WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th August, 2023) The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is the most important arms control agreement that the United States and Russia must do all in their power to keep in effect, retired US Lt. Col. Nicholas Troyan told Sputnik.
"I think this is the most important treaty, among all others, because when we speak about strategic missiles, that means the end of the entire world," Troyan said.
In 1988, Troyan, a Chinese-born Russian emigre to the United States who served 33 years in the US military, became chief of one of 12 US teams that inspected Soviet nuclear sites under the terms of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
Troyan said the New START and any other similar initiative is very important in diminishing the threat of nuclear weapons.
He called "idiotism" the complaints that another country has 6,000 nuclear warheads when the United States has 5,000 because "less than 1,000 is enough to destroy the whole world almost completely."
Troyan called on the United States and Russia to start talking about all open nuclear-related issues rather than engage in mutual insults.
"We must try to communicate to understand each other and this is the most difficult thing, of course," he said.
Troyan also emphasized the necessity of reaching agreements on both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons of any range, warning that the negative effects of using such arms impact not only the battlefield but the entire world.
"The greatest danger to me is that not only where you bomb, where the center of impact is, but all the secondary effects of radiation and how they affect the people and the environment all around," he said.
When the United States dropped the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Troyan was seven years old and living with his parents in China and was unaware of the war's developments.
"Of course, the United States and Russia now have more accurate warheads than those used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But there can always be, as the Russians say, 'stray shells,'" he added.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima killed 140,000 people and 74,000 in Nagasaki and the vast majority of them were civilians.
