With healthcare reform behind him, President Obama has turned his attention to what is perhaps his number one foreign policy priority: nuclear disarmament. On April 6, the Obama administration released a new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) report, outlining U.S. nuclear weapons strategy. The NPR is not the dramatic document that some on the left had hoped for, but in a sop to Obama’s base, does revise U.S. declaratory policy to limit the instances in which the United States will use nuclear weapons. The NPR also fails to outline a clear path to warhead modernization, something that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said is essential to ensuring the reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile in the coming decades.

Two days later, the president signed a new arms control pact with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Prague’s Hradcany Castle. However, in their rush to ink a deal, the Obama negotiators appear to have granted concessions to the Russians on missile defense that are troubling and could torpedo the treaty’s prospects for Senate ratification.