Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 1, No. 3 | Sam Nunn an interview, page 2

SN: That will certainly be our goal. And Ted Turner himself came up with this concept. He had watched—talk about the power of television—a 60 Minutes II program about nuclear weapons in Russia. It focused on General Eugene Habiger, who was the head of the U.S. Strategic Command, a four-star Air Force general in charge of all our strategic nuclear forces, and his visit to his counterpart in Russia, General Vladimir Yakovlev, who was commander-in-chief of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces. The program followed them in Russia and through a reciprocal visit back home in the U.S. Ted saw all the weapons that the two countries had and that they had made very few changes since the cold war. He vividly saw the dangers. Then he decided—the light bulb went on—that he was going to do something about this because he felt that the media, in which he obviously plays an important role, have gone to sleep on this subject, basically conveying to the American people that the cold war is over. Yet we still have thousands of nuclear weapons, as well as a tremendous amount of other nuclear material and know-how out there contributing to the growing danger of terrorism and accidents, among other things. Ted said, “I’m going to put a lot of my money into the problem.”

He came to me and asked me if I would run the Initiative. I was practicing law, I was involved in a number of corporate boards and on several nonprofit boards as well. In addition, I was chairing a think tank in Washington, the Center for Strategic International Studies, and so with all that I said there was no possibility that I could spend all my time on the threat of nuclear weapons. But we talked and talked and our discussions eventually evolved to the point where I agreed to spend one-third to one-half my time leading the Initiative.

We did a six-month scoping study, because I wanted to make sure that the way I thought we needed to go was compatible with what Ted thought. Ted really has a vision of the world without any nuclear weapons. I think that’s a noble vision but I don’t know how you get there. I told him I did not think, in the next fifteen or twenty years, that was a realistic direction or one where he could really be effective. There is so much work to do to clean up post-cold-war problems and so many dangers out there that we have to deal with first, like getting the number of weapons down and finding out how to build trust and transparency. That might eventually lead—maybe in the next generation—to figuring out how to verify and maintain the kind of trust that would be required to really get rid of nuclear weapons.

So we didn’t agree on that point but did decide that it wasn’t the most important point and that we would agree to disagree and move forward, working together, with his money and my time. And his considerable energy and intellect, too. It’s not just money that Ted contributes. He is a person with a huge vision and very broad dreams and really is willing to put his money up for the things he believes in.

So you’re talking about a considerable financial commitment but one that, in the scope of the overall challenge—biological, chemical, nuclear weapons and enough unsecured nuclear materials in Russia alone to make 60-to-80,000 bombs—is not that much. If you look at $250 million in the face of a lot of overwhelming problems, it’s really a small amount of money. But if you look at it compared to other private, nongovernmental organizations, and you say that we might be able to help government, we might be able to stimulate government, we might be able to show the way and have some pilot projects that government could learn from, then it becomes a very significant amount of money in the private sector.

SK: That is a huge agenda. But the big agenda that will be set in the next four years will be set by the Bush administration, which just put National Missile Defense square onto the international stage. Do you see yourself, in a way, challenging the Bush administration with the Initiative? Or do you see your work as trying to inform the Bush administration about different perspectives?

SN: We may not see eye-to-eye with the Bush administration on any number of issues but we’re going to be open and transparent and we’re going to keep them informed. I’ve already had meetings with people in the Department of Defense and top people on the National Security Council and also plan to meet with State Department staff, especially Colin [Powell]. He and I have talked briefly about it, but no meeting is set at this stage.

We respect the administration. We know that President Bush is going to take a look at a lot of things including some dramatic changes, perhaps in the U.S.’s offensive forces, which I applaud. I think we have far too many weapons in this country, to start with. And I think, right now, the number of what are called “hard target kill weapons” that the U.S. has, those that can knock out other weapons, really makes the Russians feel vulnerable because their economic distress renders them unable to keep their missiles mobile by moving them around on submarines or on the rails.

Now you might say, if you don’t think through this, well, that’s good news, we want Russia to be vulnerable. But when they become more vulnerable they, as we would, might be inclined to decide that they’re going to fire quicker. And when they decide they’re going to fire quicker, that means firing when they think a weapon is coming, maybe rather than when it hits. That’s what’s called “launch on warning.” And now one of the critical problems is that the warning systems in Russia are deteriorating. I recently read a newspaper article indicating that the Russian satellites are not working properly a great deal of the time.

So you combine a great big country like Russia with huge numbers of weapons that they feel cannot survive a first strike, and you have trouble. By helping to ensure that Russia has more confidence that they are not vulnerable to a first strike, we are shoring up our own stake in our survival. So, therefore, we’re not only going to work with the U.S. government, but we’ve also written to President Putin and told him what we’re doing. We’re going to be open and transparent to the Russian government and to other governments around the globe.

We’ve got to work with other countries around the world and whatever the U.S. does in missile defense has to be done in a cooperative way, particularly with Russia, because if we alienate the people we have to rely on to prevent the proliferation of these weapons, then we’ll be cutting off our nose to spite our face.

I remember President Eisenhower said, toward the end of his administration, that there’s always a tendency in this or any other country to believe there’s some magic technological solution to all our problems. But there usually is not, almost always is not. And we have to have a balanced program. So missile defense has to be balanced, it has to be threat based, it has to be cost effective and it has to be carried out at least with other nations’ acquiescence, if not their cooperation.

SK: So the Nuclear Threat Initiative and other foundations like Carnegie Corporation of New York really have a role to play in bringing attention to all the other elements that are involved in defense.

SN: Absolutely.

SK: One domestic question. You were there in 1985 at the birth of the Democratic Leadership Conference, the DLC, which has a more or less centrist philosophy. Now that it has a few years under its belt, do you feel it has changed the soul of the Democratic party?

SN: Well, I think certainly it has. I think Al From, the CEO, and Will Marshall [president of the Progressive Policy Institute, DLC’s affiliated think tank] and that whole crowd have done a tremendous job. When we got started, it was with the help of people like senators Chuck Robb, Dick Gephardt and Lawton Chiles. I was also very much involved, as you mentioned. And so was a young governor by the name of Bill Clinton; after we got the DLC started, he began working with us and did a good job. When I turned over the gavel as president of the DLC to my successor, it was Bill Clinton that I turned it over to. And I made a little joke at that time that he didn’t particularly like, but it happened to be true. I said, “Bill Clinton is the only young leader in America who has been labeled by the news media as an up-and-coming star in three separate decades.” So he’d been in politics a long time even though he was young. And so Bill took it over and became—

SK: And went to the White House with the philosophy of the DLC.

Next page: I think the middle of the Political spectrum is really the swing vote in America. And I believe that really, in effect, it’s the Common-Sense position most of the time.

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