Russia: The Adventurer

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*Another version of this scheme was publicized last week in the New York Times's letters column. The proposal, jointly forwarded by Harvard University's chief seismologist and by a Harvard government student, had some weird aspects. It would require the U.S. and Russia to deposit $5 billion apiece with the World Bank, as a sort of good faith deposit against discovery of an illegal underground blast within their boundaries. The evidence would come from many unmanned seismic recorders in sealed boxes scattered throughout the two countries. On every Wednesday (why this must be the day is not explained), each nation would fly the recorders to a neutral team on its frontier. Eventually, the records would be inspected by a panel of 15 scientists from neutral countries. If nine of the 15 decide that there has been an explosion, the guilty nation would be declared a violator, and steps would be taken to hand over its $5 billion to the other country. Thus testing would become expensive, if not impossible.