Nuclear Weapons: How Few Is Too Few? (From Forbes)

After downplaying efforts to further reduce the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals in the run-up to 2012 elections, President Obama has returned to the subject in his second term. According to published reports, he is securing support from both Moscow and the Pentagon to cut the permissible number of deployed nuclear warheads from 1,550 to barely 1,000. Meanwhile, his administration has quietly retired 500 warheads from the nation’s reserve stockpile of non-deployed weapons — reducing the overall size of the nuclear arsenal to less than a fifth of what it was when Obama was born in 1961. There is extensive evidence that the president’s ultimate goal is total elimination of nuclear weapons, a topic he has discussed favorably throughout his political career. Unfortunately, the closer we get to zero from this point on, the less safe we will be. I have written a commentary for Forbes here.