The Carnegie Nuclear Policy program has released two nice papers worthy of a look-see.
The first, entitled “Gambit or Endgame? The New State of Arms Control”, is written by Alexei Arbatov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation Program and a former member of the Russian State Duma. The paper ponders the future of arms control after New Start and posits that the U.S. and Russian must move past Cold War mentalities and thinking in order to move forward. (Ignore my unintended alliteration)
The second, by my colleague James Acton, is entitled “Low Numbers: A Practical Path to Deep Nuclear Reductions”. In the paper, Acton offers up “a practical approach to reducing the U.S. and Russian stockpiles to 500 nuclear warheads each and those of other nuclear-armed states to no more than about half that number.”
Both papers can be found here:
http://carnegieendowment.org/files/gambit_endgame.pdf
http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=43288
I would add that the American Physical Society released a paper on a similar subject to that of Acton’s piece entitled ‘Technical Steps to Support Nuclear Arsenal Downsizing” which also discusses what it would take to get to low numbers. That report, released in February of 2010, can be found here:
http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/upload/nucleardownsizing.PDF
