The end of the Cold War and disappearance of the Soviet Union have allowed us to outpace even the most ambitious earlier predictions for arms reductions. I and II Treaties, when fully in force and implemented, will eliminate two-thirds of U.S. and former Soviet deployed nuclear weapons. President Clinton and Yeltsin's agreed in principle in 1997 to take us to 80 percent below Cold War peaks. About 60 percent of all warheads, including about 80 percent of all non-strategic warheads, have been eliminated. Understandably, the far-reaching progress in nuclear disarmament has whetted all our appetites for deeper, irreversible steps.
Some countries assert that the pace of progress is unacceptably slow.
The unavoidable reality, however, is that arms control is a process in which painstaking negotiations are often an essential part of achieving an effective and verifiable outcome. Moreover, intermediate steps are the engines of progress. The 1995 decision to make the NPT permanent and negotiation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty opened the way for the deeper reductions outlined at Helsinki. We have demonstrated that the best way to move forward is through a series of attainable steps, each building on the last and opening the door to the next. The U.S. recognizes that others are frustrated that more has not been accomplished in the disarmament arena in the way of new, formal agreements to further reduce nuclear arsenals.