Copied from: The White House Blog

President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia signed the New START treaty and its protocol.  Links to the PDF versions of these documents are below:

Read the Treaty (pdf)

Read the Protocol (pdf)

Also, the Department of Defense released the Nuclear Posture Review, reflecting the President's overarching view of U.S. nuclear strategy.

I recommend that before you comment on this review you should read the entire document rather than depend on a spoon fed version from a media outlet, especially if your media sources commonly uses political bias and misinformation. Link to the PDF version is below

Read the review (pdf)

Now for my comments

Last year in Prague President Obama said; "The United States will take concrete steps towards a world with out nuclear weapons". Now that he is making good on that, some accuse him of weakening our nation while they fail to see that he is just following in the footsteps of the presidents that have come before him, the US has a long history of signed agreements with the Soviets regarding nuclear weapons, see the following paragraph for more on that. The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) signed for the US by President Ronald Reagan on 31 July 1991 went into effect on 5 December 1994, around the end of 2001 all actions were completed and it expired 5 December 2009.

Other than the early concepts of the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine (which is not a signed agreement), the beginning of signed mutual agreements between the US and the USSR regarding nuclear weapons began with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) by President Kennedy. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed by the US 1 July 1968 going into force 5 March 1970 and SALT followed that in 1970 coming into effect May 1971 which was the first to address limitation on inventories. Though not limiting nuclear weapons, but worth mentioning is the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty or ABMT) signed in 1972, which is for the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against missile-delivered nuclear weapons, its intent was to maintain the balance of the MAD doctrine. The ABM Treaty is no longer in effect, since The US's official withdrawal in mid 2002, making START that much more crucial in maintaining realistic sized inventories towards the balance of power. Next would be the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty (PNE Treaty) of 1976. The US also revisited SALT with SALT II signed on June 18, 1979, honored but never formally ratified it was withdrawn from in 1986 by the Reagan Administration based on accusations that the USSR violated the pact. Then there is the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Which leads us back to, as referred to in the above paragraph, the multiple START treaties. Then Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT), refereed to as the Moscow Treaty, signed in Moscow May 24, 2002, went into effect on June 1, 2003, and expires on December 31, 2012. It is important to note the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) adopted by the UN General Assembly 10 September 1996 but it has not yet entered into force. It’s important because in the Nuclear Posture Review it says; “The United States will not conduct nuclear testing and will pursue ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty”.

As you can see US Presidents have dealt with mutual limitations on nuclear weapons for the good of the US and the world ever since President Kennedy. There is no reason any US president should not continue to carry this torch forward for as long as nuclear weapons exist, even if it takes a 1000 years to secure a world free from threat of nuclear weapons or any weapon of mass destruction for that matter. I like many others find it difficult to conceive of that day, given human nature; however that does not mean we should do nothing to reduce inventories that far exceed what would fulfill any possible scenario of the MAD doctrine.

In the words of President Reagan "We must never stop until we see the day nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth"

Arizona-Rick

Links

PTBT

SALT

PNE Treaty

INF

START I

START II

START III

SORT

START treaty (2010)

MAD

ABM Treaty or ABMT

P.S.

I hope I didn't leave out any significant information, as I'm no historian. I researched the internet based on what I could remember and expanded based on what I found. I don't feel the need to do in-depth research as this is not a commercial article or for some collage class it's just a virtually unread blog. That said consider this “P.S.” my disclaimer on accuracy. Also I get my words, punctuation and grammar from Typos-R-us, so sometimes there are spelling, typographical and grammatical errors, oh well.