1,500. In their first meeting on Wednesday, President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev committed to negotiating a new arms control treaty. The United States and Russia hold the majority of the world’s nuclear weapons and further cuts in their strategic arsenals would improve US-Russia relations and advance nuclear nonproliferation.
A new treaty would replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) signed in 1991. START is set to expire in December. Some view the 1991 agreement as the corner stone of post-Cold War arms control and START led to the largest bilateral cuts in nuclear weapons in history.
In 2002, the two countries agreed to the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) which committed Russia and the US to reduce arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012. SORT, however, is filled with holes. Weapons can be stored rather than destroyed and nuclear delivery systems are not restricted.
A new deal will likely go beyond SORT and include stronger verification procedures.
Both Russian and American officials said 1,500 warheads was a realistic figure, representing a more than 30 percent cut in their current arsenals. It’s far from a nuclear free world, but a verifiable reduction to 1,500 warheads would certainly demonstrate progress.
Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote that “cutting the total of operational and reserve nuclear warheads to 1,500 will force nuclear war planners into tough decisions about how to deter the use of nuclear weapons by another state against the US or its allies.”
Clip from Reuters.
