White House Will Host 47 Nations in Nuke Talks

The White House will host world leaders representing 47 countries at the Nuclear Security Summit April 12-13.

“The pursuit of peace and calm and cooperation among nations is the work of both leaders and peoples in the 21st century,” Obama said in Prague, Czech Republic, Thursday.

Next week, world leaders will discuss the prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons, preventing the trafficking of these weapons on the black market and keeping them out of the hands of terrorist organizations.

The Washington, D.C., summit follows President Barack Obama’s signing of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty with Russia.

Under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the United States has agreed with Russia to begin decreasing nuclear arms by 30 percent. But the president said this was not enough.

“This is a well-crafted treaty that meets the interests of both countries; that meets the interests of the world in the United States and Russia reducing its nuclear arsenals and setting the stage for potentially further reductions in the future,” Obama said.

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Obama and Medvedev sign the START nuclear nonproliferation treaty April 8. World leaders will gather in Washington April 12-13 to discuss nonproliferation among 47 nations.

Obama, Medvedev Sign Nonproliferation Treaty

The two largest nuclear powers in the world – the United States and Russia – have signed a treaty to decrease nuclear arms by 30 percent.

President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the treaty in Prague, Czech Republic April 8.

“This day demonstrates the determination of the United States and Russia,” Obama said, “the two nations that hold over 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons — to pursue responsible global leadership.”

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Medvedev toasts Obama after signing the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

According to the White House, decreasing U.S. nuclear warheads by 30 percent includes ballistic missiles, submarine missiles and bombers.

The treaty states that Russia and the United States will also be permitted to monitor each other’s adherence to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) through inspections and other forms of transparency.

But the United States also issued a statement allowing for the continued development and deployment of its missile-defense systems for national security.

The treaty must also be reviewed and approved by the U.S. Senate to take effect.

“But nuclear weapons are not simply an issue for the United States and Russia,” Obama said. “A nuclear weapon in the hands of a terrorist is a danger to people everywhere … Next week, 47 nations will come together in Washington to discuss concrete steps that can be taken to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years.”

Obama Expresses Surprise, Humility at Nobel Peace Prize

“This is not how I expected to wake up this morning,” the president said, after hearing that the Norwegian Nobel Committee had awarded him with the prestigious Nobel Prize for Peace. “I am both surprised and deeply humbled,” he said, and “do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.”

“To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace,” he said.

There have been detractors in the United States and overseas for the Nobel Committee’s decision. After only nine months in office, the president’s vision of eliminating nuclear weapons and his renewed emphasis on global cooperation and dialogue to resolve challenges such as climate change and pandemic disease have not yet accomplished their goals. Obama himself said today that some of his policy goals may not be completed during his administration, and the elimination of nuclear weapons “may not be completed in my lifetime.”

But when Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland announced the decision in Oslo, he compared President Obama to other peace prize winners such as former West Berlin mayor Willy Brandt and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose own reform efforts had not been achieved when they received the prize.

“The question we have to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world,” Jagland said. “And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

The president said the prize has been used to “give momentum” to causes, and he said he sees the award, which will be given in Oslo December 10, as “a call to action” for the United States and all nations to “confront the common challenges of the 21st century.”

What do you think about this surprise announcement? Do you think this will help or inadvertently hurt President Obama as he tries to advance his policy goals?

President Obama: the anti-nuclear activist-in-chief

You may have noticed that President Obama is not a fan of nuclear weapons. At a speech in Prague this past April he called for their abolition. He has been working with Russia to reduce the number of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons and launchers. And he has also been trying to prevent Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons of their own.

Today marked another indication that nuclear nonproliferation is a huge priority of the Obama administration when the president called a summit meeting of the United Nations Security Council and became the first U.S. head of state to ever chair the body. It was also only the fifth time the Security Council has met at the head of state level since its formation in 1946. The first was held in 1992 to discuss the dissolution of the former Soviet Union.

Can you guess what the topic was today?

What President Obama and the other heads of state achieved from this summit was the first U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons and which sets out a broad framework on how to reduce nuclear dangers in pursuit of that goal.

The spread and use of nuclear weapons is a “fundamental threat to the security of all peoples and all nations,” Obama said. If one nuclear weapon exploded in a major world city, it would kill thousands, and “it would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life.”

The president said every country has the right to peaceful nuclear energy, but those which already have nuclear weapons “have the responsibility to move toward disarmament,” and those who don’t “have the responsibility to forsake them.”

What do you think? Is a world without nuclear weapons achievable? How can this goal become a reality?