Senior Policy Director Alexandra Bell spoke with The Christian Science Monitor about the future of arms control, especially in relation to the United States and Russia.
In the early 1960s “we walked up to the edge of the nuclear abyss with the Cuban missile crisis. Then we walked back and started negotiating,” says Alexandra Bell, senior policy director for the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “In retrospect, we were lucky to make it out of there alive the first time. Arms control gave us guard rails against chaos. It will be really bad if, for the first time in 50 years, we don’t have any on-the-ground insight into each other’s military forces.”
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Ms. Bell says the U.S. and Russia will eventually come back to the table. “Between us, Russia and the U.S. have more than 90% of all existing nuclear weapons, and we are the only two countries capable of posing an existential threat on that scale,” she says. “So, asking if Russia is a good partner is the wrong question. We basically have no choice but to start a sustained new conversation with them.” Read more
