The US and Russia each have thousands of nuclear weapons, but the danger lies less in the number of weapons than in the state of Russian-American relations. Even though nuclear arsenals were near an all time high in the late 1980’s, the risk of a nuclear catastrophe was greatly reduced by transforming what had been a highly confrontational relationship into one of friendship — unfortunately short lived.
Because improved Russian-American relations can greatly reduce nuclear risks, I hope you will look at an important, new bipartisan report on this subject. Contributors include former presidential National Security Advisors, a former advisor to President Nixon, and our Ambassador to Moscow under Ronald Reagan.
The Executive Summary notes that “Securing America’s vital national interests … requires deep and meaningful cooperation with other governments. The challenges — stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, defeating terrorist networks, rebuilding the global economy, and ensuring energy security for the United States and others — are enormous. And few nations could make more of a difference to our success than Russia … Rapid and effective action to strengthen U.S.-Russian relations is critically important to advancing U.S. national interests. … A new, more forthcoming approach to Russia is far from guaranteed to succeed, but we are convinced that the risk in making the effort is far smaller than the costs of a slide into hostility.”
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Hoping you find this of interest and with thanks for your participation.
Martin
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Martin Hellman
Member, National Academy of Engineering
Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering
Stanford University
Archives of earlier emails and other resources are at
http://nuclearrisk.org/resources.php.
Defusing the Nuclear Threat 