vice President Walter F. Mondale addressed the Special Session on Disarmament. The United States, he said, wanted to achieve eight “bold” objectives over the next years. It wanted to 1) “substantially cut” strategic arms stockpiles and “place increasingly stringent qualitative limitations on their further development;” 2) end the practice of nuclear explosions by achieving a Comprehensive Test Ban treaty; 3) prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons; 4) ban “other weapons of mass destruction” such as chemical and radiological weapons; 5) “slow down and then reverse the sharp growth in conventional arms” transfers; 6) strengthen regional arms control agreements; and 7) “fully develop the institutions and expertise required for arms control; all of which would allow nations to 8) “release additional resources for economic and social development.” Arms control, he concluded, “must be the moral agenda of our time.” (“Excerpts From Vice President Mondale’s Address to the U.N. Disarmament Session,” New York Times, May 25, 1978, p. A16)