U.S. intends to further reduce nuclear arsenal in future

The United States has made significant progress in reducing its nuclear arsenal and intends to make further reductions in coming years, Tom D'Agostino, U.S. under-secretary for nuclear security and administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said here on Tuesday. "At the peak of the Cold War in 1967 we had over 31,00 nuclear weapons, 31,255 to be exact," said D'Agostino. "As of Sept. 30, we are down to 5,113. This is an 84 percent reduction in the overall size of the stockpile." His statements came at a briefing, organized by the U.S. Mission to the UN and titled "Demonstrating the United States commitment to nuclear disarmament." D'Agostino said that the bilateral agreements between the U.S. and Russia on those operational nuclear weapons have been the " foremost" actions in the American nuclear disarmament program. "Our partnership with Russia on nuclear reduction will continue and eventually we will seek to bring other nuclear weapon states in with the goal of eventual elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide," he said. Russia and the U.S. have agreed on a New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to report on and reduce their arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons. The original START was signed by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union in 1991. "The United States has declared 1,800 deployed strategic warheads as part of the initial data exchange for the New START treaty as of the 5th of February 2011," said D'Agostino. "This is a massive reduction compared to the over 10,000 warheads declared under the initial START treaty in the early 90s." Under the New START, he said, the U.S. and Russia will reduce their arsenals of deployed operational warheads even further. According to D'Agostino, the U.S. will reduce to 1,550 such warheads over the next seven years. D'Agostino said that the Obama administration has become more focused on stopping terrorists from gaining control of weapons. "Looking to the future we are going to continue to focus on preventing further proliferation with really a special emphasis on nuclear terrorism, or what I call nuclear counter-terrorism efforts to ensure that this material doesn't fall into the wrong hands and more importantly -- how do we prevent that and work together as a community of nations to make sure that happens," he said. According to D'Agostino, this change in viewpoint comes directly from the fact that the global nuclear security situation has shifted significantly since the Cold War and the arms buildups of that time period. "We understand, the president understands that the greatest threat to global security is not necessarily two large powers going at each other with warheads but its terrorists getting their hands on the materials or improvising a device or somebody else's device and using that to create chaos," he said.