STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Mike Shuster reports.
MIKE SHUSTER: President Obama made it clear early in his presidency that containing the spread of nuclear weapons was one of his most important goals. In April in Prague, he outlined a vision of a world without nuclear weapons and committed his administration to pursuing that goal. But at that very moment, North Korea tested a long-range missile and was threatening another underground nuclear test, prompting the president to strike a tough tone about nations that violate the nonproliferation norm.
BARACK OBAMA: Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.
SHUSTER: Only a few weeks later, North Korea did conduct its second underground nuclear explosion. The challenge has also come from Iran. Last fall, Mr. Obama revealed that Iran was building a secret uranium-enrichment facility, sharpening suspicions that Tehran is indeed seeking a covert nuclear weapon's capability. 2009 has been a dismal year for the international regime of nuclear arms control. Or has it, asks Joshua Pollack, who writes for the Web site ArmsControlWonk.com.
JOSHUA POLLACK: One way to look at it a little differently is not that the regime is cracking or that the regime is failing, but that the regime has succeeded in retarding the pace of proliferation and continues to do so, but isn't going to catch everything.
SHUSTER: Since the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945, the past decade has seen the fewest nuclear tests than any comparable period, notes Michael Krepon, president emeritus of the Stimson Center in Washington.
MICHAEL KREPON: Never before have there been so few nuclear tests as in this past decade. This is a norm. It can still be broken. But the country that breaks the norm does not gain points. It loses standing.
SHUSTER: The concerns of the Obama administration are wider than Iran and North Korea. The president also wants to see a dramatic reduction in the number of nuclear warheads deployed by the U.S. and Russia. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made that clear in a speech she gave in Washington a few months ago.
HILLARY CLINTON: Clinging to nuclear weapons in excess of our security needs does not make the United States safer. And the nuclear status quo is neither desirable nor sustainable. It gives other countries the motivation - or the excuse - to pursue their own nuclear options.
SHUSTER: The administration concluded the way to pursue those goals is through new arms control negotiations with Moscow, a mechanism largely ignored by the George W. Bush administration.
START: Nonetheless, there is much to be optimistic about, says Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund.
JOE CIRINCIONE: The overall climate is so much improved, and the overall effort to just dramatically reduce nuclear weapons and increase the transparency gives us lots of assurances.
SHUSTER: The U.S. and Russia are still negotiating, but there are some significant problems. For the Russians, the big issue is American missile defenses. Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made it clear this week that he sees U.S. missile defenses as a threat to Russia's nuclear deterrent.
VLADIMIR PUTIN: (Through Translator) Our American partners are building missile defense systems, as is known, and we are not. If we do not develop ABM systems, then a threat appears, because having created such an umbrella, our partners may feel completely protected and will do what they want. Aggressiveness will surge.
SHUSTER: For some arms control advocates and for other nations, that number is still too high and the process far too slow. Michael Krepon says reductions in nuclear warheads must come carefully and incrementally.
KREPON: You don't get to deep cuts in nuclear forces and you don't get to zero, without having a strong, credible nuclear deterrent. If the deterrent is not safe and secure and credible along this long journey, there will be great disruption.
SHUSTER: Mike Shuster, NPR News.
INSKEEP: We made it through a precarious decade. We'll be watching to see what happens in the next. It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News.