PRESS RELEASE

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Retired General: U.S. Must Reopen Channels of Communication with Moscow

Nov. 3, 2016 (EIRNS)—Peter Zwack, a retired brigadier general who is now the Senior Russia-Eurasia Fellow for the National Defense University’s Institute for National Security Studies, called for re-opening the dialogue between Washington and Moscow that existed during the Cold War, in an op-ed that was published by CNN on Oct. 28. The military tension between the US and Russia "is taking place against the backdrop of the withering of long-standing arms control regimens," Zwack reports. Zwack notes that the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty have already been cancelled—though he fails to note that the ABM Treaty was cancelled by the United States—and that several other arms control treaties are being questioned.

"This is important—and tragic—because besides reducing and regulating dangerous weapons and warheads, these treaties and conventions, built over decades of hard negotiation, were a key confidence-building measure during the Cold War and breakup of the Soviet Union,"

Zwack writes.

"Today, that confidence-building cushion is dangerously ’bone-on-bone’ and must be rejuvenated before the whole process collapses and we enter an all-out arms race."

As is common, he blames Russia without acknowledging that Russia is responding to the strategic threat presented by the United States, but nonetheless calls for re-opening the channels of communication that existed until a few years ago, "before we are inevitably engulfed by a cyber-fast crisis or incident."