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The Czech government has suspended the ratification of its agreement with the United States on the deployment of a missile tracking radar. Some military analysts link this decision with the changes in the new U.S. administration's attitude to the plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile systems in Eastern Europe. Barack Obama said during his election campaign that the efficiency of the system should be scrutinized. When he was elected president, he said he might put off the ABM plans for Europe or bury the idea, especially if Russia would help convince Iran to suspend its nuclear weapons program.

The 1991 Soviet-U.S. Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) expires December 5 next year. This brings to the fore the problem of reducing nuclear arsenals and the monitoring of the process because the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which is valid through 2012, does not provide for irreversible reductions and does not establish a permanent mutual verification mechanism. The 1991 treaty, which entered into force in late 1994, limits the sides' strategic offensive potential to 1,600 carriers and 6,000 warheads. START II, the successor of START I, banned the use of MIRVs on ICBMs but it was never validated. In 2004, Russia officially withdrew from START II in response to the U.S. pullout from the 1972 ABM Treaty in 2002.