REASONS TO STOP THE WAR
"I told NATO, the Americans, the Germans: Don't push us toward military action. Otherwise there will be a European war for sure and possibly world war.''
--Russian President Boris Yeltsin, April 6, 1999 (Reuters)
"In the event that NATO and America start a ground operation in Yugoslavia, they will face a second Vietnam. . . . I cannot rule out a third world war.''
--Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, April 17, 1999 (AP)
"If NATO goes from air force to ground force it will be a world catastrophe. [Russia] has never felt such anti-Western, anti-European feelings."
--First Deputy Russian Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, April 25, 1999 (Reuters)
"You have to understand that if we want to cause you a problem over this, we could. Someone, we don't know who, could send up a missile from a ship or a submarine and detonate a nuclear weapon high over the United States. The EMP [electromagnetic pulses that destroy electronic and computer equipment] would take away all your capability."
--Vladimir Lukin, Chairman of the Russian State Duma Foreign Policy Committee, late April, 1999, quoted by Rep. Kurt Weldon in May 18, 1999 speech.
"Just let Clinton, a little bit, accidentally, send a missile. We will answer immediately. Such impudence! To unleash a war on a sovereign state. Without Security Council. Without United Nations. It could only be possible in a time of barbarism."
--Boris Yeltsin, May 7, 1999 (Washington Post)
(Collected by Carol Moore)
I have just been at a seminar in Moscow, followed
by one at the Olaf Palme Institute in Stockholm
....Our meeting with Aleksander Arbatov, Deputy Chairman of the Defense Committee of the Russian State Duma, left us deeply concerned. Arbatov stated that U.S.-Russian relations, in the wake of NATO's bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, are at the "worst, most acute, most dangerous juncture since the U.S.-Soviet Berlin and Cuban missile crises." He states that START II is dead, co-operation with NATO is frozen, co-operation on missile defense is out of the question, and Moscow's willingness to co-operate on non-proliferation issues is at an all-time low. Moreover, anti-U.S. sentiment in Russia is real, deep, and more widespread than ever, and the slogan describing NATO action--"today Serbia, tomorrow Russia"--is "deeply planted in Russians' minds." Arbatov was bitter about 10 years of wasted opportunities on both sides, with disarmament talks completely stalled even before this crisis.
Scientists, politicians, doctors, and generals all told us the same thing--that NATO bombings of Serbia have set back disarmament 20 years. Some said that India and Pakistan are safe now that they have nuclear weapons and that other states like North Korea will step up their nuclear weapons programs. Officials from Minatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, have indicated their great concern about some 22 nuclear reactors in the region of conflict. A bomb hitting a reactor by accident would cause a catastrophe worse than Chernobyl.
Government spokesmen told us repeatedly that Russia will not allow the bombings to continue for another month, and that because their conventional forces are in tatters, Russia must rely on its nuclear weapons. I must ask, if these are idle threats, what distinguishes them from real threats? The credibility of the people we spoke with has convinced me that the threats are serious.
The Russian speakers deplored ethnic cleansing and did not support Milosevic, but Dr. Serguei Kapitsa, a scientist famous for his weekly television show, stated that Russians feel a sense of betrayal by the West and a profound loss of confidence in treaties and in the United Nations because NATO took this action outside the UN. Previously confident that Russia was moving toward integration with Europe, they focused their security concerns only on their southern and eastern boundaries. Now they perceive their primary threat from the West. Officials in Foreign Affairs told us that Russia has no option but to rely on nuclear weapons for its defense because its conventional forces are inadequate. When I said that if Russia used even a single nuclear weapon, the U.S. would respond with hundreds or thousands of missiles, they nodded and said, "Yes, it would be suicidal, but how else can we defend ourselves?"
--Dr. Mary-Wynne Ashford, Co-President of Internat'l Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Sam Smith is editor of THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1739 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20009 Tel: (202) 232-5544, Fax: (202) 234-6222, email: <ssmith@igc.org>. For a free trial subscription to the bi-monthly hard copy edition and regular e-mail updates, send e-mail and terrestrial address to <ssmith@igc.org>.