REGISTER - Sept. 27 Lecture

September 27James Goodby

Nuclear Arms Control: Is It Finished? Does it Matter? What Can We Do?

President Trump has tried to withdraw the US from agreements that have restrained the world's nuclear arsenals. There has been little public reaction to his announcements of US withdrawal from the agreement with Iran, or the treaty with Russia on intermediate-range cruise and ballistic missiles, or to the statement by his NSA that the New START treaty, which reduced and capped the numbers of US and Russian nuclear weapons, is unlikely to be extended beyond its expiration date. Meanwhile, Trump's efforts to "denuclearize" North Korea have stalled and Kim Jong-un is busy improving his capability to strike his neighbors with nuclear-armed missiles.

Does all of this matter? The human race has been lucky not to have endured a nuclear war or to have experienced nuclear explosions in a major city since we dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. I use the word "lucky" advisedly because nuclear bombs have been inadvertently dropped but did not explode, nuclear bombs have been misplaced, and signals of nuclear attacks on the US have led to misreadings of what was happening (especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962). We cannot assume that our luck will last forever. Next year's presidential elections should be a time to address nuclear concerns, yet none of the leading candidates have campaigned on the issue. They will not, probably, unless the public demands it. Can we save what is left of the nuclear restraint infrastructure, first and foremost the New START treaty, then create new means to help the world reinvent nuclear arms control?or not?

James Goodby has served in the US Foreign Service as a policy adviser, achieving the rank of Career Minister, and was appointed to five ambassadorial-rank positions by Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Clinton, including ambassador to Finland. He taught at Georgetown, Syracuse, and Carnegie Mellon Universities. Ambassador Goodby is the author and editor of several books, including most recently, Approaching the Nuclear Tipping Point: Cooperative Security in an Era of Global Change.

 

Location: The fall lectures are in Room A on the 1st floor of 4801 Massachusetts Ave. NW.

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