Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, just a few words of welcome today. Im tom blanton. Im director of the National Security archive at George Washington university and honored to be one of the organizers of today. This is the day, 25 years ago, that president george h. W. Bush signed the nunnlugar legislation into law. Now, being document fetishists, we scanned the bush library for the photographs of that extraordinary moment, and none exist. There was not even a signing ceremony, which gives you a sense of the kind of mixed opinion inside the Bush Administration about this Congressional Initiative in Foreign Policy. But the judgment of history is in. The wall street journal called the nunnlugar legislation one of the most prescient pieces of legislation ever enacted. And today on the National Security archive website you can see the declassified documents showing the real danger of that time, the first ever declassified list of the 3,429 soviet Strategic Nuclear warheads that
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, just a few words of welcome today. Im tom blanton. Im director of the National Security archive at George Washington university and honored to be one of the organizers of today. This is the day, 25 years ago, that president george h. W. Bush signed the nunnlugar legislation into law. Now, being document fetishists, we scanned the bush library for the photographs of that extraordinary moment, and none exist. There was not even a signing ceremony, which gives you a sense of the kind of mixed opinion inside the Bush Administration about this Congressional Initiative in Foreign Policy. But the judgment of history is in. The wall street journal called the nunnlugar legislation one of the most prescient pieces of legislation ever enacted. And today on the National Security archive website you can see the declassified documents showing the real danger of that time, the first ever declassified list of the 3,429 soviet Strategic Nuclear warheads that
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Western governments and analysts have periodically expressed fears that the Kremlin might try to escalate by using nuclear weapons. This anxiety stems directly from Moscow’s own nuclear threat rhetoric: indeed, Putin’s original announcement of the officially designated spetsial’naya voyennaya operatsiya (special military operation) against Ukraine included …
To read Part One, please click here. Moscow’s official statements since February 24, 2022, concerning possible nuclear escalation should the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) directly intervene in the Russo-Ukrainian war represent a deliberate policy of strategic deterrence. Possible escalation to a world war between the US and Russia is acknowledged by both sides, which …