Board members Philip Coyle and National Advisory Board member Frank von Hippel spoke with Radio Free Europe about the Andrei Sakharov, known as the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, who would have turned 100 years old this week.
“I think from at least 1948 forward, Sakharov was a man who saw the moral and human rights aspects of human pursuits, and had the intellectual capacity to make original and insightful observations each time an issue arose,” Coyle said. “Of course, early in the Cold War years, before Tsar Bomba, questions about the morality of nuclear weapons, the dangers of nuclear weapons, or the ‘appalling waste of the arms race’ didn’t even arise, as Sakharov wrote himself.
“Later, it became obvious to Sakharov and others that we had a responsibility to think about these things, and to challenge the narrow thinking of the past.” Read more
