Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball writes in Foreign Policy in Focus: For nearly 40 years, American presidents have expressed their intention to fulfill the U.S. obligation under the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue "effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament." Still, few presidents have taken that goal seriously, and those who did missed historic opportunities to move closer toward a nuclear weapons-free world. Under the presidential administration of Barack Obama, U.S. nuclear weapons policy and nonproliferation diplomacy can and must change, or else the global effort to reduce the risk of nuclear war, curb proliferation, and prevent catastrophic terrorism will falter.
"I find hope in the work of long-established groups such as the Arms Control Association...[and] I find hope in younger anti-nuclear activists and the movement around the world to formally ban the bomb."