It looks like good news, but just how good, nobody is quite sure. On 3 June the US pledged to slash its arsenal of nuclear weapons by nearly half over the next eight years.
The cuts will leave it with 鈥渢he smallest nuclear-weapons stockpile we鈥檝e had in several decades鈥�, said Linton Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Brooks announced the plan in a letter to Congress.
The new reductions target weapons the US holds in reserve, and come on top of an earlier pledge made by President George W. Bush under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) in November 2001. Otherwise known as the Moscow treaty, this commits the US and Russia to cut the number of 鈥渙perationally deployed鈥� warheads from an estimated 6000 to between 1700 and 2200 by 2012.
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The real extent of the overall reduction is difficult to gauge because weapons are classified in a number of ways. Reducing the number of operationally deployed warheads could theoretically include reclassifying them or storing them away as inactive components.
But Matt Martin, deputy director of the British American Security Information Council in Washington DC, an independent research organisation, believes the move is a welcome step in the right direction. 鈥淎ny time the US administration announces it鈥檚 going to be making a reduction is a step forward 鈥� it鈥檚 better than doing nothing.鈥� But he points out that there are many questions yet to be answered about the plan.