Time to Face Facts

BY JOHN KERRY | APRIL 8, 2013

Three years ago today – April 8, 2010 – President Obama and then-President Dmitry Medvedev signed the New START agreement to reduce American and Russian deployed strategic nuclear forces to their lowest levels since the days when Dwight Eisenhower was president and the Cold War defined our relationship with the Russians.

That December in the Senate, we clawed our way to ratification with 71 votes, a big bipartisan statement that the arms control and nonproliferation consensus could hold together even in a polarized political culture. That statement was reaffirmed by treaty supporters from Henry Kissinger and James Baker – and every other living secretary of state – to President George Herbert Walker Bush. MORE