appropriately, you're not getting a correct picture. i think the new treaty is very significant for part of the same aspect of building momentum and consensus and getting more partners on board to plain lies on his agenda. certainly, the reset in general with russia is an important piece, and unless you have former superpower's relief agreeing in and those -- really agreeing and those with the most powers saying we are moving ahead on an agenda, you would not get the same agenda on how the international community sees the white house making terayon what was said in prague last year, so it is all about controlling more for the u.s. seriousness in terms of his objectives of disarmament, so i

think it is going to be very exciting couple of weeks for reporters, because there are a out thereing because there are a lot of moving parts. if you see it in the frame in terms of non-proliferation and making good on npt obligations in terms of the legitimate five, weapons states and any measures in that regard, helping create that momentum, it is a very positive, positive first step, even if the numbers are not as dramatic as people might have hoped. >> i think to look at this issue from about 30,000 feet where we had from the '40s, through early 1990s this cold war period u.s., russia and russians built up their maximum capacity, a number of weapons that, as many nuclear weapons as they could produce in order to

deter one another for what was essentially a political struggle, not necessarily for utilization. . . we are going to move away from post-soviet russia and look at this issue in a more global framework, and that is what the president is going to do on wednesday, so where does it fit in? i think it is dealing with the old cold war over hang issue, which is important. i think it is making good on the president's commitment to go to 0, which is going to be a difficult agenda.

third, we have nuclear non- proliferation treaty review conference in may, where they are going to say, what have you done for us lately, and you will be about to point to that. i think the orchestration is right. he'll be able to point to that. i think the ordinary care administration is right. the signing of s.t.a.r.t. and the npr that came out today, not your npr and the nuclear security summit is going to be one long week of kind of nuclear, you know, discussion and repositioning. but again, i come back to this point. s.t.a.r.t. -- we always kind of knew where s.t.a.r.t. was going to do. we don't know where this nuclear security issue is going to go. it's a lot more difficult. it's more expensive and more moving parts than just dealing with the russians. >> i think we're seeing u.s. leadership finally in keeping

our country safe. in keeping weapons and materials out of the hands of terrorists that can harm both us here in the homeland but also our i think it's all part of this new nuclear security agenda that we're seeing. the u.s. take leadership on some part is s.t.a.r.t. and reducing the weapons. and part of securing the materials. securing them and then eventually eliminating them so they don't get in the wrong hands. and then hopefully eventually we'll see test ban treaties so these countries that already of these weapons a very strong demonstration of u.s. leadership moving forward. >> one thing i would say is that we're never going to have sustainable effective security in russia. unless we build it in a partnership with the russians. and i think this -- getting this s.t.a.r.t. follow-on accomplished is a major element of rebuilding that partnership.

and continuing with the reset of relations so that we can really focus on a real partnership-based approach rather than a sort of we're going to give you money and tell you what to do kind of approach. on the other hand, the fact that we have so much fighting over what is a relatively limited agreement as i think a clear indication of just how hard it's going to be to then move on and address the much more difficult issues in the next stage relating to warheads that aren't on missiles and tactical nuclear weapons. and so on. we've got a lot of heavy lifting in the years to come. >> in the back. >> thank you. i'm with china radio international. i've got two questions. the first question is related to the timing of the summit. is it considered a critical moment now to deal with the issue of nuclear security?

is there evidence showing that the nuclear terrorism is stronger now than it was before? and the second question is, will the summit be considered as the biggest achievement in the foreign policy of the obama administration? thank you very much. >> well, i think that it's not so much that terrorists are getting stronger as that president obama came to office and saw that this was a major problem. called for a nuclear summit, nuclear security summit and then it took a certain amount of time to put together and it's not something you can do overnight. but i think the reality is we do face a serious threat. the threat is ongoing. and the critical need is to make sure that the security improvements get to these nuclear stockpiles before the thieves do. so that we can keep these materials out of terrorist hands. >> just this past january we saw -- i'm going to read this 'cause i want to get it right. the bipartisan commission on the

preinvestigation of wmd proliferation and terrorism. as well as the -- yeah, it's long. as well as the former high ranking official at the cia both testified in january and february that al-qaeda is still actively seeking nuclear weapons. and nuclear weapons materials to use against the u.s. and its allies and it has since the 1990s. >> i think the timing is what the timing is. it's something that the president promised last year in prague. it takes a while to organize something like this. it's the kind of thing you want to do early in your administration because after the midterm elections, it's not clear what's going to happen. and after that it's on to the president's re-election. so i think that there's -- there's -- the timing is actually good. will it be one of the greatest achievements of the president's foreign policy? i think that depends on whether or not we have gauziness and unclarity. or whether we have specificity and the working plan that is going to be very specific. >> and follow-up. >> and follow-up.

you know, president -- i give him a lot of credit because he's a very bold -- he's made a lot of bold predictions in this area. secure all vulnerable nuclear materials if four years. -- in four years. we have been at it in 15 years and we haven't succeeded in one country yet. that's a very difficult thing. the budget is not adequate, frankly, for that kind of admission. and now he said, you know, that the communique is going to be very specific and not vague. you know, i think i'll wait until tuesday to see. but i think if by the end of his first term we've may not have achieved the four-year objective he set out but come a long way from today than i think it would be one of his greatest achievements, yeah. >> i got to thinking a couple months ago in terms of the nuclear agenda. the things that were already on the plate when they came -- when this administration came into office was, you know, negotiating s.t.a.r.t. follow-on because it expired in december of look. -- .

and the mpt treaty was going to happen whether they held a summit or not. i got to questioning whether, you know -- i think it was probably some speechwriter and the question of the midterm elections who said within the next year we will host this nuclear security summit. and then all of a sudden you have this nuclear policy pile-on that's coming this week and the coming months. but i think it was probably more related to, you know, a speechwriter putting that in and there being a political calculation as it relates to it instead of realizing, wow, we've got a lot of stuff on our plate. and this is a lot of balls to juggling simultaneously in terms of that. but i don't think the timing was related to the terrorist threat will be at a threshold and we just can't bear it anymore. and this is what we have to do. but i do think there's probably staff people at the national security council and over at the pentagon who are like why did we commit to host the summit right in the middle of all these other -- all these other things that we're juggling?

it's just a guess in terms of where that fits. >> i think people in many countries in the room -- to make the point that this is really a threat to everyone and not just to the united states. if a nuclear bomb went off in a major city, even if it was manhattan or washington, the effects would be global. kofi annan when he was secretary-general of the united states said that the reverberating economic effects around the world would push millions of people into poverty and create a second death toll in the developing world. if you think u.s. foreign policy was aggressive and annoying since 9/11 wait until you see what happens after a u.s. city goes up in smoke. this is really something that is a threat to the security of all countries. including countries that don't even have any nuclear weapons or material on their soil. it's something that we all have to work together to address. >> other questions? in the back. go ahead. >> hello.

i'm from the news agency from kazakhstan. so you know as you know kazakhstan was the first country to give up the -- it's nuclear arsenal and shot down the nuclear testing sites. the question is is it plausible to view our country as a role model for other nuclear states in the question of disarmament and why? thank you. >> i would like to see kazakhstan as a role model and as part of it being a role model they would get rid of the highly enriched uranium that is still on its soil. i'm at least modestly hopeful that an announcement on that subject may be made at the nuclear security summit. i don't know. we shall see. i think a number of countries will be making announcements related to things that they individually will do for nuclear security. associated with the nuclear security summit. i think those announcements may turn out to be more important

than the communique itself. because there's no sort of everybody has a veto process on that. but i think kazakhstan is not the only one that can be an example. south africa is another one which, you know, in that case built its own nuclear weapons. and, you know, of its own choosing decided to get rid of them. so there are today in the world more countries that started nuclear weapons programs and agreed to give them up than there are countries that have nuclear weapons. which means that our efforts to stem the spread of nuclear weapons succeed more often than they fail even once a country has even started down the path of nuclear weapons. so i remain hopeful despite all the challenges that exist today that 20 years from now we may still only have the same number of nuclear weapons states that we have today or maybe fewer. and i think that should be our goal. >> great. let me remind folks that we have materials out on the table. so when you leave please pick them up.

there's a fact sheet and top questions, faqs that you can pick up on the way out. go ahead. oh, shaun? >> the problem of nuclear security needs to be addressed on several levels. and one of the most important one is the governmental but there's also a lower level of nuclear industry. and, of course, the two levels are interrelated. so i was wondering if you anticipate any challenges when either implementing the communique or whatever happens with the nuclear industry. and what incentives there are to get the nuclear industry to cooperate? >> well, the nuclear industry is meeting. they're having their own event specifically on what they can contribute to the nuclear security process. and so i think that's extremely important because i don't think that's happened previously. and then secondly there's a new

organization which others at the table may know more about than i do called the world institute for nuclear security, which is specifically focused on working with the nuclear industry to make certain that they take the security responsibility seriously. and that they act on it. and that they -- at their board level view it as a i seem fair moving in the right direction -- i think they are moving in the right direction, certainly where they are advancing beyond where we have been in the past years. >> i think it is important to understand the industry itself has tens of billions of dollars at stake in the sense that if there were a terrorist nuclear bomb or a massive sabotage, what i sometimes referred to as a security chernobyl, that would

put the kibosh on the hope of the industry growing and being a major player on climate change, so the industry is slowly coming to feel that in the gut more than it did in past years, but i think we have always to go. it is difficult to convince anyone who has not had an incident at their plant in 20 years that they need to spend more on security than they have been before. sinclair lewis once said the hardest thing in the world is getting a man to understand something he does not want to understand. >> another key player would be the non-governmental community, and that is what we hope to do, to shine a light on, make more transparent, make more accountable the commitment our country will make prior to the

summit itself. will make prior to and at the nuclear security summit itself. and you can check out our website while i'm talking. it's fmwg.org. and on it it will have all these materials. it will have this today. it will have other resources for the press and also the public. as well as a follow-up to the summit. we'll be analyzing what the official summit outcomes are actually. and whether they're good or bad or, you know, explaining them. and then as well we will have our own summit live webcast as well. i have a question in the back. >> thanks, i'm carla from canadian broadcasting. and i just wanted to get your thoughts on today's announcement about the npr. what kind of significant change in american policy you see or is there one? >> well, the two things that

people are talking about or that seem to make the biggest splash is not using nuclear weapons to respond to chemical and biological attack which if my memory is correct, i think it is. was actually a function of the clinton administration change in doctrine. i'm not sure prior to that using nuclear weapons to respond to chemical and biological attack. so i don't see -- i actually don't see that as a significant item. and then secondly, no new nuclear weapon development. which, you know, we are spending 6 or $7 billion a year already on the maintenance of the arsenal under stockpile stewardship. and there's been no credible analysis that the monitoring and the systems which have been in the technologies which are being funded under stockpiles stewardship are not adequate to maintain the u.s. nuclear stockpile. nuclear weapons are not militarily useable weapons.

i mean, once you unleash a nuclear weapon, you're likely to unleash more than one nuclear weapon and you're likely to end up with an incredibly devastating situation. so i think they are the ultimate deterrent but they are not the ultimate useable military item. and i think that's a reality that the npr takes into account. and i think the carping about, you know, somehow the united states is not going to respond to some kind of chemical or biological attack by nuking the perpetrator most likely, which would be a nonstate actor. so i'm not sure we would even be able to identify who they are is not necessarily -- is not necessarily a credible -- a credible argument. if it's a state that is a rogue state, you know, like what we used to call them, then i think it's, you know, something to consider. but a nuclear response to anything other than a nuclear attack is extremely serious business and i don't think it should be devolved down to a

political football which i think is happening today. >> i think the review is a first step toward reducing the role of nuclear weapons. reassuring nonnuclear weapon states that we won't threaten them with nuclear weapons. and we are committed at least over the long term to moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons. but it's only a first step. and i personally wish that it had been a larger step. i would have liked to see a more fundamental shift in thinking about nuclear weapons this far after the cold war. the notion that we're still, you know, we're fighting over 50 or 100 nuclear weapons one way or the other in the s.t.a.r.t. follow-on or what have you is a clear indication that we still fundamentally don't understand the nature of nuclear weapons in the new world that we're in. so i think if we're ever going to achieve president obama's

vision or even start getting reasonably close to that vision, we need a much more fundamental transformation of our thinking about nuclear weapons and what it takes to maintain a deterrent and what it takes to get out of a situation where we need to maintain a deterrent. >> other questions? okay. well, i thank everyone for coming and we hope to continue this conversation with you in the future. >> another student cam winner

before "washington journal." now all of a debt anti- government militia and extremist groups -- now, a look at anti- government militia and extremist groups. this is 40 minutes. host: joins us now is mark potok. welcome to the program. >> welcome to the program. backgroundlittle and your organization. guest: it was formed in alabama. for several years we did classic civil rights work. in the early 1980's, we got into with the work that made the place well known, suing a white

supremacist groups. basically, the suits were built around the idea of holding the leader and the group itself solely responsible for the actions of followers. the suits were successful. our offices were burned to the ground. actually helped make the place quite famous. since then, we have expanded. our lawyers do a lot of immigration work, juvenile justice work. my department covers the radical right. we have a teaching tolerance policy which produces material. host: most recently in the headlines has been demolished a group of detroit, michigan. with this headline, --

host: tell us what you know about this group and why is it that other mother should groups are trying to put some distance between themselves and these guys? guest: this was an odd group. they basically believed like most of the patriot-groups or militia-type groups, but the world was headed for held-in-a- hand basket. ultimately, the pushing of the united states or the subsuming of the united states into a new world order, a so-called, socialistic one-world government. it is not very defined. this group was interesting in that it put a christian millennial spend on the new

world order idea. in -- instead of talking specifically about the new world order, they speak of the antichrist. they think that the antichrist might be the former secretary general of the european union. this fits very much in the ideas of other militia groups. these are all pre figurations of the terrible -- of the terrible socialists tell that we are headed for. this group is accused of quite a remarkable plot. supposedly, they were going to murder a local police officer. that would draw hundreds of law enforcement officials to a big funeral and their idea was that they would attack this funeral with improvised explosive devices and missiles. it was quite remarkable. given all that, it is no

surprise to me that all of the other militia and patrick groups and related organizations are essentially running away from them. they want nothing to do with this plot to murder a a whole lot of police officers. host: we're talking about militias and extremist groups with mark potok. if you want to get involved, give us a call. host: we want to show you of the to bit of what senator joseph lieberman of connecticut had to set on the subject. then, we'll get your calls. threat has definitely escalated. all the conditions that you mentioned are there to encourage people. i would have a word of caution to my colleagues in the

political parties and the media, the level of discourse about our politics are so extreme and incendiary, but if you are dealing with people that may not be clicking on all cylinders and may have all rebels -- and may have of all abilities, there is a danger. i would not overstate this threat. it is not as confident as the global threat of islamic extremism, but it is real. i want to ensure the american people that your government is taking this militia threat very seriously. the fbi is on top of this. that is why they stopped in this group before they had a chance to do what they wanted to do, which was to attack law enforcement officers. host: mark potok, is the political extremes that we are

seeing in the united states, is that driving up an escalation of militia groups in the united states on both sides, left and right? guest: i am not sure what you mean by left and right. the short answer is yes. i think that the polarized, incredibly incendiary and often a very defamatory discourse that we have sunk to in the public square and is very much the reflection of anger out there and helping to drive forward the radicalization of a lot of individuals and groups. we put out a study which found an absolutely explosive growth in the number of not only militias and anti-government groups, but also a very hard- line anti-immigration group and what we classify as hate groups.

this is in addition to the broader political scene. we are not talking about, for instance the tea party. that is another formation that contains a lot of people that are very angry, frustrated, and in many cases, afraid. host: of first call comes from lynchburg, virginia. caller: good morning. i would like to make a statement. i am noticing that mark potok and a lot of these lower-level interest groups would prefer to identify the kirch -- the christians and the extremists on the right side, but i hope that your organization works as well try to stop groups like greenpeace and extreme islamic organizations. people that are anti-emigrants,

you are for -- you are against people that come into this country illegally. country illegally. there is not much of an extreme left. our focus has been on the radical right groups. our focus is around the 14th amendment. the said, we have covered a bit of the extreme left that really does exist, and that is the terrorists -- ego terrorists -- eco terrorists. the animal liberation front, the earth liberation front, we have written a lot about those groups. they have increased in violent