QUOTES
Haste
is good only in catching fleas.
“Never
be humiliated. Do not fear to have your own opinion and to make it public, even
if your opinion does not coincide with the opinion of the authorities.”
The
world was shaken twice in the last decade: once when the USSR dissolved, and once
when terrorists attacked the US on September 11. In the Gorbachev era, we actually
lost our way to change the world for the better. We lost some wonderful possibilities
to begin a process for deep reductions of the stockpile, and to eliminate nuclear
weapons once and for all. Now one of the main obstacles to achieving a nuclear-free
world is the new US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). What can we do? Leaders are
still sure that peace is possible because their countries have nuclear weapons.
I am sure nuclear threats and nuclear weapons are the last argument of weak, stressed
and irresponsible politicians. People must act very quicky to stop the movement
to nuclear war. But Russian people do not wish to spend money for new weapons
of mass destruction; Russian people wish to build a new peaceful life after years
of the Communists? totalitarian regime and many years of transition-period chaos.
Russia today wishes to build its civil economy, not military industry. But the
US NPR and the US deployment of space-based national missile defense (NMD) will
provoke Russia to build new nuclear armaments. Combined with NATO expansion (to
the Russian border), these US initiatives will break down the whole world order,
and every nation will pay their own political and economic price for that nuclear
apartheid.
