Arms Control Association Press Briefing
Friday, April 11, 2008, 9:30 - 11:00 A.M.
National Press Club, The Murrow Room on the 13th Floor
529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC
Please click here for the transcript.
Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin are seeking to burnish their legacies by touting a raft of U.S.-Russian accomplishments completed on their watch. But the two leaders are leaving U.S.-Russian strategic relations at arguably their lowest point since the Cold War. The two governments are deeply divided on future nuclear arms limits and missile defenses, particularly U.S. plans to deploy anti-missile systems in Europe. The panelists will discuss steps to put the U.S.-Russian strategic relationship on a more stable footing, reduce the two countries’ excessive nuclear arsenals, and craft a more sensible approach to dealing with missile threats and missile defenses.
Panelists:
Ambassador James E. Goodby, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Goodby has held many U.S. government positions, including Deputy to the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Special Representative for the security and dismantlement of nuclear weapons, and chief negotiator for nuclear threat reduction agreements. He recently co-edited with George Shultz and Sidney Drell Reykjavik Revisited: Steps Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons. Also with Drell, Goodby co-authored the Arms Control Association report What are Nuclear Weapons For? Recommendations for Restructuring U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces.
Ambassador Avis T. Bohlen, Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. A former career Foreign Service Officer, Bohlen retired in 2002 from the Department of State after serving in a variety of top positions, including Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria, and Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Much of her Foreign Service career focused on European security issues, arms control, and Soviet affairs. She is a member of the Arms Control Association Board of Directors.
George N. Lewis, Senior Research Associate and Associate Director of the Peace Studies Program at Cornell University. Lewis, who holds a PhD in physics, is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He received that society’s Joseph A. Burton Forum Award. An associate editor of the journal Science and Global Security, Lewis has co-authored two extensive reports on missile defense: Countermeasures: A Technical Evaluation of the Operational Effectiveness of the Planned U.S. National Missile Defense System (2000) and Technical Realities: An Analysis of the 2004 Deployment of a U.S. National Missile Defense System (2004).
Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director, Arms Control Association.