WASHINGTON — The long- term outlook for keeping U.S. nuclear weapons safe and reliable is “bleak,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday. In part, he said, that was because the United States is experiencing a brain drain in the laboratories that design and develop the world’s most powerful weapons.
Gates said America’s more than 5,000 nuclear weapons are now safe and secure, but he sketched out a series of concerns about the future, while stressing that nuclear weapons must remain a viable part of the U.S. strategy for deterring attack as long as other countries have them.
“Hope as we will, the power of nuclear weapons and their strategic impact is a genie that cannot be put back in the bottle — at least for a very long time,” he said in remarks at the Car negie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank that advocates the elimination of nuclear arms.
In a later question-and-answer session with his audience, Gates said he is concerned about the possibility that some Russian nuclear weapons from the old Soviet arsenal may not be fully accounted for.
Gates also said that if he were advising the next U.S. president, he would advocate new nuclear talks with Moscow.
Both presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, advocate negotiating further reductions with Russia.
