In April, US President Barack Obama told a crowd in Prague of his hope for a world free of nuclear weapons. Achieving such a vision would take "patience and persistence", he said. But we "must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change".rnUnfortunately, some of those voices belong to powerful figures within Obama's own administration. Last month, the non-proliferation news site Global Security Newswire reported that the defence secretary, Robert Gates, has been quietly lobbying for the reinstatement of a programme to build a new generation of 'reliable' nuclear warheads. The same report suggests he has at least tentative support from two key cabinet members: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and energy secretary Steven Chu. However, pursuing this programme would do nothing to improve the reliability of the US nuclear arsenal. Instead, it would seriously damage Obamas efforts to reduce the threat posed by the world's most deadly weapons.
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