News Release

“Liquidating the Legacy of the Cold War”?

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ZIA MIAN
Mian is co-editor of the book Out of the Nuclear Shadow and a researcher on South Asian security issues with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He said today: “I’m very disturbed by the Indian prime minister’s speech and his talk of a ‘decisive fight.’ …. There is no end in sight to the nuclear danger in South Asia, especially since the U.S. and Russia have shown with their new nuclear treaty that they have no intention of putting their nuclear weapons behind them, even though their Cold War ended a decade ago.”
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JACQUELINE CABASSO
Cabasso is executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation, which recently released the report “The Shape of Things to Come: The Nuclear Posture Review, Missile Defense, and the Dangers of a New Arms Race.” She said today: “The Bush-Putin nuclear arms reduction treaty is a sham. Far from ‘liquidating the legacy of the Cold War,’ as Bush claims, the administration’s real nuclear weapons agenda can be characterized as fewer, but newer. As recently confirmed in the Nuclear Posture Review, ‘more useable’ precision, low-yield nuclear weapons will be developed to complement first-strike strategic nuclear weapons, in combination with a suite of missile defenses and space-based weapons. Together these components constitute one integrated, offensive global war fighting system.”
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WILLIAM HARTUNG
Hartung is the President’s Fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School and author of “About Face,” a new study on the role of the arms lobby in shaping the Bush nuclear doctrine, as well as the report “The Costs of NATO Expansion Revisited.” He said today: “The Bush-Putin accord gives nuclear weapons a new lease on life…. In the next five years alone, the Bush administration plans to spend an additional $33 billion on its new strategic ‘triad’ of long-range strike systems, missile defenses, and a revitalized nuclear weapons production complex. The Bush nuclear policy draws heavily on the work of corporate-backed conservative think tanks like Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy and Keith Payne’s National Institute for Public Policy, both of which have close ties with major nuclear arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin.”
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BORIS KAGARLITSKY
Author of Russia Under Yeltsin and Putin, Kagarlitsky said today: “Russians expect Bush to bring them some reward for the concessions made in the last months as a contribution to ‘the war against terror.’ So far, however, it remains unclear not only what Bush can offer but even what exactly our leadership wants to get. The real interest of Putin is that the U.S. administration turns a blind eye to human rights violations in Russia and Chechnya (knowing well that there will be much more of them in the near future). This is not hard to get but it is not something that can be presented to your own people as a great diplomatic achievement.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020 or (202) 421-6858; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167