Philip Taubman: Time to cut nuclear weapons
Jan 09, 2012

There is increasing momentum for reductions in the massive American nuclear weapons stockpile.

Over the weekend, Philip Taubman of the New York Times penned a column recommending cutting the size of the arsenal by two-thirds.

Taubman recently wrote a book entitled The Partnership, analyzing the work of four former nuclear hawks and a renowned scientist now working for a world free of nuclear weapons.  As Taubman noted, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Republican secretaries of state; William Perry, former secretary of defense; Sam Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sidney Drell, a Stanford physicist, “are not exactly pacifist hippies”.

Taubman calls for more than nuclear weapons reductions.  He also urges the Pentagon to scale back nuclear war-fighting plans, remove the requirement that most American land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles be capable of launch within minutes, and terminate the aging B-52 bomber fleet that could deliver nuclear weapons.