John Pepper writes: “I am going to be participating in a conference at NYU on Monday, November 23, starting at 6PM. The subject is US-West-Russia relations. Joining me will be fellow board members from the American Committee for East West Accord, the mission and members of which are described in the note below. I would like to send an invitation to members of the New York Yale Club.”
Mission Statement of The American Committee for East-West Accord
The American Committee for East-West Accord is a nonpartisan, tax-exempt educational organization of American citizens from different professions — business, academia, government service, science, law, and others — who are deeply concerned about the possibility of a new (potentially even more dangerous) cold war between the United States/Europe and Russia. Our fundamental premise is that no real or lasting American, European, or international security generally is possible without essential kinds of stable cooperation with Russia.
Since early 2014, we have therefore watched with growing dismay as East-West cooperation created over decades — in diplomacy, arms control, economics, energy, education, science, space, culture, even in preventing nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and environmental threats — have been heedlessly discarded or gravely endangered. While experts warn of an unfolding new nuclear arms race, and with it the risk those weapons may actually be used, there may already be less East-West cooperation than existed during the latter decades of the preceding cold war.
The primary mission of the Committee is to promote such discussion about East-West relations and thus to create broad public awareness of the new dangers and of ways to end them. The Committee encourages open, civilized, informed debate of all the related issues, current and past, among Americans with different, even opposing, positions, perspectives, and proposals. And the Committee seeks to do this in as many ways as possible, including an informational website for engaging individuals and other groups; sponsoring or cosponsoring public events in Washington, at universities, and across the country; and in the national media, including social media.
Read our full Mission Statement.
The Committee’s Initial Proposals
At this perilous moment, in mid-2015, the Committee urges that the governments most directly involved in the crisis take the following mutual steps:
— The Obama Administration should formally join the “Normandy Four” which negotiated the Minsk Accords of February 2015
— The U.S., NATO and Russia should reactivate the NATO-Russian Council
— Washington and Moscow should restore the provisions of the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program
— Moscow and Washington should take all necessary steps to preserve the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)
— Washington and Moscow should protect educational and related exchange programs
Read the full content of our Proposals.
The Founding Board
- Bill Bradley is a Managing Director of Allen & Company LLC. Senator Bradley served in the U.S. Senate from 1979 – 1997 representing the state of New Jersey. Read more….
- Stephen F. Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, History and Politics at New York University and Princeton University Read more….
- Gilbert Doctorow received a Ph.D. in Russian history from Columbia University in 1975. Read more….
- Jack F. Matlock, Jr. is a career diplomat who served as US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991. Read more….
- Ellen Mickiewicz is James R. Shepley emeritus professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University. Read more….
- John Pepper is the former Chairman and CEO of The Procter & Gamble Company. He also served as Chairman of The Walt Disney Company and of the Yale Corporation. Read more….
- William J. vanden Heuvel served as the American Ambassador to the United Nations by appointment of President Carter