Obama Has Slowed Reduction in US Nuclear Arsenal

Despite Talking Up Disarmament, Obama Making Little Progress

In Hiroshima today to pointedly not apologize for the United States launching a nuclear attack on the city in 1945, President Obama went back to one of his favorite talking points, calling for a “world without nuclear weapons.

Obama has been talking up his pro-disarmament stance for years, even as he pushes for the US to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in modernizing its massive nuclear arsenal. To make matters worse,  new figures from the Pentagon show that the reduction of the US nuclear arsenal has slowed dramatically under Obama.

Indeed, the rate of disarmament has been slowing for years throughout Obama’s presidency, with 2015 the smallest figure of dismantled arms throughout both of his terms in office, even as he continued to talk up his “accelerating” of the program to the international community.

The lack of arms reduction reflects that the US has made next to no progress on any international disarmament deals in years.

Officials are trying to defend the lack of progress during Obama’s time in office, blaming hostility with Russia. At the same time, Obama has continued to publicly present the disarmament program as ongoing, which the new figures show it clearly was not.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.