Nuclear treaties diminish, although certainly do not eliminate, the threat of nuclear war. Abandoning them is insanity. From Norman Solomon at antiwar.com:
Forty years ago, across a dozen pages of The Nation magazine, I was in a debate with the English historian E. P. Thompson about the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, the relative culpability of both governments, and how activists should approach it all. At the time, Cold War hostility was rampant. In a March 1983 speech to an audience of evangelicals, President Ronald Reagan declared that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire” and, for good measure, “the focus of evil in the modern world.” Weeks later, Soviet leader Yuri Andropov accused the United States of pursuing an arms buildup to win a nuclear war; in his words, “not just irresponsible, it is insane.” Both countries were gunning their military-industrial engines in a feverish drive for more advanced nuclear arsenals.
Such was the frightening distemper of the times. But a grassroots movement calling for a bilateral freeze on nuclear weapons had quickly gained wide support and political momentum since Reagan took office. In April 1982, he responded to the growing upsurge of alarm with a radio address that tried to reassure. “Today, I know there are a great many people who are pointing to the unimaginable horror of nuclear war. I welcome that concern,” Reagan said. He added that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Two months later, not mollified by soothing words, 1 million people gathered in New York’s Central Park at a demonstration for nuclear disarmament and peace. That protest was part of a transatlantic uprising against reckless escalation of the arms race. Activists struggled to challenge a spiraling arms contest propelled by two nations with very different political systems but mutual reliance on brandishing huge quantities of nuclear weaponry.
