The Visor

Russia and U.S. sign treaty to reduce nuclear arms

April 20, 2010

Lindsay Huth

Once Cold War nuclear arms race enemies, the United States and Russia made a landmark agreement on April 8 to cut their nuclear warheads by a third and the missiles, submarines and bombers that transport them in half.

“It says to our country, the Cold War really is behind us, and these massive nuclear arsenals that both our countries maintained as part of deterrence no longer have to be so big,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said according to NPR. “We can begin to cut that.”

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met in Prague to make the world safer and bring together the two countries that had been, according to Medvedev, starting to “drift” apart.

“When the United States and Russia are not able to work together on big issues, it is not good for either nation, nor is it good for the world,” Obama said according to CBC News. “Together, we have stopped that drift and proven the benefits of co-operation.”

The treaty is important to the U.S. because it allows for monitoring of Russian weaponry, while Russia benefits because it cannot keep up with U.S. in typical weapon supply.

The act also hopes to encourage other to nations across the globe, especially Iran and North Korea, that nuclear weapons need to be reduced and monitored. Next week, over 40 countries’ leaders will meet in the U.S. capital to discuss the safe handling of nuclear weapons, and next month the 40-year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will be renewed and strengthened.

“It allows the American delegation at that review conference to say the United States is doing its part — it’s cutting nuclear weapons,” arms control expert Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institution told NPR. “And now the review conference needs to find ways to make it more difficult for other countries to get nuclear weapons.”

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