Gorbachev's nuclear arsenal - 30 August 1991

I was sitting at home, transfixed by a debate, I suppose the last one, in the supreme Soviet, while, of course, life went on all around us performing dreadful and delightful things. The worst underground accident in New York in 63 years. A mile or two away on the meadow by Flushing Bay, the world's best tennis players were slamming away at each other in sun temperatures of 125 degrees. A friend's daughter, who'd given up hoping for a child, had just been delivered of a squalling boy to the joy of the family – an event that obliterated all news from the rest of the world.

Two miles farther uptown, a prominent athlete was arrested for rape. Only a week or so ago, we were warned, the New York police warned us, that for Paul Simon's free concert in Central Park, there was the possibility of half a million people showing up. So if you had no irresistible desire to see the great old man, stay away. In fact the audience that jammed into one half of the park, which is precisely the size of kingdom of Monaco, was 750,000 – a sure recipe for madness and mayhem. The result: there were four arrests for minor offences.

And yet, I've talked to friends a thousand miles and three thousand miles away and whatever their interests, their trade, their hobbies, their concerns for their own cities, what they all bring up at once is the Soviet Union during the unbelievable two weeks.

During the past week, except for one day of exposing myself to that burning, searing sun at Flushing Meadows, I, for one of many millions around the globe, watched, hour after hour something that at any time, any year before this August, I would have laid my worldly goods against its ever taking place. A Soviet parliament debating there in public, for all of us to see, the new shape, the terms, the institutions of a new federation, a confederacy, a group of nations.

It wasn't the substance of what they were saying that fascinated us – which was in fact difficult to grasp – but the absolute candour and genuineness of the debate. If there's one thing that Mr. Gorbachev's reign has produced, something never likely to go away, it's glasnost. Openness.

I remarked a week ago that, to me, the most striking new element in all the menace and confusion of the coup was the demeanour of the people in that Moscow square. For the first time in my lifetime, we saw a Russian crowd, and in the other republics, Soviet crowds, unafraid. It's hard for us to imagine going out in a public square and for the first time in your life, not cringing just a little before the approach of soldiers, not ducking away from the police, or worse, from a man who might be from the secret police, but just saying out loud, or not so loud, what's on your mind.

That this openness has run through all the layers of Soviet society was made wonderfully plain this week in the goings on at the Supreme Soviet. Of all the speakers, I did not spot a familiar type: the man who expects his constituents to expect him to say something, however false or rhetorical, to speak for Buncombe. Everyone had a point to make in a forthright, direct way. They seemed to say exactly what came to mind and say it quickly, courteously, pungently. And these are the people we look on as early students of democracy, apprentices who should learn from us. They have come far and already gone beyond us in some things. They were more mannerly than the House of Commons, far less wordy than the House of Representatives.

A general and justifiable rejoicing over the surely irreversible breakaway from communism does not, as I mentioned last time, soothe the concern of the Western capitals for the immediate future of the republics and the prospect of social and economic chaos, to the point of a vast civil war. And that will remain on everybody's mind until we see the peoples of the dismantled union come through the next winter without having suffered starvation.

But now, once over the shock of the failed coup and its aftermath, there's a concern that's lurking in the minds of some statesmen and politicians, but which in the past week has come looming up as a bogeyman in the public consciousness. It's the question, it was first a question of who held the keys to the nuclear arsenal? So far as I heard, this was probably too frightening a topic to bring up at the height of the disorder. But I see from the notes I made, that it was not until our Wednesday morning, when the coup had failed and the tanks were withdrawing in order, that some reporter got hold of a Gorbachev ally – and Gorbachev was still not back in Moscow – and asked him who had had charge of the nuclear arsenal? "Always," the man replied swiftly, "they were under constitutional authorities".

I supposed we were so relieved to hear that that we didn't go into it. Whose constitutional authorities? Which constitution? If there are 30,000 warheads in the Soviet Union, they're not all in the Kremlin's vaults. There are many nuclear arsenals. Second or third I think, only to the Russian stockpile is that of Kazakhstan, which borders China. Did they have a private line to some buddy of Gorbachev or the conspirators? Did they know things would come out alright? Just how firm, how absolutely dependable was the hold on the local nuclear bombs of the big politicians in that republic? They are what 5,000 miles way from Moscow? Muslims, with their own language.

There must be people in the foreign offices of Britain, France, the United States, to go no farther. And not only in the foreign offices but in the cabinets of their leaders, men, who must at some point during the upheaval, must have secretly prayed that somebody got back into total power soon. That the Soviet Union would stay intact, if only to reassure us that the terrifyingly scattered nuclear resources of the 15 republics would stay under the control of one authority.

Only now, while the structure of the union, if any, is being debated and the number of new independent republics is unknown, now the anxieties of our side, the Western leaders, is coming out into the open. Soviet submarines, alone, possess 3,000 warheads. Another 6,000 are land based missiles. Most of the missiles, true, are in Russia. But there are enough, 900 in the Ukraine, and in Kazakhstan 1,000, to blow us all to kingdom come.

The other night, NBC's famously alert political commentator, John Chancellor, listed what he called "the pecking order". The six main nuclear powers of the world in order of the magnitude of their stockpile. To most of us, I believe, the ranking will be a painful surprise. Number one, the United States. Number two, Russia. Number three, Kazakhstan. Number four, the Ukraine. Number five, France. Number six, Britain.

I think we're all agreed this past fortnight that we live, as the Chinese put it, in interesting times. But in the break-up, which we all applaud, of the Soviet empire, there is as we now see, good reason for more concern about who, outside Russia, has the finger on the nuclear trigger. In the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and in other republics, this anxiety is going to play a big part in the new defence policies of the United States, certainly, of Britain, France, of Nato. And by the way, there's a lively battle going on between the Western allies about these questions: Should Nato still assume the defence of the West? Should the United States still remain indefinitely in Nato? Should Europe – this is a hot debate – should the new European Community have its own defence force, either inside or outside Nato? In which case, should Nato go on existing?

Whatever comes out of these serious squabbles in the next year or so, the main anxiety will remain about the nuclear powers of Russia and its former satellites. In this country, this anxiety is already beginning to spark a conflict in the Senate. The Democrats with one or two distinguished exceptions, are going to say, the country we've called the enemy for so long is no longer a threat and it's time to reduce, again, and more drastically, the defence budget, and – and the Democrats' favourite consequence – devote more of the money to our innumerable social ills, poverty, drugs, crime, education. Many Republicans, liberal Republicans, will join the Democrats in that policy. But the opposition to it is already being mounted by a senator who has been regarded for years by both parties, as the Senate's expert on defence, on nuclear defence especially.

He is Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia. He's the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and is on four or five other related committees like space, strategic nuclear committee, so on. He's also a member of the Methodist Church, and, you may remember, he was the man who brought down the late Senator John Tower when the president nominated him for Secretary of Defence. Senator Tower was a clubbable man and at one time had enjoyed a drink or two, or three. He freely admitted as much, and when he came up before Senator Nunn's committee for confirmation, he had become practically a teetotaller. Nevertheless, Senator Nunn didn't trust him heading up the Pentagon and Senator Nunn's power and influence were enough to bring him down.

Senator Nunn has persuaded the Senate to spend $10 billion to revive an anti-missile defence system that was abandoned, oh, in the early 80s, a defensive weapon against ICBs – intercontinental ballistic missiles. The senator's critics have popped up smartly. Moscow, they said, is no longer a threat, and the dissident republics are more likely to fire a missile at the Kremlin than at the United States. A defence, against whom? Senator Nunn's reply: The CIA estimates that 15 to 30 Third World countries will have missiles by the turn of the century. Nine years from now.

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