START II

One positive result of the end of the Cold War was a reduction in nuclear weapons.

Under Bush, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. negotiated and implemented the START I and START II treaties, which limited the number of warheads each country could possess to between 3,000 and 3,500.

I mean, that was still enough to end human life on Earth several times over, but it was amazing progress.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War led President Bush to declare the dawn of a new world order.

If you add them all together, it's about 10.

But we are in the midst of an enormous modernization program, a couple trillion dollars that President Obama agreed to as the price for getting military support for START II, if I'm not mistaken.

And you do remark at the beginning of the book and at the end of the book as well that At the end of the book, you note that Putin and Trump let the last major arms limitation treaty, which is START II, lapse, and that the arms control regime, you say, is collapsing into a new Cold War.

Is that simply a fear of yours, or do you really believe that we're at the beginning of a new arms race?

Well, I mean, I don't think I've ever—I've lived a long time, and I don't think I've ever lived in a time with more flux, with more—I mean, on the one hand, it's chaos, and on the other hand, it's fluidity.

It was carefully, uh, balanced between the Soviet Union and the, and, and the United States.

At some point, they made a treaty, and they, the START I and the START II treaties, they decide, agreed to destroy 80% of the nuclear warheads, uh, both sides, uh, to bring down the risk.

That was wise mana- management of the planet, in spite, you know, there were communists on the side, capitalists on the side.

They hated one another.