Rose Gottemoeller, the chief negotiator of the treaty with Russia, has a post on The Hill today celebrating the anniversary and the major victory for arms control the Senate vote represents:

This great bipartisan effort is paying big dividends now in strengthening U.S. national security. … The New START Treaty entered into force on February 5th of this year and immediately entered implementation. It is going very well.

Our experience so far demonstrates that the New START Treaty is enhancing our national security by building predictability and stability between the United States and Russia, still the world’s two largest nuclear powers. We are also setting the stage for the future, since new nuclear reductions will build on the success of New START and the innovations we are putting in place as we implement it.

Earlier this fall, the State Department released the latest totals of the deployed nuclear warheads restricted by the treaty.


This is down 178 from the 1968 strategic warheads that the US had deployed in May of 2010, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

In less than a year the process has been moving pretty quickly, with US warheads already approaching the 1700 limit of New START. This is a great sign, and reinforces our position that the State Department should start another round of negotiations with Russia ASAP to lower the limits much sooner than the treaty’s current expiration date of 2021.

So, here’s one more thank you and congratulations from me to you, for everything you did to help us flip 13 Republicans and achieve a decisive victory for arms control and nuclear disarmament. Have a Happy Birthday, New START!

The problem is that 15 years later, the Senate has yet to ratify the treaty. And without the full backing of the United States, the treaty has languished, with progress in other countries stalled as well.

But now, President Obama is testing the waters for a possible push to finally ratify the treaty, and set the stage for a global ban on nuclear explosions. After our recent victory in making the first reductions to the US and Russian nuclear arsenals in decades, momentum is on our side.

That’s why I believe the time for the CTBT is now. Click here to tell your senators to support ratification of the CTBT.

As the leaders of the Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Free World we are spearheading a national week of action starting September 24th, with hundreds of groups across the country urging their senators to support ratification of the CTBT as soon as possible.

Join thousands of other activists to amplify your voice and call for the Senate to ratify the CTBT.

This treaty is a necessary step to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. If we want to repeat the victory we had with New START, we need to lay the groundwork now. The sooner we show the Senate that the public supports the CTBT, the better chance we have to swing the key votes we need to ratify.

Click here to tell your senators to support ratification of the CTBT and make the world safer from the threat of nuclear weapons.

When I entered Hiroshima, the charred bodies were still being pulled out of the rubble. The horror that I experienced burned a lasting impression in my conscience. To this day, it serves as a philosophical anchor – my beacon of clarity in a political arena that turns a deaf ear to those who do not speak the exotic language of megatons, kill probability ratios and other terms that desensitize us to the true nature of nuclear war.

For 8 years I was involved in progressive politics in Oregon, where Hatfield’s service as a senator and a governor was much admired, and I was saddened to learn of his death. It is surprising to newcomers to Oregon that so many on the left side of the aisle think so highly of Hatfield and his legacy. Because Senator Hatfield was a Republican.

The Senator consistently reached across the aisle to find common ground with Democrats, and felt it was important to act according to his own sense of right and wrong, even if it meant taking a position that was in conflict with the Republican Party line. As John Isaacs with Council for a Livable World put it:

Indeed, Hatfield represented a brand of Republican moderation that has largely been obliterated in United States politics.

In my work with communities across the state, I found that Oregonians of a variety backgrounds, perspectives and political stripes are proud of the bipartisan heritage that Senator Hatfield represents. When calling voters for the Jeff Merkley campaign in 2008 I spoke to one gentleman from Pendleton, in Eastern Oregon, a rural and historically conservative area. I started telling him about Jeff’s positions on various issues when he cut me off to ask, “is he going to do what he says he’s going to do?” Agreeing with a politician on every issue wasn’t as important to this gentleman as whether his senator had integrity and was going to do what he thought was right.

Senator Hatfield became one of the US Senate’s foremost leaders opposing the use of nuclear weapons and the nuclear arms race, never forgetting his experience in Hiroshima. The concept of an arms moratorium was originated by Senator Hatfield in 1979, and became what we now know as the nuclear weapons freeze. In a prime example of his bipartisanship, he partnered with Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to sponsor a Senate resolution endorsing a mutual and verifiable nuclear weapons freeze. Although their resolution was never adopted, it was a groundbreaking proposal that paved the way for bipartisan efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons and led to last year’s successful ratification of the New START Treaty.

And the fact that the United States has not explosively tested any nuclear weapons in 20 years is a direct result of Senator Hatfield’s work. He led the fight to impose a moratorium on nuclear testing in 1992, again partnering with a Democrat, Sen. Jim Exon (D-NE), to introduce an amendment that called for a moratorium on US testing, and required the US to begin negotiations on a multinational test ban. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which has been signed by 182 nations, is the continuing legacy of Senator Hatfield and his experience witnessing first-hand the “incredible human suffering” caused by nuclear bombs.

We must urge our senators to put aside party divisions and vote to ratify the CTBT so that a complete ban on all nuclear testing becomes law, and finish the work that Senator Hatfield began when he stepped off that boat 66 years ago.

Because thousands of you spoke out earlier this month, together we got Congress to protect funding for nonproliferation programs. The final budget for 2011 provided a $190 million increase for programs that lock up nuclear bomb-grade material around the world, a major accomplishment when the Republicans were fighting to cut almost everything. Thank you!

Can you help us build on that success by telling Congress to block wasteful spending on nuclear bombs and new bomb factories in 2012? Please click here to contact Congress today.

Even though we have fewer nuclear bombs in the US than we did at the height of the Cold War, we continue to spend more and more money on them every year. That’s insane! If we cut just a fraction of what we spend on these horrific, wasteful weapons, we’d still have plenty left over to provide lunches for poor children.

Current plans would spend $85 billion over the next 10 years, including $12 billion building two gigantic new bomb plants and $4 billion extending the life of old, outdated nuclear bombs. These projects don’t make sense if we are working to rid the world of all nuclear weapons. And meanwhile, efforts to lock up loose bomb-grade material, and to dismantle the weapons we already have, are chronically underfunded and behind schedule. Instead of securing this material for good, some people would rather spend billions to build another factory that would put weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear power reactors.

Please click here to tell Congress it’s time to fix our priorities.

Thank you for everything that you do.

These important programs that clean up loose nuclear material around the world had been threatened with as much as a 20% cut! That would have severely jeopardized the efforts to lock down bomb-grade nuclear material within four years, one of the crucial steps on the road towards a nuclear weapons free world.

from Global Security Newswire:

The bill, [voted on last night], sets aside $2.32 billion for nuclear nonproliferation initiatives administered by the National Nuclear Security Administration. Much of the additional funding is focused on the Obama administration’s effort to secure vulnerable nuclear materials around the world….

The final version of the bill used the number the Democratic Senate had proposed, which is a 9% increase over last year’s funding. This is one of the only programs that was increased in the federal budget, many other programs were cut back. This is still lower than the President’s request for 2011, but it marks a dramatic shift from the GOP-backed House proposal to slash this funding. Their version of the bill would have given $241 million less to these critical programs.

These programs secured 800 bombs worth of nuclear material in 2010, and with this increase in funding, will be able to keep on track to complete this work within four years.

The Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Free world organized a national April 5th Call-in Day to save nuclear security funding, and people around the country called and emailed their senators and representatives asking them to fund these programs that are working to make the world safe from the threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation.

If you were one of the people who emailed your representatives: Thank you and congratulations!

This week we will enjoy this success. Next week, we will get back to work to change next year’s budget for nuclear weapons. We’ll be urging Congress to stop spending billions of taxpayer dollars on giant bomb factories and outdated warheads, and instead to dismantle the weapons we have and deal with dangerous nuclear material. If we are ever going to achieve a world free of all nuclear weapons, we have to put our money where our mouth is.