Big Think

Parag Khanna: I don’t think that we can un-invent nuclear weapons. I think that we can get to a situation where the United States and Soviet Union have dismantled all but a few hundred of their nuclear weapons each.

That would mean that a number of us had only a couple of hundred total each, and that would be the limit. I think that would be very positive step.

I don’t think it's worth talking about grand proposals for evolution unless we can get to that point, and have the political will internationally to get that point. It makes for a grade and provocative bet or series of war pads of [Henry] Kissinger and Cove have done, which is not realistic until we can at least get to the stage where we were supposed to be at right now, under the arms control agreement that we signed in the 1990s, but at more or less been ignored in the last 8 years [i.e. circa 2000 to 2008].

Recorded on: 3/3/2008