Take Action on This Issue HOW MANY NUCLEAR weapons make us
"safe"? At the height of the Cold War, both the U.S. and the
Soviet Union had tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, aimed at
each other's cities, towns, and military targets. Not many felt
that the world was somehow made safe by this hair-trigger,
apocalypse-risking standoff. The Soviet Union is long gone, but
the Cold War mentality that fueled the era's nuclear arms race
seems to linger on. According to a December report by the
Federation of American Scientists, the world's combined
stockpile of nuclear warheads is still more than 17,000. Of
these, the report continues, "some 4,300 warheads are considered
operational, of which about 1,800 U.S. and Russian warheads are
on high alert, ready for use on short notice." President Obama,
for his part, has laid out what he called his "vision of a world
without nuclear weapons." In a speech last March in Seoul, South
Korea, Obama said the goal of a nuclear-free world "would not be
reached quickly, perhaps no