zero option

Then there is the zero option — no new funds — which, in the absence of any discernible progress on Capitol Hill, is the baseline assumption on which transit executives must formulate their budgets.

In Metro’s case, the zero option is a disaster that would deepen the hole from which the local economy must climb.

During their 1986 summit at Reykjavik, Iceland, both leaders agreed to the zero option, details were worked out, and the INF Treaty was signed in 1987.

People in the streets, in both the U.S. and Europe, refused to go away, with public calls for a “zero option,” no short-range missiles on either side.

Duly, Andropov did refuse the zero option; but his successor Mikhail Gorbachev had different pressures and priorities – economically, the arms race was unsustainable by then – and accepted the zero option as a sincere rather than tactical demand from the US.