The fact that 30,000 nuclear warheads are around in Russia and the United States and that our government has no plan for reducing that number below 20,000 in the next decade should be unacceptable to us as citizens. No military officer could imagine a war that required 30,000 of these warheads. And it is not only costly to maintain them, it is dangerous. It tells the world how important we believe these weapons to be, even though without them we are still the strongest military power in the world. Because it, and the arms control community that lobbies it, are fixated on using treaties to reduce and control these weapons.
Treaties are inherently slow and cumbersome.
Their sole virtue is that they establish rigorous standards for verification. Within nine days, Mikhail Gorbachev reciprocated with similar actions. Those moves have held, and the world has been a safer place. It was a quick, clean and effective process. Citizens must insist that our government look for some such way out of this stalemate.