Political Quotes

“the 11 nuclear detonations conducted by India and Pakistan this past month demonstrated in graphic fashion the weakness of present international efforts to control nuclear proliferation. The tests also revealed the folly of economic sanctions in deterring nuclear proliferation when balanced against asserted interests of national security. In a recent opinion editorial piece in the Washington Post, physicist Zia Mian and professor Frank Von Hippel of Princeton University provide an answer to proliferation that I fully support, and I want to share this with my colleagues. They advocate, and I quote, ``India's and Pakistan's nuclear tests are a challenge that can be met in either of two ways. One would be to simply recreate the nuclear status quo with two more nuclear weapon states and accept the enormous dangers for the people of India and Pakistan and the rest of the world. The alternative would be to take international steps to devalue nuclear weapons' possessions by moving the nuclear goal posts towards disarmament. ``The history of the past 50 years teaches that nuclear weapons are unusable for rational military purposes and that their existence makes ordinary human miscalculation or madness potentially catastrophic. Yet the nuclear weapon states act as if they are giants in the world of pygmies, creating imagination in many countries and a temptation for nationalistic parties such as India's newly governing BJP.”