Nunn Pushes Global Disarmament

Former Senator Sam A. Nunn urged for a complete global disarmament of nuclear weapons at a speech Friday at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum before an audience that included former defense secretary Robert S. McNamara.

Nunn, who got some media attention over the summer as a potential running mate for Barack Obama, warned about the dangers of nuclear weapons within the context of growing powers Russia and China.

Nunn’s speech, the first annual Robert S. McNamara Lecture on War and Peace, came 46 years to the week after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and was delivered with the 92-year-old former defense secretary sitting in the front row.

“I believe that America would be far more secure if no one had nuclear weapons,” said Nunn, who represented Georgia in the Senate. “We’re moving in the wrong direction. We’re not moving up the mountain; we’re moving down the mountain.”

Nunn, who co-wrote an opinion article on this subject in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year with three retired senior diplomats including Henry A. Kissinger, cited the different the challenges that the United States faces in the post-September 11 world as one of the impetuses behind his growing concern.

“We’re in a different world, we’re not in the Cold War, and we’ve got to adjust to that,” he said.

But Nunn’s speech did not only focus on the contemporary need for nuclear disarmament. He drew on the Cuban Missile Crisis as a historical lesson for his argument, recalling that he received classified briefings as the events of the crisis unfolded because of his role on the House Foreign Services Committee

“I made a decision then, that if I ever had an opportunity to reduce the nuclear dangers and raise the nuclear threshold...that I was going to try to do it,” said Nunn, who added that the gravity of the situation carried over while he served in office.

Since leaving the Senate after the 2006 elections, Nunn has dedicated his career to the disarmament of nuclear weapons.

He is currently the co-chairman and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization that tries to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons by analyzing threats and funding threat-reduction projects like the cleanup of nuclear material left in Belgrade.

The annual lecture was established thanks to a gift from the McNamara family, and the lecture is to be given by an individual “seeking to illuminate key lessons from history for future policymakers seeking to avoid war and promote peace.”

Audience members said they found the presentation compelling.

“I thought of the most paramount points was that we continue to not talk first. We should sit down with Russia, China, India before taking action,” said Benjamin T. Hand ’12. “We continue to produce and own more tactical weapons than can ever be used...we continue to treat NATO and other subsequent military treaty organizations as political, which undermines our nation.”