The Quest for Peace and Security
Most individuals have a natural desire for peace and tranquillity, but that desire has been frustrated throughout much of human history. Recent years, however, have seen some remarkable gains in man’s quest for peace, as the following list shows.
1985: (October) United Nations celebrates 40th birthday and proclaims 1986 as the International Year of Peace.
(November) First superpower summit in six years as Gorbachev and Reagan meet; Reagan speaks of a “fresh start.”
1986: (January) Gorbachev calls for banning all nuclear weapons by the year 2000.
(September) Conference on Confidence- and Security-Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe (35 nations, including the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, and all of Europe except Albania) signs treaty to reduce risk of accidental war.
(October) Reagan and Gorbachev summit in Iceland fails, although Gorbachev says they were on the verge of “major, history-making decisions.”
1987: (January) Policy of glasnost (openness) appears to be pointing to new era in the Soviet Union.
(March) First visit of a British prime minister to Moscow in 12 years.
(December) Gorbachev and Reagan sign INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
1988: (March) Nicaragua and anti-Communist contras sign cease-fire, beginning negotiations to reach a permanent settlement.
(April) Soviet Union announces withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan by February 1989; Ethiopia and Somalia agree to end conflict.
(May) Vietnam announces withdrawal of 50,000 troops from Kampuchea before end of year, the rest by 1990.
(June) Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke says of Gorbachev-Reagan summit in Moscow: “For the first time in the whole postwar period, there are real signs of emergence of a world that can live constructively in peace.”
(July) Iran announces acceptance of UN resolution calling for cease-fire in eight-year-old Iran-Iraq war.
(August) The United States agrees to pay withheld dues to UN, a course already taken by the Soviets, thus helping end UN financial siege and giving it renewed stature.
(September) Morocco and Polisario guerrilla forces accept UN plan to end 13 years of war in Western Sahara.
(October) The UN peacekeeping forces are awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace; Libya and Chad formally end long-lived state of war.
(December) At UN, Gorbachev announces large unilateral reduction of Soviet forces within two years and a pullback of troops and tanks from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the German Democratic Republic; South Africa, Namibia, and Cuba agree to implement UN resolution on April 1, 1989, granting Namibian independence and ending 22 years of war; half of the 50,000 Cuban troops in Angola to be withdrawn by November 1, the rest by July 1, 1991; the United States agrees to talk with Palestine Liberation Organization after Yasser Arafat guarantees the right of Israel “to exist in peace and security.”
1989: (January) 149 nations attending Paris Conference on Chemical Weapons call for rapid action to ban development, production, storage, and deployment of chemical weapons.
(February) Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala sign agreement on securing peace in Central America; Colombia’s largest rebel group, FARC (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces), announces cease-fire, raising hopes that 35 years of guerrilla warfare may be coming to an end.
(March) Foreign ministers from 35 nations begin talks in Vienna on CFE (Negotiations on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe), designed to reduce military forces in Europe.
(April) Vietnam announces total troop withdrawal from Kampuchea by September 30.
(May) Hungary begins scrapping its 40-year-old barbed-wire barrier on Austrian border; at first meeting of Soviet and Chinese leaders in over 30 years, Soviets announce reductions in Asian armies; Soviets start unilateral troop and armor pullback from Eastern Europe.
(June) Bush’s call for deep cuts in troops, tanks, artillery, and aircraft in Europe by 1992 leads newsmagazine to say: “It may really open the door to the most significant arms reductions since the end of World War II.”
(August) Five Central American nations agree on a plan to bring an end to the hostilities in Nicaragua.
In spite of these impressive gains, however, many lands are still far from enjoying peace. People are still dying in Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and the Philippines—to name just a few—because of military action. Hence, while many feel more optimistic than before about the prospects for peace, we should not forget that the second horseman of Apocalypse, the “fiery-colored horse” of war, is still galloping through the earth.—Revelation 6:3, 4.