|
|
 Sen. Richard Lugar Photo by Heather Hill |
The Cold War is over, but the fall-out from the nuclear weapon proliferation that it engendered continues, explained the inaugural Charles F. Bonser Distinguished Lecturer in Public Policy at Indiana University Bloomington Feb. 18.
"Our current vulnerability," said Sen. Richard Lugar, "stems from the fact that a vast supermarket of weapons, deadly materials and the scientific know-how to produce them was left behind in the Soviet Union after its collapse."
Lugar was a catalyst to the Nunn-Lugar Implementation, signed into law during the Bush administration. It has facilitated the destruction of 344 ballistic missiles, 286 ballistic missile launchers, 37 bombers, 96 submarine missile launchers and 30 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. It has sealed 191 nuclear test tunnels and 4,838 warheads aimed at the United States have been deactivated.
"Without Nunn-Lugar, Ukraine, Kazakstan and Belarus would still have thousands of nuclear weapons," he said. "Instead, all three countries are free of nuclear weapons."
Lugar said the overall relationship between Russia and the United States is not good, which makes the dismantlement of weaponry all the more notable.
"In my view, the U.S.-Russian relationship during the last eight years has declined from a strategic partnership, to a pragmatic one, to a relationship of benign neglect, to one that is lurching toward malign neglect. Weapons dismantlement remains one of the few areas where contacts and cooperation between our nations are flourishing" he said.
The new lecture series is funded by a gift from Charles Bonser, founder and dean emeritus of the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and his wife, Nancy. The lecture series is cosponsored by SPEA and the Kelley School of Business, which each matched the Bonser's' gift to launch the series.
Read the entire lecture at this Web site:
http://web.iquest.net/lugar/iuspeech299.html
Return to Table of Contents