SUGG: Okay, Dr. Makhijani, you have a reputation as being someone who takes these technical and somewhat abstruse issues, and boils them down to terms that the average citizen can understand and relate to. And then, we would hope, respond to. Why should average citizens care about the current state of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, most people think that with the end of the Cold War, the adversarial relationship is over, and so the risk of being blown up all of a sudden, and both countries being completely destroyed is over. That's not the case. In some ways, the situation is more dangerous today than it was during the Cold War, because both sides' nuclear weapons are on hair trigger alert. And to maintain weapons in that state, safely and reliably as possible, requires a very high degree of technical preparedness, and Russia is too poor to maintain that high degree of technical preparedness. Moreover, the adversarial relationship is gone, and there's no need for hair trigger alert. We've got to move from a system of mutually assured destruction, to a system of mutually assured survival.

SUGG: Okay, that puts me in the mind of this question. You are undoubtedly working with Russian counterparts as you develop these notions of de-alerting and de-coupling. Why aren't the Russians leaders in this? Why are they recalcitrant? What are their motives in terms of not, you know, pushing this agenda forward?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, during the Cold War–

SUGG: And refer to your interaction with your brother scientists, and arms control people.

DR. MAKHIJANI: We work quite closely with many counterparts and colleagues in non-governmental organizations in Russia, and keep in quite close touch with them. The problem in Russia right now, and why Russia cannot take leadership on the de-alerting issue, is that the conventional military capability of Russia has collapsed. They simply cannot afford to pay their soldiers and maintain their armies. People don't want to serve in the army, the suicide rate is very high, the living conditions are very bad, and so on. Therefore, Russia is relying more and more on nuclear weapons, and they've been very upset about NATO expansion, they've been very upset that NATO has taken on military functions, outside of its defense perimeter. And so they have declared that they're going to rely on nuclear weapons more than before, as a deterrent, because they have nothing else. Just in the last eight months, since last December, President Yeltsin has twice threatened world war, once when the United States started bombing Iraq, and once, in the Yugoslavia war. Both times, the United States started bombing without going through the UN Security Council, and the Russians were very, very upset. They fear that maybe the United States might start bombing in some area of Russia, where there's a rebel movement. And so, in some ways, the situation is really very dangerous, even though the Cold War is over, both sides are approaching each other very fearfully, and the Russians are afraid of being overrun by American power.

SUGG: All right, let's just summarize that point by sort of saying that, at the time when the Russians are really least equipped, given the state of their military, and this is, in your context we're talking, they are nevertheless much more reliant-- just sort of summarize.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Sorry. I know I went on for very long.

SUGG: It's okay.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right now, the Russians have no conventional military capability. Therefore, for deterrence purposes they have declared that they're going to rely more on nuclear weapons than during the Cold War, in some ways. During the Cold War, much of it, they had a no first use policy. Now, they have renounced that. They said they would, like the United States, be willing to use nuclear weapons first in any conflict. So, the United States faces a situation where the only thing that can really completely destroy this country is Russian nuclear weapons. And so, it's in the greatest interest of safety and security for the United States to make sure that Russian weapons are de-alerted and safely stored, and to do that, there's a price to pay, of course. American weapons also have to be de-alerted and safely stored; otherwise, the Russians will never agree to it.

SUGG: Okay, let's, that's good. Picking up on that last point, that "the only thing that can hurt us now---.."

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right.

SUGG: Just hammer on that one time, and talk about how we need to take leadership.

DR. MAKHIJANI: The only thing today that can physically devastate the United States is the Russian nuclear arsenal. It's very huge, and it can destroy this country. At the same time, the Russians aren't going to take the leadership, because they don't have conventional military capability. In order to protect itself and be secure, the United States must take leadership and de-alert its weapons, in order to convince the Russians it's serious, that it won't destroy Russia with nuclear weapons, and that Russia must de-alert its nuclear weapons. It's the only way to safety.

SUGG: Well, Clinton and Yeltsin, I thought they made some progress toward that when they de-targeted their weapon.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, de-targeting is different than de-alerting. De-targeting means you change the computer coordinates of the missile targets. And of course, computer coordinates, as anybody who has operated a computer can tell, you can change computer coordinates with a few clicks of the key. A few, a half a minute, a minute, a few minutes, and you can re-target the weapons. So it's not really a sufficient degree of security–

SUGG: You need to take that from the top. And hit -- I'm not in the show, so hit on "de-targeting is not--"

DR. MAKHIJANI: De-targeting does not provide a sufficient level of security to prevent nuclear war by miscalculation. The amount of time you gain is simply too short. It's just a few minutes, at most.

SUGG: All right. Now, you mentioned in the pre-roll part, the differences between, I mean, moving from that to mass, you know, Americans are somewhat, those that have taken an interest are just exhausted by the sort of picayune technical approaches to arms control. Start I, Start II, etcetera, etcetera.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right.

SUGG: How does the de-alerting initiative differ from the traditional approaches to arms control that we're sort of all familiar with from political science class, and that sort of thing?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, this, de-alerting is not in opposition to traditional methods of arms control. The fewer weapons you have, of course, they easier it is to de-alert them, and make them safe. But de-alerting is basically a way of ensuring the safety of nuclear weapons. It doesn't change the overall doctrine of deterrence in the sense that if somebody attacks you with a nuclear weapon, you might still be able to retaliate. That's a separate issue. What it does is it maintains nuclear weapons in a condition that is safe, so if somebody pushes the button by accident, they won't go off. Let me give you an example.

SUGG: We've talked about how de-alerting is consistent with traditional approaches, but adds a new, and it sounds a little bit like you're saying the enemy now is not the Russians so much, as an accident.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right.

SUGG: Or confusion, that sort of thing. So talk about, can you give us an example?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay. At a time when there's a McDonald's in Moscow, there's really no reason to be fighting. During the Cold War, there were real differences, and people were arguing about them, and they thought that they might blow each other up in the process. Today, the greatest danger is from complete devastation by miscalculation, not by design, as in the Cuban Missile Crisis. So it's very important to make sure that nuclear weapons are stored safely, so they can't be fired off in a hurry by miscalculation. Let me give you an example. When an electrical technician in a factory wants to do a repair job on a motor, he wants to make sure that that motor won't be started by accident. By somebody going up to the motor control center and simply pushing the On button. So what he does is, before starting the repair, he goes and puts a lock-out switch on the On button, so that somebody has to actually go with the key, and open the lock, and unlock the motor control center, and then only you can push the On button. It introduces a physical barrier, and he has the key. So it introduces a physical barrier to actually starting up the motor. De-alerting is like that; you can introduce a kind of a lock-out switch into a missile, you can prevent the warhead from actually undergoing a chain reaction and blowing up, if somebody pushes the button. It simply lengthens the time of decision-making from fifteen minutes, when it's easy to make a mistake, to an hour, two hours, a few hours, a day, a few days, a few weeks, and even months, depending on what de-alerting measure you adopt. So the longer the time of decision-making, the safer your system is going to be.

SUGG: Because we're not talking about a situation where war planners are calculating the next move in a conflict. We're really talking about anticipating the risk of an accident.

DR. MAKHIJANI: That's right. Right now, and even during the Cold War, if you look at the Cuban Missile Crisis, there were two weeks of discussions, and negotiations on both sides were debating whether it was worthwhile blowing up the world or not. And fortunately they decided to back off, and didn't blow up the world. Right now, the danger is that as you're strolling your baby to the park, as you are going to school, as you are going to work, reading the newspaper on the metro, everything may be blown to smithereens, without any chance of negotiation, or any thought that just a few people in that chain of decision. And it's very, very important to lengthen that chain of decision, so we don't have global catastrophe by screw-up.

SUGG: Okay, that was very good. We've talked about traditional approaches, okay, now, you know, we've built in a couple hours, we've built in three hours, a day, a week. Isn't there a danger that if we do need our nuclear weapons, we'll be caught unawares, or that reconstituting our forces, or, you know, getting ourselves back to the status where we're controlling events, that we're limiting our ability to do that? How do you address this reconstitution argument?

DR. MAKHIJANI: People have worried a lot that if you de-alert weapons and store them separately, or make them so that they can't be fired in a short time, that you're inviting an attack; that other people may destroy your nuclear weapons. However, the United States is actually in the best position to avoid that kind of problem, because it has got a sufficient, it has got more than sufficient number of nuclear weapons in its nuclear submarines, which are completely invulnerable. And even if all the warheads and nuclear submarines are de-alerted, they can be reconstituted and fired. The question of whether they should be fired is a separate question of military doctrine, but there can be no doubt on the part of an adversary that might want to start a deliberate war against the United States, that the United States would still have a retaliatory capability. De-alerting does not remove retaliatory capability on the part of the United States. It just introduces a breathing space for everyone, that before you take a decision to retaliate, there should be sufficient time to make sure you're not firing them off first, and forcing a retaliation from the other side.

SUGG: It seems like two hours, in the context of an accidental launch, is a generous and useful amount of time, whereas two hours in the sort of ramping up to conflict is very short. Most conflicts wouldn't evolve over the space of two hours, right? Isn't it the case that in almost every scenario, the United States would have plenty of time to sort of see the way things were going, and make the necessary adjustments in the status of our nuclear weapons?

DR. MAKHIJANI: The Kosovo and Iraq conflicts are examples of the most intense kinds of post-Cold War conflicts that we know about, in which the United States was heavily militarily involved. In Iraq, it is still heavily militarily involved. The Russians haven't liked what has gone on. President Yeltsin has said if you do X,Y,Z, we're going to be very upset. If you use nuclear weapons, or do such and such, there may be a world war. He has given plenty of warning, there have been negotiations during the Yugoslavia conflict, for example, when Russia was extremely upset about the bombing of its traditional allies, Serbia. There were two months over which the U.S. and the Russians talked about how to calm down U.S.-Russian tensions, and separate them from the problems in Yugoslavia and Kosovo. And they were successful in doing so. So that's the time scale of reducing tensions on, when there are conflicts and wars involved, and deliberate use of weapons involved. The time scale of miscalculation is fifteen minutes.

SUGG: Let's try to compress that sentiment. The time scale for conflict is days and weeks. The time scale to deal with conflict is days and weeks, the time scale to deal with an accident is just a couple of minutes. That's why de-alerting is so important. Something very, without the examples, just a quick, what, compare the worst case scenario in a conflict situation, with a worst case scenario in an accident situation, and compare the time scale.

DR. MAKHIJANI: The worst case scenario that we know about in a conflict situation is the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the crisis had gone on for about two weeks. So you've got days and weeks to discuss the situation and negotiate it out. The time scale for miscalculation is fifteen minutes. There's absolutely no chance for discussion and calculation; you must avoid the miscalculation by physical measures.

SUGG: Great. This was maybe going back, again, a more compressed, and make reference to your contacts with the Russians, if possible, because it's not, you know, we talk about it as a unilateral gesture in arms control speak, but this is really something that you're working out with your Russian counterparts.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Let's talk about the President Bush-Gorbachev example. If somebody's going to talk about that, I don't know.

SUGG: We'll follow up with that. Let me start with, you know, does de-alerting make sense as a unilateral gesture, why?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, the United States must take the leadership in de-alerting because it's the most powerful country in the world, by far. If it does not lead by example, it's highly unlikely that Russia will act first to reduce nuclear dangers. They are already very upset about NATO expansion. The United States also maintains nuclear weapons in Europe, very close to Russia. Russia does not maintain nuclear weapons in Latin America, close to the United States. So some de-alerting gesture on the part of the United States is very, very important, to start off the process.

SUGG: Okay. You mentioned the Yeltsin-Clinton example as being telling.

DR. MAKHIJANI: There is precedent for this. The largest unilateral--

SUGG: There is precedent for a U.S. unilateral measure--

DR. MAKHIJANI: There is precedent for a U.S. unilateral gesture. The largest unilateral nuclear disarmament measure, actually, and de-alerting measure, was carried out by President Bush in 1991. He could see the Soviet Union was about to fall apart, there had been a military coup attempt in August of that year, and he thought it's very crucial to prevent black markets in nuclear materials. And weapons, if the Soviet Union falls apart. He decided to lead by example, withdrew almost all the tactical nuclear weapons from deployment, de-alerted many missiles, and in about a week, President Gorbachev thought it was useful that the Soviet Union should do the same. Very, very grave nuclear dangers were avoided. I don't think anybody made any mistake that President Bush was soft on defense, or that he was lowering the guard of the United States. He did the most important gesture for assuring U.S. security, by acting to prevent miscalculations, black markets in nuclear weapons, and so on. Today, it's very, very important that President Clinton do the same thing, by acting to de-alert U.S. nuclear weapons, to give President Yeltsin the political room to de-alert his.

SUGG: Great. You, as you make your way amongst fellow arms control experts and nuclear weapons experts, what do you think is the mind set of these people? Why isn't there more energy or momentum or enthusiasm for de-alerting? Is there a question of inertia, or bureaucratic pig-headedness? I mean, what is the, what are the chief obstacles to getting some energy behind this?

DR. MAKHIJANI: I think people feel that it's an inside Washington, very technocratic issue, and that a political price to de-alert nuclear weapons may be very high. They need for the people of this country to be woken up and say goodness, could we be wiped out while we're on our way to work, or on our way to school, or having coffee in the morning, or playing softball with our kids? This is a very serious situation, where the people of the country have to get up and remind their politicians that there is a nuclear danger here, that they must act to reduce. I think that's what it's going to take. Inside Washington is not known for political initiative, they act by political polls, rather than political leadership. I think it will be up to the people of this country, to take that leadership and remind people that we don't want to live with nuclear dangers that might blow everybody up in fifteen minutes.

SUGG: My sense is that the technical and arms control community isn't necessarily averse to this, that there's a certain window of opportunity here, if there's political will behind it.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Actually, the range of sentiment behind de-alerting is enormous. There are people who have served in the military, in the Strategic Air Command, political leaders, people from Harvard and think tanks, and universities and so forth, who have warned about nuclear dangers, and who have said that this kind of hair trigger posture is not useful, that it is important to de-alert, and that nuclear dangers currently arise mainly from war by miscalculation. So there is quite a lot of expert sentiment, and, let me step back. There is a lot of expert sentiment, both military and academic and political, in favor of de-alerting, but there isn't enough political momentum in favor of de-alerting.

SUGG: Good. I know that, I mean, polls do show that people are really preoccupied less with nuclear weapons when things like loose nukes, or terrorism. Are there any sort of ancillary advantages, if you looked to the de-alerting initiative, for things like regional arms races, and the proliferation of nuclear material, some of the other sort of, you know--

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right.

SUGG: --contemporary dangers. I mean, does it have a beneficial spillover into some of these other areas of concern?

DR. MAKHIJANI: I think that de-alerting on the part of the United States and Russia will have enormous beneficial effect for non-proliferation, in two different ways. First, one of the main black market threats is from loose nukes in Russia. If you have de-alerted verifiably, if you're storing these weapons safely, if you arrange that over a period of months, then you have accounted for the weapons, which we have not today, and you have reduced the risk of black markets. The second thing is that countries like India and Pakistan are pointing out to the United States that it's like the pot calling the kettle black, that they don't want to be lectured by a country that's not fulfilling its commitments for disarmament under the non-proliferation treaty. I think de-alerting would be such a dramatic step, saying that we really are preserving these weapons not for the sake of using them in conflicts, that the moral authority of the United States to work with countries like India, especially India, would go up immensely, and I think the political pressure from the Indian people for the Indian government to de-alert India's nuclear weapons would also go up. So I think the non-proliferation impact, especially in South Asia, by calming the situation down, and increasing the pressure for regional de-alerting would increase, and I think the black market situation, in terms of, I think the dangers of black markets in nuclear weapons would also be reduced by de-alerting.

SUGG: Good. Do you have any other juicy sound bytes you wanted to inject here? I mean, we could go on for hours on this, but just re-focusing on, you know, boiling this down for the average citizen?

DR. MAKHIJANI: I'm thinking what I might say usefully about the Russian side of the equation that might give you a better–

SUGG: I think you could do, it would be useful to do another, what you said before, but just shorter. Everything's got to be shorter.

DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay.

SUGG: You know, I like the kind of seesaw image of, you know, precisely at a time when they're not really equipped to deal with it, they are becoming more reliant on the nuclear weapons, and the United States can diffuse that situation by unilateral gesture. So, you know, I think there's a knee jerk tradition amongst our people to say, you know, what are the Russians up to? Tell me why the Russians aren't more effective players in this scenario? Why we have to take the initiative.

DR. MAKHIJANI: The Russians are weak and down. They feel they have lost their superpower status, and nuclear weapons are the only thing they have left. Of course, their nuclear weapons are the only thing that's really threatening devastation upon the United States. So unless the United States stops the threat of devastating Russia in a few minutes, in a first strike, they are not going to give up, or reduce their alert status. It's really crucial for the U.S.'s own security, that the United States take the first step in de-alerting. The Russian people are in no mood to put pressure on their government, after having seen the war in Yugoslavia, after having seen NATO expansion and so on, to reduce their alert status. I think this is a political impossibility in Russia now, however much we may wish that the Russians should act, at the same time as the United States, however much we may wish for a new agreement that's bilateral, or a treaty, there just isn't time to negotiate treaties. It's like when the Soviet Union was falling apart. It's time for U.S. leadership on de-alerting, and it's time for the U.S. to act and persuade Russia by example.

SUGG: --you would see some, kind of material evidence that they were ready to respond in kind, and that sort of thing, just give that a second, because we're going to have to preserve tape and juice. Is that something you can address?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Sure.

SUGG: Okay, let's roll and see if we can't wrap it up with this.

DR. MAKHIJANI: The Russians really can't afford to maintain a huge nuclear establishment. They have been asking for various measures that would reduce their costs. De-alerting would certainly be one of those things. If the United States made the right kind of gestures, for instance, by removing the bombs it has in Europe, the sentiment in Russia to cooperate with the United States on this issue is very likely to go up.

SUGG:The concept of quick reversibility was something that would probably track with an average viewer, and I don't recall exactly how we got into it, but we were talking about our Russian counterparts, and I was asking if there was any evidence that Russia may be very receptive to this. So again, you're sort of working amongst your colleagues and counterparts around the world. What do you think would be the response by Russia, and its arms control community, if the United States made this unilateral gesture?

DR. MAKHIJANI: I think if the United States acted first to de-alert nuclear weapons, if it took out the bombs from Europe and brought them back to the United States, the sentiment in Russia to reciprocate would be immense, and positive.

SUGG: What if they didn't respond? What if they didn't respond positively? What if a demagogue there said hey, we've got them on the ropes, it's a weak, decadent power, you know, how do you address that concern?

DR. MAKHIJANI: If Russia did not respond, of course, de-alerting is reversible. You can alert weapons, and de-alert them. It's not like complete disarmament in that you're taking them out of the arsenal. De-alerting is a distinct thing from disarmament in that sense, in that you can reverse them. The Russians know that if the United States de-alerts, and they don't reciprocate, that the United States can always put its weapons back on high alert. Today the Russians are much more vulnerable than the United States. Their submarines are in port. They can't afford to maintain their submarines at sea. So, they have every interest in cooperating with the United States, not out of some moral idea, but out of their own self-interest, to de-alert their nuclear weapons, if the United States shows that it is ready to do so.

SUGG: Okay, I'd like you to now, again, more succinctly, come back to that. You know, tell me again, address again the remote but nonetheless possible danger that the Russians might to respond in a way that was consistent with our goals.

DR. MAKHIJANI: If the United States took the first step to de-alert nuclear weapons, and the Russians did not respond, of course the United States would have the option of reversing that de-alerting, and putting its weapons back on alert. The Russians know this, of course, they're more vulnerable than the United States today, so they have every incentive to cooperate with the United States in de-alerting. And if they did not cooperate, the United States would have the option of reversing its de-alerting.

SUGG: Okay. What about this, are you paying any attention to this notion of giving, why are we talking about giving satellite monitoring devices to the Russians? I mean, they're the enemy; why are we giving them early warning satellites?

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, the nuclear cooperation with Russia is a very important thing. There's no adversarial relationship, at least of the Cold War nature now, so that it's more possible to do so. There's the Y2K issue, the year 2000 computer problem. The main way in which it might affect nuclear weapons is that their radars might go blank, or give them false signals. So they might fire off their missiles, thinking they're being attacked, when they're actually not being attacked. Russian infrastructure is not in good shape, some of it is broken down, some of it is in the states of the former Soviet Union, they don't have access to it anymore. And so it's very important, especially to avoid Y2K type of misunderstandings, that the Russians should have information that the U.S. isn't attacking them. So sharing information about satellite data and incoming various objects in space is very important, so that the Russians don't fire off their missiles by accident, especially in a Y2K type of situation.

SUGG: It seems like we've got a much greater stake in mutual confidence with each other towards mutual survival than we do in mutual deterrence now. I mean this whole satellite thing to me seems indicative of just, albeit it seems paradoxical on the surface, it's symbolic of how critical it is that there is shared information, and that there's time to read and understand that information.

DR. MAKHIJANI: That's right. There are many signs that people in Russia and the United States recognize that we have to move from mutually assured destruction to mutually assured survival. De-targeting may be a small step, but it is a step in the right direction. Sharing satellite data is a small step, but it's a step in the right direction. The adversarial relationship is over, and we have to find a way in which nuclear weapons are not going to result in complete devastation by accident. That's the main danger. And so there's every incentive to talk, to lengthen the time of decision-making, to make sure that we're not wiping each other out, or wiping the whole world out, by miscalculation.