Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

Morning Panel: "Advancing U.S. Nonproliferation and Disarmament Leadership" featuring ACA Executive Director Daryl Kimball, Thomas Pickering, Joe Cirincione, and Joan Rohlfing (Continue)

Soon after the Obama administration took office, Vice President Joe Biden set the tone of the new administration's approach toward Moscow when he called for the United States and Russia to press the "reset button" in their bilateral relationship.[1] This theme was reiterated in the March 9, 2009, meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Providing guidance to their bureaucracies, Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, at their meeting on the margins of the April G-20 financial summit in London, "decided to begin bilateral intergovernmental negotiations to work out a new, comprehensive, legally binding agreement on reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms to replace" START. (Continue)

President George W. Bush Dec. 30 signed the instrument of ratification for a U.S. additional protocol to its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreement. Although the United States is a nuclear-weapon state under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and is not required to adopt IAEA safeguards, it has done so as a confidence-building measure. Washington has also pressed for the universal application of the 1997 Model Additional Protocol in order to better detect and deter illicit nuclear activities. (Continue)

The 1978 Nuclear Nonproliferation Act (NNPA) sought to tighten the criteria for nuclear cooperation and reshape the nuclear fuel cycle. Many of its provisions have been forgotten, but the NNPA regained notoriety this year with the approval of the U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement. The objectives of the NNPA are timeless and in no danger of being achieved soon. (Continue)