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Further, these two countries alone continue to account for more than 90 percent of the world’s total nuclear arsenal, 15 times the rest of the seven nuclear weapon states combined.

“The pace of reducing nuclear forces appears to be slowing compared with the past two decades,” Hans M. Kristensen, director of the FAS Nuclear Information Project, said Monday. “Both the United States and Russia appear to be more cautious about reducing further, placing more emphasis on ‘hedging’ and reconstitution of reduced nuclear forces, and both are investing enormous sums of money in modernizing their nuclear forces over the next decade.”

Since 1991, the United States has reduced its number of nuclear weapons from around 19,000 to roughly 4,650 today, according to data in a new FAS report, authored by Kristensen, looking at the next decade of nuclear disarmament. Although the corresponding Russian numbers are not publicly known, FAS estimates that the decline has been even more significant, from around 30,000 to 4,500 today. (Though between the two countries, another 16,000 are awaiting dismantlement.)

Those are nearly fivefold decreases, echoed by reductions in non-strategic (or short-range) nuclear weapons by both Washington and Moscow of some 85 and 93 percent, respectively.

Such numbers represent a major success in international negotiation and engagement, but the FAS analysts suggest that tracking this trend in the long term is “becoming less interesting and relevant.”

Although a new bilateral treaty — the New Strategic Arms Reduction (START) Treaty — entered into force between the U.S. and Russia in 2011, it now appears that by the time of the agreement’s 2018 deadline, the number of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by the two countries will be only “marginally smaller” than today. Further, the new treaty is set to sunset just three years later.

Given the new data, the implication is that either a new set of arms-reduction treaties will need to be agreed in coming years, or each country will need to embark on new unilateral programs of reduction. If neither of those takes place, “large nuclear forces could be retained far into the future.”

With the election over, Kristensen is calling on President Barack Obama to “once again make nuclear arms control a prominent and visible part of his foreign policy agenda.” …….

According to a recent policy brief from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank, the U.S. arms-control agenda is currently “a more partisan issue than at any time since the end of the Cold War.” The brief’s editor, James M. Acton, says that this is in part due to Republican disagreement with President Obama’s central goal, that of a world without nuclear weapons.

Further, U.S.-Russian relations have become increasingly strained in recent months, including over U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Europe, despite a high-profile attempt by President Obama to “reset” Washington’s Russia policy.

A major new move by the U.S. Congress to normalize trade relations with Russia — for the first time in nearly four decades — has now been overshadowed by simultaneous punitive legislation that censures Moscow for its human rights record.

The Russian government’s response has been incendiary, promising retaliation and noting that the law “will rather negatively affect the prospects for bilateral cooperation.” http://original.antiwar.com/biron/2012/12/18/rate-of-us-russian-nuclear-disarmament-slowing/