America's nuclear responsibility

Russia and the US sign treaty

Last week President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a historic nuclear arms treaty reducing the number of deployed strategic warheads by 30 percent to 1550 - lower than the ceiling implemented by the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) of 1991.

Of course, there was the usual fervour in more extreme parts of the US media about how President Obama was selling America's defences down the river, but by limiting the number of deployed delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles and heavy bombers, both America and Russia have taken a major step towards nuclear disarmament.

On the back of the treaty, President Obama is hosting a summit on nuclear security in Washington stressing the dangers of nuclear materials falling into terrorist hands. In the new treaty, the US pledged not to "use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations."

Nuclear tests would also be stopped

While critics of the President saw this as signing away America's nuclear strength, the treaty still gives America the right to attack North Korea or Iran with nuclear weapons should there be any reason, due to the fact that the two countries refuse to be members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Another part of the treaty also allows America to use nuclear weapons should it be attacked with biological weapons. So really America is as strong as it ever was and can still essentially attack who it wants as long as it has proper justification - it just has less weapons to do it with. The way it should be really...

What will the summit aim to achieve?

With leaders from nearly 50 countries attending, but without representatives of Iran and North Korea neither of whom were invited by the US because of the disputes over their nuclear programmes, President Obama hopes to rally world leaders to clamp down on the theft and smuggling of arms.

Speaking to the BBC ahead of the summit, Ikia Amano, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that more should be done to protect nuclear material from falling into the wrong hands.

"The problem is that nuclear material and radioactive material are not well protected and member states need to better protect these materials against the theft or smuggling," he told the BBC.

"On average every two days we receive new information on an incident involving theft or smuggling of nuclear material."

Indeed according to Brookings Education, the US has lost 11 nuclear weapons in accident and never recovered them.

IT is rumoured that Pakistan is especially vulnerable to such theft. If such a group such as Al-Qaeda were to get their hands on nuclear material, the result would be devastating.

"There have been numerous reports over the past eight or nine years of attempts to obtain various types of purported material," John Brennan, a senior American counter-terrorism expert told reporters.

"We know al-Qaeda has been involved a number of times. We know they have been scammed a number of times."

While the likes of China and Russia are attending, Israel has allegedly dropping out over concern that Muslim states would seek full Israeli nuclear disclosure and ask to open its facilities to international inspection.

It has never been confirmed whether Israel possesses nuclear weapons, but it is widely believed they do.

The next nuclear security summit is to be held in South Korea in 2012.

Timon Singh

Timon Singh is a graduate of Liverpool University where he received a degree in Social and Economic History. He has previously worked for BBC Magazines on BBC Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, the publication for the popular genealogy show.

Like this article? Get the RSS feed: