Trust, but verify had been popular in the USSR when Gorbachev was in college, saying that "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." Following the 2013 Ghouta attacks, Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference in Geneva on September 14, 2013 that the United States and Russia had agreed on a framework to dispose of Syria's chemical weapons. He said "President Reagan's old adage about 'trust but verify' ... is in need of an update. And we have committed here to a standard that says 'verify and verify'." The similar phrase "Trust and Verify" was also
Effects of the Cold War unprepared and relatively sudden end. National security and defense for nuclear-weapons states must be frequently reevaluated. The international arms-control treaty and verification regime inherited from the Cold War is only slowly being updated to reflect the realities of a broken international security environment. Internal national-security military postures still dominate behavior among sovereign nations. The former superpowers have not formally consummated their stand-down from Cold War military equipoise. Strategic and tactical nuclear and conventional forces remain at levels comparatively high for a peacetime environment. Localized conflicts and tensions have replaced the former bilateral nuclear confrontation. As a lingering result, large inventories