arms reduction

In a burst of optimism in 1991, after the Soviet Union broke up and the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed, the clock was turned way back to 17 minutes to midnight.

Back in 2010, when President Barack Obama was trying to get the Senate to ratify New START, the nuclear arms–reduction treaty he’d negotiated with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Republican senators refused to go along unless Obama agreed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new nuclear ICBMs, bombers, submarines, and warheads.

But the White House was quick to say at the time that the discussions would not resemble formal arms reduction talks, like those the U.S. has had with Russia.

China has rejected several U.S. overtures to join nuclear arms reduction talks, despite what U.S. officials say is a requirement to do so under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The United States withdrew all its tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea by 1991 as part of global nuclear arms reduction efforts.