In 1991, the United States and Russia signed the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I). According to the treaty, the United States and Russia reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads deployed by the two countries from 13,000 and 11,000, respectively, to around 8,000 each. The Second treaty (START II), signed in 1993 and ratified in 1996 by the United States says that each nation would further condense their number of deployed warheads to between 3,000 and 4,500, which brings the total to approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons for each side, by the projected 2003 date. START III, which would reduce the level of warheads to 2,000-2,500, cannot be discussed until

The majority of citizens consider nuclear weapons a deterrence to counter attack. However, opponents of the plan to downsize and ban nuclear testing believe that downsize in Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban Treaty will hinder the deterrence effect, opening the United States to nuclear attack from rebel nations (N. Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya). Secretary Weinberger expressed the view that as long as any nation has even one nuclear weapon, the United States will require a deterrent of its own." (Center for Security Policy, p.2) Several former and present government officials, diplomats, journalists and public policy analysts observed that radical reductions schemes, reflect traditional arms control principles of the Cold War Era, that seem more unrealistic then that of the post-Cold War. "Russia is no longer the sole nuclear threat to the United States." (Center for Security Policy, p.4) The former and present officials commented that, "weapons that were designed for service life of 20 years remain in the active inventory long beyond that point, changes in the chemical and other properties of the component parts occur that can impinge dramatically, even catastrophically...In the absence of periodic testing, there is no certitude that such changes will be detected, let alone properly corrected...in order to prepare for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the United States would need to conduct ten nuclear tests per year for ten years." (Center for Security Policy, p.5-7)

During the cold War Era, nuclear power became the strategic deterrence against both a nuclear attack and a major conventional war, because a more effective plan had not happened and the adversarial relationship between the U.S. and Soviet Union made it irresponsible to rely on good intentions to prevent a nuclea

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