Canadian officials warned of disagreement to come between the Europeans and the Americans over the “zero option,” the longstanding proposal to reduce both US and Soviet INF to zero. This dispatch from Brussels reported “substantial unhappiness” amongst the Europeans that the United States and the Soviet Union would discuss disarmament “even if neither of them believed in it.” Nuclear deterrence had prevented war in Europe for the preceding four decades, and US-Soviet discussions of disarmament only made it even more difficult to convince public opinion of deterrence’s continued importance

Description of discussions between Brandt and Mitterrand on European security and strategic balance between the East and West. Topics covered include France's nuclear forces and INF negotiations.

A memo to Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi from his Diplomatic Counselor Antonio Badini. Badini warns against the latest Soviet proposals. He suggests that agreeing to them without making any concessions regarding the deployment of American missiles would be tantamount to the realization of a long term goal of the Soviet Union, i.e. the decoupling between the Western European and the American defense system. […] He writes that the Soviet proposals “can be taken as a possible basis for an agreement is surprising. We can
only hope that this fact does not imply that, from a political and psychological standpoint, the process of Finlandization of Europe is far more advanced than we believed thus far.”

This memo to Prime Minister Bettino Craxi argues against the merging of the INF and START negotiations proposed by the Finnish government and backed by Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau. The memo suggests that the proposal could jeopardize the Geneva talks and harm European interests.