Wednesday, April 7, 2010

With Arms Pact, Disarmament Challenge Remains



PRAGUE — President Obama came to this medieval city last spring to lay out an audacious vision of “a world without nuclear weapons.” A year later, he arrives back here on Thursday to sign a treaty with Russia that envisions a world with thousands of nuclear weapons.

Under the so-called New Start treaty, the two powers will pare their arsenals but still deploy 1,550 warheads each, on top of thousands of others not covered by the pact. All of which raises this question: Nearly two decades after the end of the cold war, with terrorists, rather than Soviet despots, the main threat, why does the world still need so many weapons?

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