START Follow on Treaty: In Pursuit of a Pipe Dream

Ariel Cohen / March 26, 2010

MOSCOW – After more than a year of negotiations on a follow-on to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev finalized the agreement this week. It now appears that the new START will be signed on April 8 in Prague, to commemorate the first anniversary of Obama’s “getting to zero” speech. Getting to zero denotes an unrealistic goal of the world free of nuclear weapons.

Before anyone breaks out the champagne, however, one should remember that it could be months before a START follow on is ratified by the U.S. Senate—if ever. It took 429 days to ratify the 1991 START agreement after it was submitted to the Senate, for example. (more…)