In its 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), issued in April, the United States has reassessed the changes in the international nuclear security environment and said it would "seek peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons". It has given five key objectives for the coming decade. The NPR, along with several other US nuclear measures, shows major adjustments in its nuclear strategy, which can be divided into six parts.

First, the US has begun to consider nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism as the main global threat. Neither Russia, its Cold War rival, nor China, which it sees as a growing rival, tops its threat list. Instead, it sees them as challenges to maintaining strategic stability.

Second, the US has made a world without nuclear weapons its goal. Ever since US President Barack Obama delivered a speech in Prague last year, "a world without nuclear weapons" has become the shared opinion of the US administration. As Obama said, the US would sustain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal to "maintain strategic deterrence and stability at reduced nuclear force levels".