In response to a Feb. 13 letter: Mikhail Gorbachev's offer to the U.S. to eliminate all nuclear weapons was a gambit Ronald Reagan saw right through. It was a desperate attempt to stop U.S. military technological superiority, which was accelerating erosion of Russia's economy. It finally ended up collapsing the Soviet Union a couple of years after Reagan left office. That was Reagan's stated goal - found in his books and at his library. The strategy was quite remarkable, involving Eastern Europe and the pope, oil markets by ramping up our production, Afghanistan and Star Wars.
Russia did not provide Iran and North Korea with knowledge of how to build a nuclear weapon. The Khan network out of Pakistan did. After India detonated its first nuclear weapon, using material from a Canadian CANDU reactor, Pakistan followed a few years later. Both nations now have expanded their abilities - about as quickly as we did - to include both neutron and thermonuclear weapons know-how. India and Pakistan have about 150 compact weapons each, deliverable by aircraft, cruise missile and ballistic missile. This knowledge was also passed on to Iran.
Russia is currently assisting Iran with construction of a nuclear reactor. When Iran gets a weapon - in six months to two years - it, like Israel, will be able to build very deadly, advanced nukes right away.
Pat Kean
Kihei
