Ellen Tauscher: “It is vitally important, first and foremost, that we protect those items.”

The bar for using nuclear weapons is extremely high.

What we know better than ever is that we have the finest military force in the world and these are volunteers, unbelievable young men and women from around the country, and they should be the lever of power that we use the least and last

We want to give more incentive to non-nuclear states not to seek or acquire nuclear weapons.

While the United States and Russia frequently discuss the problems of Iran and North Korea pursuing development of nuclear weapons, this was not a topic of discussion in the negotiation of the bilateral New START treaty.