The Trump era continued a dangerous deterioration of the decades-long bilateral consensus on arms control that had been established between the two countries during the first cold war.
For a just and secure future, these trends will have to be reckoned with – and then reversed. We believe cold wars are inimical to US national security – indeed they are inimical to global peace and prosperity. They empower the military-industrial complex and the war parties on both sides. Nationalist fervor rises, diplomacy is sidelined, and the space for dissent closes.
As for diplomacy, in an unfortunate continuation of the downward spiral that began under Presidents Putin, Obama and then accelerated under Mr. Trump, both countries have recalled their ambassadors home, an unprecedented move that was not even done at the height of the first cold war. We might do well to recall that during the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviet Union and the U.S. kept their Ambassadors in place. And good thing they did: the backchannel Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy established with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin was one of the reasons the crisis was solved peacefully.
With this history in mind, we, the undersigned, call for an end to the cycle of recriminations between the U.S. and Russia.