Agreement on Nuclear Arms Control

AGREEMENT ON NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL -- (House of Representatives - July 09, 2009)

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Mr. QUIGLEY. I rise today to congratulate President Obama on reaching an agreement on nuclear arms control with Russian President Medvedev. This agreement will cut American and Russian nuclear arsenals by at least one quarter. This represents a critical step towards more substantial arms control, as well as a milestone in confronting our nuclear legacy.

I, like most Americans, was born in the nuclear age. The 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked its beginning, establishing an uncertain peace in a war-weary world.

But with the global proliferation of nuclear weapons, the threat of catastrophe grew ever closer. Confrontations in Berlin, in Cuba and the Middle East were one miscalculation away from disaster. But rather than learning from these close calls and taking dramatic steps to reduce our stockpiles of nuclear arms, we built more, and so did the Soviet Union.

Our arms control efforts were limited at best, and at worst they collapsed under the pressure of pursuing a global containment strategy against the Soviet Union. Today, the United States and Russia each deploy over 2,000 nuclear warheads. Although both countries exercise extreme care in managing these weapons, only one mistake in judgment could be fatal. That risk has grown as seven other countries have joined the so-called nuclear club over the past half century.

Our nuclear warheads are also expensive to maintain and draw badly needed funding away from other priorities. As former President Eisenhower said, ``Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.''

For this reason I stand here today not only to congratulate President Obama on his progress in Moscow, but also to urge him to take further steps toward reducing the global stockpile of nuclear weapons. Like President Obama, I recognize that we live in a world in which threats to peace are no longer confined to the traditional great powers.

I echo President Obama's sentiment that in this ``strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of nuclear attack has gone up.''

Rogue states and terrorist organizations are dedicated to acquiring nuclear weapons. We must be vigilant in controlling these weapons and making sure that they do not fall into the wrong hands. A nuclear arms treaty with Russia to replace the expiring START treaty is a good place to start. We should also ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which aims to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world.

We must confront the terrible legacy of the Cold War. We must recognize that although this legacy belongs to another generation, it is now our responsibility to enact change. We must stop wasting money on the excesses of the Cold War and start thinking about improving the present. We must show the world that we are committed to reducing this nuclear threat. We must do everything we can to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again.

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