recognize that this situation is quite destabilizing and treat it as a matter of high priority. they could focus on conflict management with the aim of preventing unintended escalation, however, what speaks against that is the pure fact that russia reads benefits from unpredictable behavior. i would go as far as to say that

unpredictability is a major element of the russian strategy within nato. so in essence, that would make it necessary to change the russian calculus. moscow must come to view the gains from corporation as outweighing those from confrontation and unpredictability. but that would basically mean that washington would be willing to offer something significant and with that i mean something that goes beyond the immediate arms control goal of predict, stability and transparency and i think we should discuss that later as well. what that could be. so against that background, what could be done? nato and russia hold tentative talks about aerospace and one of the goals is to have transformers switched on at all times but that hasn't gotten very far and another approach could be for washington to seek

direct talks with the russians. the aim arms control agreement, there are a couple of those that focus on risk reduction, most prodam nantly the agreement on dangerous military activities, so back in the cold war, those were designed to prevent accidents and exactly the kind of military close encounters and exactly that kind of atmosphere that we have right now and trying to address that behavior that we are seeing from russia at the moment. have we seen any response from the trump administration, the answer is none at all. let's turn to arms control in europe, kind of like a side theme in washington. you barely hear it mentioning these days. conventional arms control in

europe is deadlock at least 2002. efforts by the obama administration to revive it have failed largely because at the time the russians had completely lost interest and, however, today conventional arms control is perhaps even more needed than ever. so what i would like to do is let -- we look at the three levels. the first level i would term the strategic balance. one of the true concerns of the russian military today is still the conventional superiority of the combined force of nato and that, of course, includes the forces of the united states. if we go down one level, we come to the regional balance. there the russian superiority in eastern europe is very strong concern for nato and the country's concern for the region.

if we go one level below that to the sub regional level, here russia is concerned about the security. as much as we talked every day about the russians with all the stuff there, they are concerned about open conflict with nato. so think of this whole approach or this whole situation as a russian, you have strategic conventional level, you have the regional ones and the subregional ones. at least in theory it should be possible to arrive at some kind of quid pro quo arrangement because everyone can gain something there and everybody has concerns in the region. what could that mean? it could mean mutual geographic limitations on manpower,

equipment and reinforcement capabilities with intrusive and viable transparency majors. there have been a lot of recommendations. the deep cuts commission in the last two reports, second and third report of the commission particularly german experts came forward with a lot of practical ideas, how that could look like. arms control policy are based on certain recognition that preserving the status quo is beneficial. however, the united states and russia both view each other as challenging the status quo. that is a fact from both sides. it is also highly questionable that poland would agree to regional conventional arms control. so just quickly for rhetorical reasons, has there been any novel approach of the trump administration in that regard,

unfortunately not. and that leads me to my last punt, nuclear arms control. as we all have learned earlier this year from media reports, russia has not only produced more inf missiles than are need today sustain a flight program but to deploy some of the weapons. that's at least what we hear from assessments and leak that is come to the press. so the missiles are known as so-called ssc8. well, that fact alone speaks quite strongly against nuclear arms control and grimmer scenario sees both sides and latest effort at the hill seem to point in that direction and the consequence for europe could be tremendously negative. let me make this point as clear as possible. if not carefully handled the inf crisis has the potential of

reinvigorating with all the turmoil encountered at the time and also with all of the potential to further undermine and split the alliance. in times of a politically weakened nato, in times of a almost no leadership from the united states, we should make sure that that is not happening. we should not make -- we should not allow to split the alliance along certain alliance. are there potential arms control solutions in well, one option would be for the u.s. consider reassuring russia european phrase -- sorry, european phase adaptive approach missile defense installations in romania and poland. for a long time, russia has complained perhaps correctly that defense could actually be turned into offense with those systems. so one of the options would be for the u.s. to take it

technically impossible for those who fire tomahawk missiles and i'm not only talking about software fictions -- fixes with that regard. making sure that russia has deployed all noncompliance systems, but here comes again the big caveat to that. if russia has tested and deployed the sc8 on mobile and according to inf treaty all those launches must be destroyed and doesn't look like an option for me from moscow because russia has replaced short-range systems with new longer ranges. the russians would have to destroy the newest generation of short-range launches. having said that, the inf fallout could go even further,

without russia return to go compliance the senate will most likely not give it advice and consent to any follow on agreement to a new start. again on inf so far no input from the trump administration and before i continue along those lines and i don't want to steal regarding the strategic stability and new start let me finish. please excuse me for being negative or rather realistic but i hope she will provide at least some positive note in that regard. [laughter] >> well, thank you, kingston and the arms control association for bringing us together for this important discussion. it's an honor to be here today.

as they say, sometimes i guess long-time listener, first-time caller and i think it's a -- [laughter] >> that takes a while, takes a while. my husband said that would work. [laughter] >> so as a student of policy studies, one of the first concepts he learned is the garbage can model. we all know the garbage can model. policy making is essentially organized anarchy and consists of various streams, problems, solutions, participants who mostly look for jobs and choice opportunities. a window of opportunity. so a choice opportunity is essentially a garbage can into which various kinds of problems and solutions are dumped by the participants as they're generated. so if we look at policy making this way, it's very important that the garbage is processed and removed from the scene. very cynical ablology for policy making but i bring it up because

it's descriptive of the russia state and russian-nato relations. we have many old garbage cans, we have many new garbage cans. conventional, nuclear, strategic nonnuclear, cyber, nuclear materials security, counterterrorism, gray zone issues, conflicts, syria, ukraine, and pure russian military, weapons based on the physical principals. lots and lots of garbage cans. the problem is none of them being processed and removed from the scene. i hope we make good progress on some of the issues because we are getting into the summer.

wait, no one heard my list? i hope we start making headway in a lot of the difficult problems specially because we are getting into the summer. garbage gets stinky. we worked really hard to deconflict, if you will, our remarks. i want to share my opinion about three things to stimulate discussion in q&a. first i wanted to talk about russia and improving conventional capabilities at the theater level and second i wanted to talk about how russia's nuclear and third, i wanted to talk about the importance of arms control and u.s.-russia relationship and i know it's a subject near and dear to some of you here. i think, you know, we have seen a lot of writing, calling this thing and other things, but i believe personally that using

the russian terminology for this is very interesting because it's not what we think of a strategic deterrence. so the russian idea of strategic deterrence is coercion, escalation control and it's supposed to operate in wartime and in peacetime so there's a spectrum of conflict that they do. and strategic deterrence relies on three types of capabilities, military means and we all seen and heard russian threats, highly provocative, but it also relies on strong nuclear capabilities and connell: -- conventional capabilities and what you see in practice in russian system, with strategic deterrence is that russian is improving conventional capabilities including long-range provision strikes. so what this means is that

they're thinking in plan to go using strike systems as means of escalation control and they want to do so by inflicting the current damage on various military and economic targets and the russians call it forceful nonnuclear deterrence. one of the many challenges with this logic is that the systems are capable, so they're used for escalation control, may contribute to escalation and we can talk much more during the question and and question about potential use later in conflict and how the russians look at that or aerospace threat from the west which could result in nuclear use but russia's development of conventional systems and how the russians continue to think about them is really the thing to watch. so to get back to the garbage can there's ample broom to reduce russia's indirect use of

military forces and to echo things, proposal by the deep cuts commission, by the european leadership network on reducing the dangerous of accidents so curving the pathways to escalations with the rush are a very good place to start since it's clear to me personally that we are in for a period of very serious changes and conventional postures and any sort of discussion about conventional arms control pretty black for that reason because we are in a lot of transition. second, across the and call community in russia, you see a variety of opinion on the moscow conflict. some russians say that threats were useful reminder to the west that russia's interest need to be tape -- taken seriously and russia is a nuclear danger and nothing more than propaganda,

but still other russians say that moscow has lost legitimacy and that loose nuclear talk in the media as well as by low-level officials should have occurred much sooner and last october putin spoke where he said, quote, nuclear weapons are a deterrent and a factor of ensuring peace of security worldwide. it's impossible to consider them as a factor in any potential aggression because it would probably end -- mean the end of civilization. it's abundantly clear that it's a deterrence and many experts believe that possession of nuclear arms by leading countries was one of the reasons why the world has not experienced a major armed conflict in the 70 years in the end of world war ii. now, we can debate whether or not russia used the nuclear shield in crimea. i think that's a very interesting discussion. we can also wonder if putin's statement of this sort was too little too late clearly made to international audience, journalists, western experts.

personally, i view that as an attempt that russia does not view nuclear weapons as tools of coercion. i think it's obvious that the proof will be in the pudding but i think there's a lot of concern in russian circles that nuclear weapons can be used in limited way, for instance, in the north korean context by north korea and this will shatter what they view as the fundamental role of nuclear weapons in preventing great power warfare. so my third comment is about the importance of the nuclear arms control architecture of strategic stability in the u.s.-russian relationship. i think we can disagree on whether deep nuclear cuts are practical or desirable. i personally think the russians aren't quite interested in that, but i think we all need to agree on the importance of extending new start and preserving our intrusive transparency, predictability and verification regime with russia and i think that's something that needs to be clear and the administration needs a clear statement, make a clear statement with regard to

that. now, a great piece in survival last month where he talked about the idea, idea of leashing through process. so he talked about the importance of the arms control process and clarifying soviet position and contribute to go russian understanding about deterrence and what americans understand as deterrence. so this kind of acceptance eventually of the american deterrence logic. he also called for a statement of the principal that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought and i strongly endorse that. i think if we think about substance where the strategic talks this could be a very nice place to start. but broadly, i'm sorry so to the say that i'm not cheery either. i think we are in for a very lengthy phase where both the united states and russia as well as many other countries now are developing a defense system, nuclear conventional, other ones

and i think these will have implications for strategic stability. but i think we also need to make sure that we preserve existing transparency and predictability in areas where we have it right now as we try to understand the impacts of the emerging destabilizing technologies. >> great, well, thank you so much, and thank you to you both for incredibly rich presentations with a lot to chew on. why don't we open it up to the floor for questions. please raise your hand and i will try and pick you out and please, again, try to ask a question. [laughter] >> wow. >> yes, right here. yes, please wait for the microphone. >> my question is for you, what do you think the russians are trying to accomplish with their

provocative actions in the baltic sea where their planes come close to nato ships or they come into -- into nato air space or nato waters and this seems to be going on all of the time and i worry that this is going to be a spark that some day could lead to inadvertent escalation, what do you see as the purpose of this, what is the strategic intent? >> go right ahead. >> what can be done about it? >> thank you very much for your question, it's actually a very excellent question because it points to the larger question to what is behind all of that, why the heck are they doing that even though they know that it's pretty dangerous. i mean, we have seen the buzzing of the uss mcdonald.

you're right. this is actually pretty serious. i think the russians have several objectives. one of the objectives is to make clear to nato, we are here, we are ready, we are pretty good armed and just don't come too close. so in a sense, it is intimidating the opponent not to move too close, not to engage in too many military maneuvers, not to send too much hardware and so on and so on. the other objective i think is what i try to point out in my remarks, is to create unpredictability, a sense where the opponent in that regard nato does not know how far are the rush owns -- russians going and what do they want to achieve by

that. that creates image where adversary and you cannot calculate his next move. the larger picture is that russia is trying to, well, kind of get back to a quote, the russians are trying -- when it comes to the service space, they are trying to keep the americans out, the russians in and the post soviet state down and they're achieving this with a strategy where they intimidate their neighbors and where they fuel conflict in countries where there are russian minorities, we have seen that in georgia, we now saw it in ukraine and at the same time projecting that through certain degree upon nato and nato is in a difficult position to find out how far is

that going, where do they really wanting to, do they want to overreturn the baltics, i don't know, do they wanting to to the river in germany or is that simply, to show, look, guys, nato enlargement has moved far enough, no more, this is the end stuff. i think that's the larger picture and just quickly what you said, how to address that, well, i think a lot of communication, we need, again, communication not just nato-russia council meeting every now and then, but we need it actually at the operational level to officer to officer contact regularly, open chance and -- channels and at some point mutual risk reduction agreements which i tried to outline in my remarks. >> just very briefly. when i talk about nonmilitary and indirect military uses of force as part of strategic

deterrence, this is exactly what that is and i think what's not clear to me, though, is the trends over time in case of those incident because it's not entirely clear if the russians had reduced the amount of activities over time because we are still excited about what happened a couple of years ago and so we still carry the perception that kind of progresses, so sort oflingers the -- lingers the effects of actions and what do you use military force for, coercion, that's what they're doing. >> right here. >> working? yes. richard, i wanted to get back to a comment you made anya about use of nuclear -- small-scale nuclear forces for escalation control. you said we could talk about that in the q&a. >> conventional.

>> not conventional. nuclear. >> yeah. yes. >> some limited use of nuclear weapons as a form of escalation control in a crisis during conflict, so i wanted you to address that and also the question of whether you see a problem and the different understandings of deterrence or crisis stability between the united states and russia including united states with nato. >> so it's a very good question. i want to think about it more substantively. so on the -- let's not call it escalate to escalate. part of the idea of strategic deterrence, the russians talk about use of conventional capabilities to ensure damage to

targets to get adversary to back down. this is the idea for the last decade and aimed to sort of develop that conventional capability that would substitute what they used nuclear capabilities for since 1990's and conventional forces were incredibly weak. however, i think -- they're still developing precision capabilities and i think it's still not entirely clear what's going happen to that sort of regional nuclear deterrence piece of it. it's clear that as escalation progresses, they look at that as a possibility but there are very few sort of since those articles came out in 1999, there's been a few explicit discussions in that way. that's what i will say. but as folks understand the complex spectrum, they think if

there's a conflict between nato and russia how many conventional forces does russia have to lose for it to get to the point where it gets desperate enough to signal with some sort of nuclear use, whatever that looks like, that it sort of needs to stop now basically and i think that's still sort of a thing that folks are exploring, however, if you read piece in survival, there's a specific debate going on that seems to be sort of leaking into russian media and sort of the expert discussions about the potentials limited use in case of aerospace limited attack. the russians are concerned about their air and missile defense capabilities, that's the reason they have been developing them even though arguably you kind of undermines strategic -- nuclear deterrence. so i think some in sort of russian military circles do think that because the united states was the country that invented the concept of limited

nuclear use, you could -- engage in that in the united states. but i think it's a highly questionable debate and i think that we haven't really seen what that means, sort of the level of policy but the other thing i will say, you have people who are still in sort of leadership positions on the russian and national security council, but his statements of using nuclear weapons and local and regional concepts, you don't see much of that in terms of leadership. >> you want to add something? >> that seems to be a debate going back and forth here in washington. look, we don't really know whether the russians have this doctrine or not and i think actually if that -- the more interesting question is, if they have it, for what purposes do they have it, do they have it for purely defense, deterrence purposes or do they have it

offense deterrence purposes and in offense scenario, for instance. and i would not single out the russians so much in that regard and say, oh, my god, what are they doing, it's not new. every time that a conventionally weaker power was facing a conventionally stronger power that was nucleared armed, you had this kind of doctrine. look at west berlin. pakistan and india and even the french have something called -- which is something like the final warning shot. so, yes, i think the bigger question for us which puzzles nato and western policymakers and the military is like what are the scenarios where the russians would employ that and, well, there's actually a lot of gasp work here going around.

>> take a couple at a time. i saw a hand way in the back. two at a time. >> thank you, debra, i've talked to lots of different people on the russian and the american side on different areas and we are speaking so much here like these are actors, however, if you go to the fact that the global issued terrorism and had it by the u.s. and the russians or talk today scientist who is are cooperating on the research levels or talked to some, you know, folks in the diplomatic area who know that russians and the americans -- [inaudible] >> so i'm wondering, you know, please give us a fuller sense of

where you see levels of cooperation or i guess you mentioned potential areas. i was wondering in addition to the separate areas cooperation on and maybe we can go off on that. >> i know there was a question. i saw a hand up here. yes, sir. >> i was wondering if either of you could comment on the doctrine and howie: it applies to the current level context and nuclear policy. >> if one of you can describe the doctrine. >> i will do that. >> let me talk about very briefly about security cooperation. it was interesting to ask ford

when he was here to share importance about cooperation with the russians as well as the broader international community. my perception has been if you look at the budget it's not entirely clear that we have a commitment to nuclear material security like we had it before but if you look at the substance and the meat of russian nuclear security cooperation, there's really not much left and i think that's very sad, personally because i think we took for granted and i think the russians took for granted the amount of transparency and reassurance generated by a lot of the efforts because we knew much more about russian practices in terms of security and they knew more about our practices and now a lot of that stuff is gone. i think it's important to talk about positive examples of cooperation where it does exist but i also think that we shouldn't overstate them. i think the other issue here is that if you look at in terms of bureaucracies on the russian and

now people that are becoming bureaucrats. it's a rhetoric of people who were not sort of part of the cooperative activities in the 80's or 90's and that's a different tonal change when it comes to issues and generally much more nationalist and there's other aspects of this which are much more troubling than positive. >> all right, so doctrine, first of all, there is nothing like a doctrine. there is a large body of thought going in russia since ten years and some of those thoughts have the same theme and for those of you here in the audience who

have dealt with russia, the whole state apparatus, you need to be actually pretty organized and the russians are not that organized in that regard. there's a lot of stuff going on and different actors pursuing their different interests and interagency competition and put on top of that corruption and so on. but nevertheless let's talk about what can we understand under this thought of body, some people have described as anya opinioned out new generation, warfare, other term is strategic deterrence, other cross domain coercion, what all those approaches have in common is that you rely on asymmetric response and cheap inside to say that everyone has vulnerability. the united states, the most powerful nation in the world

also has vulnerabilities and this kind of doctrine is trying to exploit that along certain lines and i think we should not fall, we and i mean we in the west, nato, the u.s., we should not fall into the trap of describing russia as this strategic superman who can act on all fronts and who can, you know, who can tip our elections and who can intermingle there and destabilize whole societies and at the same time they have military capabilities, look, the russians are trying to explore weaknesses wherever that's possible. they go on and test somewhere else. yes, we should be aware. one of the responses to this doctrine is certainly in the realm of resilience, not so much in the realm of deterrence

because, again, when it comes to asymmetric threats, how do you want to apply deterrence in the conventional or even nuclear context to someone who is spreading disinformation in your country. it's just not possible. make society more resilient not just those targeted by russia propaganda like the baltic state but also applies to our society. why was america so vulnerable to the russians interfering in the election? was it because the russians were so good because they are such superman, no, i think it has domestic roots in the united states. so let's talk about that. >> i know you we wanted to jump in. >> very quickly, i think it's very important to not see into russian behavior what we want it to be. so i would encourage you to actually go back and look at

writings as they appear and sort of maybe trace them back to military journals because what you see is that there's perplexity about them thinking that the west think that is russian doctrine is hybrid so there's a lot of imaging going on in terms of perception. >> i'm curious to know what is the civil society grassroots feeling, concern about nuclear weapons in russia and does it matter and are there things that we should be doing to reach out to civil societies about nuclear weapon issues and disarmament? >> sounds like it's for you. >> russia is going through a

nuclear modernization. they are going through a period where there's a perception that the west is hostile and still very much appreciate western culture and i'm pretty sure most of russia has seen house of cards even though i have not. so i think, you know, when a country goes through nuclear modernization, you see that in nuclear new-comer countries, they're all very excited about technology and so there's also various limits in engaging in societies because i doubt that you will find receptive aspects to that but the one caveat to that is where you do find some activity with regard to sort of the downsize of the nuclear energy program, so in the environmental implications that that has on sort of certain bodies of water and other parts of russia, so there you have much more of environmentalist movement than sort of that aspect of it but i would say

that's really the only thing. >> well, honestly, i don't want to pretend that i'm an expert on the russian civil society. >> german civil society. >> german civil society, yeah. 92% of germans think that a nuclear weapon would be a good idea. 85%, a poll from la in 2016, 85% of them think that it would be a good thing to withdraw the u.s. 61 from german soil which basically means denounceing nuclear deterrence. at the same time, we have seen very surprising debate within germany a couple of months back about germany perhaps acquiring

own nuclear deterrence or at least going together with french force, euro deterrence, but this is, first of all, that would run into a lot of domestic german problems. i think every politician that would seriously pursue that would risk the end of his career but at the same time we see a lot of pressure from other countries including the united states and not just on germany but on europe and i don't want to exclude that a former, a furniture stronger german-french security bond which has to develop not only for the sake for the two countries but for the sake of europe would at some point, again, seriously pursue that way. >> i would add to that that would be interesting to see in russian debate.

>> rachel and then darrell. >> could i ask you to expand a little bit on what you think would be the domino effect of failures to resolve the inf violations and you said that would spread over to senate not renewing new start should president trump seek that and just what that would mean in terms of doing away with predictability and transparency and returning to the cuban missile crisis level tension. >> thank you both.

ulrich and anya. i was trying to get clarity from chris ford about. from germany's perspective and anya if you can put yourselves in the shoes of the kremlin for a moment, okay, what three things would german governments want to see either happen or not happen in that meeting between president trump and anya, if you can, i know it's kind of an impossible question and i want you to try anyway, what do you think the russians would be looking for with respect to the strategic relationship and i'm sure -- i'm not asking about cyber hacking or collusion with russia in the election but the security relationship between the two. >> darrell, quick question, is that limited to arms control or in a broader sense? >> take it as you will, because,

i mean, broader arms control may not be the concern of europeans at this point specially since they didn't hear our reaffirmation, what three things would they like to see -- >> any concluding comments if you want to make as well. >> imf domino effect, basically what could happen are two domino effect so the one would very much pertain to european theater and the other one would pertain bilateral u.s.-russian strategic stability. the first domino effect, let's start with worst-case scenario. the russians, they are

continuing to -- we are not doing anything wrong here, everything is fine and u.s. at some certain point decides to say, look, we are going to get out of inf and we have to counter that tit for tat and we also need at least dual capable inf missile in europe or maybe just go full in and say nuclear missile in europe. there are actually a lot of people in washington aware of the fact that that would be highly destabilizing, not just in general sense vis-a-vis russia but what i wanted to point out with view to maintaining alliance unity within nato, so a lot of people like steve. >> my colleague john have put forward some proposals saying,

we could station u.s.-long range bombers in great britain equipped with air launch cruise missiles conventional and the naval card, u.s. warships and others have the look that we should concentrate on point defense for certain military installations, that is clearly linked to the concern that nato has with regard to baltics and escalation from the russians. i think there are some opportunities. as you can hear already from my response, those are all military options and as much as i like, for instance, i can just recommend the article my friend brought forward in the latest arms control today issue, we would like to see those arms control solutions and i have a feeling that the train has

already left the station in that regard. let's look for damage limitation and let's not go too far and the domino effect with regard to the bilateral, clearly, if trump decides it's a great deal, he can expand for the next five years, even with the inf violations, nevertheless we would face same problems five years later or he decides against that and, you know, the strategic arms control mechanisms that we have in place will weather away and will throw us back to a state that we have last seen in very early 1970 ice -- 1970's and 1960's. we have to work hard on preserving inf.

that was about the prudent trump meeting at the sidelines of g20. were one thing that germany would like to see. >> trump reaffirming article 5. >> i know, very briefly in the interest of time let me answer the question second first and brief point on the first question that rachel asked. in terms of the russians list of things, sanctions are probably number one, how feasible that is anyone's guess, in terms of the broader strategic baggage, missile defense, we also know and how that process is going to proceed. those are the three things that keep the russians interested in sort of having a strategic stability dialogue but very briefly on the crisis question, i think you talked about the

euro missiles crisis, don't get your crises confused because it's very important in the russian debate. russians think they are back in the euro missile crisis. some at least do. they argue that epa launchers are in fact, nuclear capability and they are back into that discussion, but also sort of some things that written not for western consumption. a lot of concern that there will be an arms control collapse but it will be different so we start with inf, go to start, then also include ctbt and go to mpt. russians view collapse as dramatic and potentially consequential. >> on that cherry-note, i want to thank both of our panelists for an excellent set of remarks and very thoughtful responses to your questions. we are going to transition very quickly to our final keynote

speaker and i'm going turn it over to darrell to introduce. [laughter] >> former fbi director james comey will testify thursday before the senate intelligence committee investigating russian activities during last year's election. the committee says former director comey will testify in open session which will will be followed by close session, you can watch live coverage 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span3 and c-span.org. you can also listen using the free c-span radio app which you can download at the apple app store and google play and hearing will rare thursday evening at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's

cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> next a conversation on american socialism, bhaskar of sunkara discusses american left in donald trump's america. harvard university shoren stein center on media hosted the event. >> our guest today is bhaskar sunkara, the editor of publicker jacobin magazine, describes himself as quote, leading left offering socialist perspective on politics, economics and culture. he's the editor among other volumes of the abc's of