Dear Editor,

Fifty years ago this week, the world woke up to a crisis that brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of a cataclysmic nuclear war.

Today, the U.S. continues to have over 5,000 nuclear weapons and five additional countries have become nuclear weapon states since 1962. Our current strategy is not working. We need bold action to move the world towards the elimination of these deadly weapons. Only through mutual, verifiable reductions in nuclear weapons can we begin to reduce the nuclear weapons threat.

Secretary of Defense, under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara remarked that all that prevented nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis was luck. A National Security policy based on luck alone is not a wise strategy for this country or the world.

Sincerely,