Opening Remarks to General Butler's Abolition Speech
by General Andrew J. Goodpaster, December 4, 1996

National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

I welcome the opportunity to talk with you about the reduction of the world's nuclear weapons arsenals. It is an issue that ranks in the highest order of importance for American security (and that of others) in the coming century.

To do what needs to be done means giving high priority to the issue and sustained commitment to the efforts amidst a vast number of other demands. This will not be easy. Nor can it be taken for granted, whatever the merits of the case, in a security process where the more urgent is in constant battle with the more important (and quite regularly wins). It will take firm top-level decision and determined follow-up leadership over many years to move the needed nuclear policies and action forward.

But it can and must be done. Two considerations fundamental to security interests and possibilities should now shape the nuclear future.

First, as so often emphasized by President Eisenhower (who had a talent for getting to the heart of such questions) nuclear weapons are the only thing that can destroy the United States of America.

Second, the Cold War is over and unlikely to return, hard as it may be to comprehend this historic fact in all its dimensions, and to seize the opportunities that are now available to reorient our policies accordingly.

Nowhere is this more salient than in reducing the world's arsenals of nuclear weapons.