Today, I am here with some of our nation's leading statesmen and defense experts. And there is broad agreement that our nation needs a new approach to nuclear security that matches a new era. When it comes to nuclear weapons, the world has changed faster than US policy. The emerging security threats to the United States, its friends and allies, and even to Russia, now come from rogue states, terrorist groups and other adversaries seeking weapons of mass destruction, and the means to deliver them.
Threats also come from insecure nuclear stockpiles and the proliferation of dangerous technologies.
Russia itself is no longer our enemy. The Cold War logic that led to the creation of massive stockpiles on both sides is now outdated. Our mutual security need no longer depend on a nuclear balance of terror. While deterrence remains the first line of defense against nuclear attack, the standoff of the Cold War was born of a different time. That was a time when our arsenal also served to check the conventional superiority of the Warsaw Pact.