BERLIN — As the recent U.N. and Washington summits have demonstrated, nuclear arms control and disarmament are among the top issues on the world's political agenda. They are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Indeed, 2010 will determine whether U.S. President Barack Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world will remain a distant but achievable hope, or must be abandoned.
No one should be under any illusions. Even if all of the world's nuclear-weapon states embrace the vision of a world free of the threat of nuclear conflict, nuclear weapons will remain with us for two decades at least, and even that would require the most favorable conditions for disarmament.
This year is crucially important. The agreement signed in early April in Prague between Russia and the United States on the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons and possibly on further cuts was accompanied by the publication of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, identifying the nuclear capabilities that Obama's administration wishes to preserve for the next four years.