December 13th 2008 - If Barack Obama sent the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to Congress for ratification early in the new session, that would be an excellent start. Since it was signed in 1996, 148 other countries have ratified it, but it cannot come into effect until the United States does, too. And then he could get on with banning the nuclear weapons themselves, not just the tests.There's a new initiative, launched in Paris last Tuesday (December 9) under the title Global Zero, in which more than a 100 world leaders endorse the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons completely. That may have a slightly antique ring to it - don't these people know that the Cold War ended ages ago? - but in fact the nuclear weapons are still there.
Some 20,000 of them, in fact. And last July, at a rally in Berlin, Obama publicly adopted the same goal: "This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.'' More >>>
