Disarmament Expert Says There Must Be Strategic Dialogue Between U.S. and Russia

Aug. 29-- Seymour Hersh posted an interview Aug. 27 of Mark Medish, described by Hersh as a Washington attorney and arms control and disarmament expert who spent years working at high levels in the Treasury, the State Department, and the White House. In an Aug. 15 article in the Washington Spectator, “Medish argued that a renewed major power interest in nuclear freeze talks is urgently needed because ‘the complexity of this subject has increased due to major technological advances in the nuclear, space, rocketry, biological and cyber/AI/quantum areas.’”

One of Medish’s main points is that there must be dialogue between the U.S. and Russia. “Those who say that the tragic Ukraine War must prevent us from strategic dialogue with Russia are missing the lessons of our own history,” he told Hersh. “Nuclear talks and arms control treaties are not a sign of approval, but a recognition of shared interests. Nixon rightly met with Brezhnev and Mao not because they were our friends but because it was in the U.S. national interest to do so.”

In making this argument, Medish took a dig at those who call for unilateral missile defense. “Any non-cooperative effort to insulate from nuclear attack can easily be interpreted by the other side as an attempt to gain supremacy and first-strike capacity, in other words the ability to strike with impunity,” he said. “In the nuclear game, unilateral ‘defense’ moves of this kind are inherently destabilizing and take us further from peace.”

At the outset of the interview, Hersh had described the Aug. 15 Alaska summit as “a flop” but Medish disagreed. “I would commend the Trump administration for trying to advance talks on ending the war in Ukraine,” he said. “Many critics insisted Trump should not meet with Putin in Alaska and discuss Ukraine without Ukraine at the table, and then the same people chided him for failing to deliver a deal. That view makes no sense. It’s in our interest to try to broker a Ukraine deal if we can, but also to pursue diplomacy on strategic interests which go way beyond Ukraine. The same is true of the Taiwan Straits issue and our interest in engaging China on cyber/AI arms control.”