The negotiation of the treaty and the Senate’s consideration of it did not occur totally isolated from external influences or the strategic context. It was part of a major foreign policy initiative related to Obama’s vision for a world without nuclear weapons, a component of the Prague agenda. It was also designed to achieve a substantial change in US policy toward Russia; one grounded in cooperation in the security sphere through arms control while remaining optimistic that the agreement could be a step toward future agreements. The reset policy and the arms control treaty did change the atmosphere, but only temporarily. Changes in the domestic international environments had a larger impact in the long-term.