President Obama is hosting scores of world leaders in Washington today for a summit focusing on unsecured nuclear materials. On Sunday, Obama began a series of meetings with visiting delegations from forty-six countries. Ahead of the summit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the aim is to keep nuclear weapons away from terrorist groups.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “The risk of nuclear attack has actually increased. And the potential consequences of mishandling this challenge are deadly. We are trying to make this summit the beginning of sustained international effort to lock down the world’s vulnerable nuclear materials within four years and reduce the possibility that these materials will find their way into the hands of terrorists.”

As the Obama administration pledged nuclear cooperation around the summit, it also took pains to reassert the predominance of the US nuclear arsenal. In an interview with ABC News, Clinton said the US is spending $5 billion this year to “modernize” its nuclear weapons.

Secretary of State Clinton: “We intend to maintain a robust nuclear deterrent. Let no one be mistaken. The United States will defend ourselves and defend our partners and allies. We intend to sustain that nuclear deterrent by modernizing the existing stockpile. In fact, we have $5 billion in this year’s budget going into that very purpose. And with this emphasis on our nuclear stockpile and the stewardship program that we are engaged in, that we’ll be, you know, stronger than anybody in the world, as we always have been, with more nuclear weapons than are needed many times over, and so we do not see this as, in any way, a diminishment of what we’re able to do.”