nuclear safety and nuclear science and on nuclear security i think we will never go back to the way nuclear security cooperation was before and we don't have to because the way it was before was for a time when russia was sort of still recovering from the soviet collapse and needed a lot of help and there was actual you know u.s. money going to build a better security systems that sites and so on that's not really needed anymore what's needed now is it is an exchange of best practices and ideas among technical experts on both sides and i remain hopeful that we will be able to get that going again at least in modest ways i think it benefits both sides security and the world security i think it's a danger to the world and to each of our countries that the world's biggest nuclear establishment is with the most nuclear experts are just not talking to each other

yeah i mean those are the two biggest guarantors i mean who would guarantee that sort of security if both sides are pretty much you know announcing arms race well the reality is nobody can guarantee. another country's nuclear security in the sense of security for nuclear material or a nuclear weapon being stolen or something each country has to provide that itself it's not like there was ever cooperation where there were you know u.s. guards guarding russian sites or russian guards guarding the u.s. sites or the like that but we can do that. job better if we talk to each other that's what i'm saying president take a break right now when we're back we'll continue talking to professor matthew bunn we'll talk more about the nuclear threats that russia and america are facing today stay with us.

one else truths seem wrong. but old old just don't hold. any you get to shape out just because to add to it and in again trade because betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.

we're back with professor matthew bunn professor you mentioned earlier touring our talk that the cuban missile crisis was a perfect example of how dangerous things they get will like little mistakes probably and to that alongside mistakes there's also like the. the fact that there

is no respect maybe or curiosity to understand each other's perception of the world which are quite different i have to say i mean when medicare i was talking to putin just recently and she was like you know you're pretty much starting the new arms race is like no it's george w. bush who started in two thousand and two when he withdrew from the ballistic missile treaty and actually built a missile defense system so that's the way he says the world we're at that americans have something to respond in return and then you know right now you have russians that are saying that i know that americans the two hundred nuclear bombs that are stored in here up ever since the world war two. i know that they. used to be a lot more yeah i know that americans are great so you know russians lab are always saying hey you know we see these as a clear violation of nonproliferation principles do you think this worries do you think this concerns are justified. it is certainly correct from the russian point

of view that the united states ripped up the any ballistic missile treaty i regretted that i opposed to actually my first book was on why the missile treaty was a still a good thing for us. obviously the book to deal with the day was not. was not a. now honestly u.s. missile defenses have first approximation no capability against russian nuclear forces we have about fifty it at that doesn't really matter you know they're right it's all about the perceptions of the west and sas and it's about the perception of what it what direction it may be going in the future because it's only on mars. long long in the future. so as i say we do need to regulate these things and we do need to understand each other's perspectives as you were saying one of the crucial moments in the cuban missile crisis came when there were two communications

from the soviet side. almost at the same time one of them very threatening and angry and one of them much more. compromising and fortunately for the world one of kennedy's staffers was a former ambassador to new khrushchev for well and sort of said to kennedy why don't we just ignore the one we don't like and respond to the one we do like and i think that if we offer this and that to khrushchev that would be enough to convince him to back down and that turned out to be what caused the crisis to be resolved so if there hadn't been a person at that moment that the president was willing to listen to you need a president with good judgment and a close advisor with real empathy for the other side and the situation they were in

. i'm not sure we have either of those things and either washington or moscow right now. that concerns me what about the two hundred nuclear bombs that want to be upgraded in europe do you see why russia could be concerned about this well of course russia and the soviet union before it was been concerned it isn't a violation of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty my father actually was one of the key negotiators of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. he reports fought over this subject at considerable length for and ultimately agreed on a compromise that allowed the u.s. nuclear weapons to remain in europe the reality is that the upgrade that's being done is i mean they're just they're delivered bombs they're going to be delivered that will last longer basically there's a few modest improvements but it really makes absolutely no difference to the threat to russia overall so how can this issue be resolved once again

a different world views different perceptions there were some back and forth nuclear developments between u.s. and russia really mean that global known for inflation i mean seeing how the biggest guarantor. that those two countries are about to expand nuclear are shareware i still don't understand where the authority to stop the spread of nukes will come from. well let me clarify a noise there are russia nor the united states at the moment is proposing to actually expand its nuclear arsenal there are still limited by new start terms of the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons russia we believe has been expanding its tactical nuclear arsenal a bit but not very substantially. so both sides i think will have a arsenal of more alas the same size as the arsenal so they have. both sides are still dismantling some of the older. weapons that they hadn't gotten around to

dismantling yet in the past. still has a couple of thousand in the queue waiting to be dismantled. so it's not really a question of building up the numbers it's a question of changing types and capabilities. and i think we need to be spending more time sitting down together talking to each other actually engaging in real discussions of strategic stability and the different ways that russia sees it and the united states sees it and specific things that you know we can agree to to address the concerns on each side but i think in order for that to happen we could give you an american perspective russia really needs to stop meddling in the u.s. electoral process because that has succeeded and you know you do the democrats and the republicans in the united states sensually everyone except the president other

states. and the russian shiri that i haven't seen for many years you know the russian first backed in on that and not even government perspective but anyway i sure would tell you you know you need to show me that proves i don't believe in secretary since i don't really in my own secret services cia and then you know why should i believe american war and a russian word because when cia was. when w m d's existed in iraq turned out to be bogus so why not show you show me the proof that we actually model the russian perspective there's a lot of proof so facebook has detailed. lowered you know hundreds of russian controlled accounts that were fostering increased polarization sort of hitting on issues that would try to divide americans and try to push people toward the republicans. twitter has revealed a lot of the same and then there's a lot of classified evidence there's really no dispute among any.

serious person in the u.s. national security establishment that that happened and is continuing to happen it's ongoing in the united states right now and then you know i'm just playing devil's advocate here but another argument that an average russian on t.v. no americans had a medal in so many elections alone in the world you know why why when we come up to you and why is it so annoying and that is a fact and i think it would be a good idea for the united states and russia to agree at a top level neither of us are going to do this to each other just want to talk about north korea shortly because it's really hot topic i mean with everything that's going on right now this crisis raised the question of japan and south korea actually getting their own nukes i mean at this point it's obvious that the north has it probably not never going to give it up so with this current configuration does this mean that their region which is going to get more nukes to the reality is

north korea's had nuclear weapons for over a decade now and so for south korea japan taiwan had made i think the correct decision not to build nuclear weapons of their own i think north korea's program creates additional dangers and more dangers as a perceived as further but again the things i worry about most are not that you know kim jong un or for that matter donald trump are going to wake up one day and said put today would be a great day to use nuclear weapons but rather that there would be some crisis that would escalate in a series of back and forth exchanges to the point where nuclear weapons would end up getting used to. that in an initial crisis for example that the north koreans might use some of their conventionally armed blistered missiles to attack us air bases or something like that and that might provoke the united states and the south koreans to think well they're using their missiles we'd better start

destroying those missiles and then the north koreans would be faced with. but sometimes known as a use them or lose them situation and might use nuclear weapons to try to scare us off so there are a variety of really dangerous scenario i think there too there is a real need to take the possibility of negotiation seriously to not attempt to get you know everything you can possibly imagine out of the negotiations but to take a realistic step by step approach starting with freezing testing freezing for their production of more nuclear weapons and so on. and to focus also. confidence building measures military to military exchanges and still and to try to reduce the dangers of this sort of inadvertent getting out of control in a crisis so according to gallup most of the americans think that north korea's

nuclear program is the biggest threat to america right now just the fact of having that gene to play with that well we have a lot of threats to america right now i think many of them are internal to ourselves and that we're tearing ourselves apart politically so we need i say to have to figure out how to function as a democracy again. which we're not doing a very good job of right now but i do think it's a serious danger from north korea it has reminded americans that the nuclear danger didn't go away when the soviet union went away i think russians remember that that was true throughout the intervening period but i think a lot of americans sort of forgot about nuclear danger. though that north korea has nuclear weapons and increasingly missiles that can reach the united states americans are sort of waking up and saying. wait that nuclear danger could apply to

beat i mean i have had people calling me from san francisco or los angeles saying should i get my family and my kids out of town. and there haven't been. americans genuinely afraid about nuclear weapons like that for a while they were in the eighty's but not for a while. well thanks a lot for this wonderful interview and for this inside or show the best. way to say war stable relationship between our countries.