Administration officials familiar with the situation say that Tuesday’s State of the Union Address will include a call by President Obama to renew his calls to cut the size of America’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
At present the US has around 1,700 nuclear weapons and according to reports President Obama would like to cut around one third of those weapons out, still over 1,000 when all is said and done.
Negotiating a deal with Russia on the cuts is going to be difficult, but perhaps the even bigger obstacle is Congress, with many Republicans spurning even a nominal cuts already agreed to and likely to fight to block anything larger.
President Obama has had private (and not as private as intended) talks with the Russians about cutting nuclear weapons further, but the huge US missile defense plans, which center around the Russian frontier, remains a key sticking point for Russian officials, who want a deal to combine their defensive systems, which the US insists aren’t “targeting” Russia in the first place.
