It will be up to the next US administration to remove nuclear arms from the quiver of threat responses and war-fighting scenarios and begin the process of delegitimizing nuclear weapons.

By playing make-believe arms control with Moscow and negotiating a vaguely drafted and potentially contentious nuclear weapons agreement, the Bush administration has sacrificed the security of structure and predictability for the putative virtues of flexibility and unilateralism.

The Bush administration's national security policies, if fully and unilaterally implemented, will severely stress United States relations with Russia and China. … These policies would also deal a serious blow to the international treaty regimes developed over the past 30 years to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction and that continue to enjoy universal support and approval.