Rose Gottemoeller: Getting to yes

The assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance discusses where the United States is headed with various treaties like New START, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and the Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT). In this interview, she describes how the United States and Russia are implementing New START and explains how this experience might be helpful in paving the way for CTBT ratification down the road. She discusses how the United States would prefer to have the FMCT negotiated within the Conference on Disarmament, and notes that the P5 is prepared to “wrestle this problem to the ground.” Today’s concerns do not revolve around a massive strike from the Russian Federation, she says—it is no longer the Cold War. She describes the biggest threat to be the same one President Barack Obama mentioned in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review—terrorism.