“When I left the Pentagon, I believed we were well on the way to ending forever that Cold War enmity, but that was not to be.”…
Since then, relations between the West and Russia have soured badly, prompting Russia to modernize its nuclear arsenal and assume a more aggressive nuclear posture.
One important step toward reducing the nuclear threat would be improving relations between the U.S. and Russia. My ray of sunshine, my hope, is I believe we can still reverse the slide in U.S. Russia relations. We must begin that by restoring civil dialog. We must restore cooperation between the United States and Russia in areas where we have mutual interest…If we succeed in doing that, then we can work to stop and reverse the drift to a greater and greater dependence on nuclear weapons.”
Source: William Perry, former U.S. Secretary of Defense 1994-1997, 10. February 2016, at the Center for International Security (CSIS), Stanford University
Text: http://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/news/william-perry-warns-nuclear-dangers-drell-lecture
William Perry, My Personal Journey at the Nuclear Brink
