Posted on 04/16/2009 10:25:57 PM PDT by pobeda1945
ROME – President Barack Obama's call for a nuclear weapons-free world is welcome, but the huge U.S. defense budget may prove an "insurmountable obstacle" to reaching that goal, former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Thursday.
Talk of nuclear disarmament would be "just rhetorical" if other nations were asked to give up nukes while the United States maintains an overwhelming conventional military superiority, Gorbachev said. What's needed, he said, are talks to "demilitarize" world politics. Gorbachev, last leader of the now-defunct Soviet Union, helped inaugurate two days of discussions on nuclear disarmament involving some 100 former and current international leaders, under the sponsorship of the Italian Foreign Ministry, the U.S.-based organization Nuclear Threat Initiative and Gorbachev's own World Political Forum. The U.S. contingent was led by former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry and ex-Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia. In an afternoon of talks, conference participants repeatedly applauded the positions Obama has taken on the nuclear future, including his unprecedented joint statement April 1 with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that the two leaders had "committed our two countries to achieving a nuclear free world."
Egyptian diplomat Nabil Fahmy recalled a different time. "In the 1970s, when we said we wanted a nuclear-free world, we were laughed out of the room. It was as if today I took this chair and threw it into that chandelier," he told fellow conferees in a grand meeting room at the Italian ministry. "I am pleased and honored that we are discussing this seriously now."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Compared to what? China's defense budget?
I wonder what old splotch head thinks about N. Korea, Iran, Russia, China, India and Pakistan. This genie will not go back into the bottle.
Russia and China won’t give up their nukes. Heck, they both have been building more of them. Russia even has a new missile than can defeat star wars systems.
oh good the commie is trying to sway American public opinion on defense.. it’s sickening a third or more of the American public agrees with him
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