Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. A Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963 outlawing tests in the atmosphere, underwater and in space. The US Senate ratified the treaty (80 – 19), but France and China refused to sign. A more expanded treaty was approved by the UN General Assembly in 1996. The US signed the treaty, but the Senate refused (October 1999) to ratify the treaty. President Obama has indicated that he would ask for Senate ratification at the “earliest practical date.”

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  In 1968, three nuclear powers (United States, Russia and the United Kingdom) signed this treaty, followed later by the two other permanent members of the UN Security Council – France and China in 1992. Currently 189 countries are parties to the treaty, leaving only India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea that have not signed. North Korea was a signatory, but withdrew in 2003. There are three major “pillars” – non-proliferation, disarmament, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

START I. The first proposal  for large scale reductions of strategic forces was made by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. Progress was limited, especially when Reagan introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative program (Star Wars), but finally, just before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the treaty was signed in July 1991.

START II. In 1993, a new treaty was signed that called for the elimination of heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles and other multiple-warhead ICBMs. Strategic nuclear weapons were to be significantly reduced. The Senate ratified the treaty in January 2006, followed by the Russian Duma in April 2000.

In recent years, progress has continued, though often at a painstaking pace.

Nunn-Lugar  Cooperative Threat Reduction Act. In 1991, Senators Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) convinced Congress to establish the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Since then, US funding and expertise has helped reduce the stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons from Russia and old Soviet Union countries. With passage in 2003 of the Nunn-Lugar Expansion Act, destruction of WMDs has been advanced in other countries, like Albania, as well. In the words of Senator Lugar “We must pay much more attention to making certain that all weapons and materials of mass destruction are identified, continuously guarded and systematically destroyed. The Nunn-Lugar Scorecard keeps track of the programs considerable success.

Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI). The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration is responsible for maintaining the safety, security and reliability of the US nuclear weapons stockpile, securing and eliminating nuclear materials, and providing the Navy with nuclear propulsion plants for warships. Its GTRI has shut down or converted a large number of research reactors from highly enriched uranium (HEU) for low enriched uranium (LEU), assisted with the removal of Russian origin HEU fresh and spent fuel, and secured or removed radiological sites in more than 40 countries.

Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. An agreement to collaborate in preventing terrorists from obtaining and using a nuclear bomb. Reached in 2006, more than 75 nations have agreed to develop and share approaches for detecting and securing nuclear bombs and related material.

Nuclear Security Project. An initiative founded as a follow-up to the “Towards a Nuclear Free World” 2007 Wall Street Journal article by former secretaries of state George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former secretary of defense William Perry and former Senator Sam  Nunn. The Project is based on the belief that “there is a unique opportunity – and a short window of time- for coordinated activities to pull back from a nuclear precipice.”  The focus is on expanding a vision of world without nuclear weapons and defining the steps necessary to get there. The project has produced “Nuclear Tipping Point”,  a movie that can be watched on the internet.

Prague Speech.  In May of 2009, President Obama outlined his position on nuclear weapons in the City of Prague, in the Czech Republic . Calling the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons “the most dangerous legacy of the cold war” he noted that “the threat of nuclear war has gone down but the risk of nuclear attacks has gone up” The President stated that the US would “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy”;  negotiate a new START treaty with Russia; pursue US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; pursue a new treaty to end production of fissile material intended for nuclear weapons. He announced a renewed international effort to ”secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world” in four years.

Nuclear Security Summits.  In the spring of 2010, a summit was held in Washington, DC, followed by one in Seoul, Korea in March 2012. Still another will be held in the Netherlands in 2014. With typically 50 or 60 world leaders in attendance, each summit concludes with a communiqué highlighting progress made and setting new objectives. Specific actions were set in 11 different categories, such as Minimizing the use of Highly Enriched Uranium and eliminating HEU no longer in use; converting to Low Enriched Uranium in Research Reactors; implementing the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials (CPPNM); contributing to the International Atomic Energy Agency http://www.iaea.org/  and much more.

NEW START TREATY.  Continuing the tradition of reducing nuclear weapons held by the US and Russia, the New Start Treaty was ratified by the Senate (71-26) in December 2010. The treaty calls for relatively modest reductions in warheads (1550, down from the previously allowed 2200) and a goal of 700 delivery vehicles by 2018. Unfortunately, the treaty does not address “tactical” nuclear weapons of which the US is said to have around 500, many in Europe. Nor does the treaty speak to back-up or “hedge” weapons (of which the US has around 2800) that are not currently deployed.

Nuclear Posture Review and Implementation Study. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_posture_review A periodic analysis conducted by the White House. The 2010 NPR called for all nations to do more to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, with emphasis on better “verification methods and techniques.” The 2010 NPR reversed President Bush’s intent to build nuclear bunker busters, and, with the exception of Iran and North Korea, pledged no nuclear attack any non-nuclear country in compliance with the Non-proliferation Treaty. More recently, the Administration has undertaken an analysis of the speed at which they can move towards targets in the New Start Treaty, and the extent to which the UN nuclear arsenal can be reduced beyond those targets.