The first ever Nuclear Security Summit to address preventing nuclear terrorism wrapped up today. Initiated by President Obama, the summit gathered 47 world leaders in DC to commit to achieving the goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear material, such as plutonium or highly enriched uranium, and securing loose nuclear weapons within four years. With the Cold War over, nuclear terrorism has emerged as a grave threat to US and global security. This Washington Post article has good coverage of the summit and illustrates why it is so important:

“Nuclear materials that could be sold or stolen and fashioned into a nuclear weapon exist in dozens of nations,” Obama said Tuesday morning. “Just the smallest amount of plutonium — about the size of an apple — could kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people.”

(Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

After a year of negotiations, the President Obama and Russian President Medvedev signed a new treaty today to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles in both countries and make the world that much safer.

But will the Senate do the right thing and ratify the treaty, or will they hold it hostage to partisan politics?

 Please click here to ask your senators to support ratifying the New START agreement to reduce our nuclear arsenal.

At the signing ceremony today in Prague, President Obama spoke about how the treaty opens the door to further actions to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Here’s an excerpt:

The Obama administration’s long-delayed Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was released today and, as expected, it’s a mixed bag. Outlining US nuclear weapons policy for the next 5-10 years, the NPR does reject some of the bad policies put forward by the Bush administration and helps to reduce the role nuclear weapons play in US security strategy.

On the other hand, the NPR definitely falls short of being a transformational document. Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Obama’s speech from Prague, in which he stated “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” The NPR does not realign US nuclear weapons policy enough to achieve the ambitious agenda Obama laid out in that speech.

On Friday, the White House announced that negotiations with Russia on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) to cut both US and Russian deployed nuclear weapons stockpiles as well as delivery vehicles were complete. This treaty is an essential part of the Obama administration’s overall agenda to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. With 95 percent of the world’s more than 23,000 nuclear weapons in their arsenals, it is important that the US and Russia complete this first round of nuclear weapons reductions smoothly and move on to negotiations for deeper reductions. The White House released some key facts about the new treaty:

Aggregate limits:

We want to remind the president that there is widespread support for strong leadership to eliminate nuclear weapons. That’s why the Campaign is launching a new sign-on letter to President Obama. Will your organization sign on?

The letter will call on the president to announce at the upcoming Global Security Summit that he will host a disarmament summit next year. It will be delivered on April 5 to coincide with the anniversary of President Obama’s Prague speech.

This is not a petition for individual members of the public to sign. It is intended for faith, community, environmental, peace, labor, and other groups to approve and sign on to. Organizations can view the letter here and sign on to the letter by the April 1st deadline.