During the campaign, Barack Obama promised to "stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global."

We've already graded two segments of this promise. Obama got an In The Works on both removing Russian and U.S. ballistic missiles from hair-trigger alert and seeking reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Significantly less progress seems to have been made on making the U.S.-Russian pact banning intermediate-range missiles a global one. Obama didn't mention it in his speech calling for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons in Prague in April 2009, and it wasn't touched on in a unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution covering nuclear issues. We looked around and couldn't find any other evidence of progress.

But the major part of this promise is the first section, in which Obama promises to stop the development of new nuclear weapons. Let's break this down into two parts: dealing with the nations that don't have disclosed nuclear programs, and dealing with the new nuclear rogues of North Korea and Iran.

The grand nuclear bargain embodied in the U.N. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was that countries without nuclear weapons would agree not to pursue them and the nuclear-armed states (at the time, the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and China) would agree to slowly disarm themselves. But the weaker nations have long complained that the powers -- which also happen to be the five states on the United Nations Security Council -- weren't living up to their end of the bargain.

That seems to be changing. The United States and Russia -- which control the vast majority of weapons -- are negotiating deep cuts to their arsenals as they look to extend the landmark Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. Great Britain is also considering cuts, and France has already announced some.

This co-operation could make it less likely that new nations will start nuclear weapons programs and make them more likely to support stricter inspections, but the true test of how pleased the rest of the world is with these developments will be at the 2010 conference reviewing the nonproliferation pact.

Dealing with North Korea and Iran has proven to be a bigger challenge. Obama's outreach to Iran has yet to produce real progress on its nuclear program, and China and Russia don't appear eager to adopt the strict sanctions Obama wants to impose on the regime. North Korea restarted its nuclear program not long after Obama entered office. And while the country offered to restart talks recently, the offer was based on some ridiculous conditions: the United States would have to formally sign a treaty ending the Korean War (there is still technically only a cease-fire) and the United Nations would have to lift sanctions imposed after North Korea tested a nuclear bomb and launched a ballistic missile last year.

This is a complicated issue, and Iran and North Korea have both been working on nuclear programs for decades. Obama can't be expected to stop them in a year. So far, despite various efforts, he hasn't made much progress. But he'll have more chances this spring to press his case, when the nonproliferation review conference and a White House-hosted Global Nuclear Security Summit occur. That's enough for us to rate this promise as In the Works.