“They must stop and think”: Gorbachev called on Russia and the United States to establish a dialogue on nuclear disarmament

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev wrote an op-ed "Nuclear Deterrence Madness" for The Wall Street Journal, in which he called on Russia and the United States to engage in dialogue on nuclear disarmament.

The ex-president recalled how he himself argued a lot on this issue with Margaret Thatcher, a supporter of nuclear weapons, and advised current defenders not to forget about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the dispute over the deployment of Soviet nuclear weapons brought the world to the brink of war.

Quote. “Nuclear weapons are like [Chekhov's] guns on the wall, only in a play written and staged by no one knows who. We do not know the goals and intentions of the author.

• The ex-president of the USSR fears computer failures and the falling of nuclear weapons into the hands of terrorists, and considers nuclear deterrence inherently dangerous. “Today, the US and Russia are at a dangerous crossroads. They must stop and think. Cold War veterans have had their say. Now the leaders of our countries will act,” wrote Gorbachev.
• You can read the column in its entirety here .
• We wrote in detail about why the latest START-3 nuclear treaty between Russia and the United States could collapse because of Donald Trump, we wrote here . The destruction of the last treaty on the limitation of nuclear weapons will mean the return of the world to the situation of an open arms race in the mid-1960s.