Former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), a giant in the arms-control world who gave his name to a famously formative piece of nonproliferation legislation, died suddenly Sunday in Fairfax, Va., at 87 from complications related to chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, according to a press release from the nonprofit Lugar Center.
Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy is a neurological disorder that can affect sufferers’ ability to feel or move their arms and legs, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Lugar spent more than 35 years in the U.S. Senate, where he was the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee and the constant companion in arms control of Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Together, the two penned legislation now called the Nunn-Lugar amendment, which President George H.W. Bush signed into law in 1991 as part of the annual National Defense Authorization Act.
Nunn-Lugar created the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, under which the U.S. helped the collapsing Soviet Union secure and dismantle nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
During the Barack Obama administration, Lugar helped push the New START treaty through the Senate. The accord capped deployed long-range Russian and U.S. nuclear warheads at 1,550 for each nation. Some Republicans who voted for the treaty did so on condition that the U.S. would subsequently modernize its nuclear arsenal, which is now being done.
In February testimony before the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, Lugar took a dim view of the Donald Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. He said the White House would also do well to extend New START for five years through 2026.
“To leave the INF Treaty and then to leave New START altogether really calls for a total new beginning, and right now, I don’t see that kind of initiative in the administration or the Congress,” Lugar said. “So we had best hold on to what we have there.”
