On April of 2009, American president Barack Obama announced his goal of abolishing nuclear weapons and pledged to work toward that goal. While speaking in Prague the president said that America is committed to seeking peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons. Global security issues seem to once again have come up with nuclear weapons at the top of the agenda. It was not since Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations, decades ago, that nuclear abolishment was discussed. The president set specific actions that his administration was going to undertake in 2009 that included the signing of a new strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians and the pursuing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ratification with the U.S. Senate.

Global security will take a new turn with the nuclear disarmament agenda underway that will see the 26,000 nuclear weapons, with the 95% of them in the possession of the United States and Russia, greatly reduced. It has been seen unnecessary to have these vast nuclear arsenals especially after the end of the Cold War. The proposal to have a nuclear weapons reduction treaty was proposed by Moscow years back and Senate Republicans seem to have favored these agreements. If Washington and Moscow accept this new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, both the Russian and the U.S. nuclear arsenals will be no more than 1,500 each. This will be seen as a giant step towards global security.

However, nuclear abolition and hence global security remains far from certain. For one, a non-proliferation agreement with Iran remains feasible. Another obstacle seems to be NATO s expansion to Russian borders. The U.S. plan to have antimissile defense systems installed in the Czech Republic and in Poland seemed to have intensified the U.S. and Russian chilly relations. Although the claim put forward by U.S. is that of averting a nuclear attack from Iran, Russian officials remain suspicious of this move and this may well affect the conditions of a reduction treaty.

Global security could not be any less dependent on the U.S. Senate. In order for a ratification of a ban treaty to be passed, it is required that two-thirds of U.S Senate vote in favor of it. This means that a determined minority can kill any treaty. The 1999 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is a good example of how this is possible. As the president remarked in Prague, a world free of nuclear weapons will not be reached quickly. However efforts are at least being made toward global security along these lines and results are likely to follow.