David Cay Johnston: “Mr. President, over the Memorial Day recess, I had the opportunity, along with the Senator from Georgia and other…”

“Mr. President, over the Memorial Day recess, I had the opportunity, along with the Senator from Georgia and other Members of the Senate and of the House, to go to a conference sponsored by the Carnegie Institute for Peace in Madrid. It was a joint conference between us and Members of the Russian Duma. Those Members had been selected on a broad philosophical spectrum properly and as fully representative of the Duma as we could get. There were those who were the nationalists, there were those who were the Democrats, there were those representing every spectrum of the Duma. We thought we were going to discuss a whole range of issues, but the theme that came back over and over and over again was the threat that all of these Members of the Duma feel from making the bordering countries around them of Eastern Europe members of NATO subject to the nuclear shield of the United States. It is an obsession with those Members of the Duma, and as we discussed it with them, it struck me, first of all, that what possible interest is there of the United States to so threaten Russia that all of the ongoing things we have with respect to nuclear proliferation, with respect to the dismantlement of the Soviet nuclear weapons to threaten that ongoing process? I think it is one of those policies, I do not know how conceived, but we really ought to rethink that and rethink it immediately.”