The Road to Zero

Richard Weitz, Miles A. Pomper, James Carafano | World Politics Review | 2009-08-04

President Barack Obama has set an ambitious agenda for arms control and nonproliferation, making a START follow-on agreement with Russia and strengthening the NPT top priorities. But critics argue there are more promising ways to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. WPR examines The Road to Zero.

Moving Past START
By Richard Weitz
Since taking office, President Barack Obama has made the pursuit of Russian-American strategic arms control negotiations a priority. But challenges to concluding a START follow-on treaty by year's end remain, as does the question of whether both sides' desire to stabilize their nuclear relationship will outweigh their concerns over their regional security goals.

Obama's Challenging NPT Agenda
By Miles A. Pomper
To a significant degree, the Obama administration's posture to date on a variety of nonproliferation issues has been calibrated to position the United States to gain desired concessions at the upcoming NPT review conference. Nonetheless, it is not clear that President Barack Obama's new approach will yield markedly better results than those of his predecessor.

Keeping Swords, Building Plowshares
By James Carafano

There is a problem with President Barack Obama's plan to run down the "road to zero" -- namely, that we've been down that road before, and it did not get us very far. The White House is resurrecting the traditional instruments of nuclear nonproliferation and arms control that, by and large, proved a failure at ever eliminating one nuclear weapon or a single missile.

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