Expiry of nuclear weapons pact between US and Russia risks new arms race | Nuclear weapons
The New Start treaty between the United States and Russia will expire on Thursday, eliminating the last remaining mutual restraints on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.
This turning point would be the death knell for more than five decades of arms control, at a time of increasing global instability, and would contribute to the overall collapse of the rules-based international order established after World War II.
Alexandra Bell, President and Chief Executive of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “When it comes to nuclear risks, everything is going in the wrong direction through 2025. Nuclear risks have become more complex, more dangerous and we have seen leaders failing in their obligations to manage these risks.
“And we are two days away from watching the United States and Russia waste half a century of work to maintain nuclear stability between the two largest nuclear states.”
Dmitry Medvedev, who signed the New Start agreement with Barack Obama in 2010 when Medvedev was president of Russia, said the expiration of the agreement should “alarm everyone”.
“When there is an agreement, it means there is trust, but when there is no agreement, it means that trust is gone,” said Medvedev, who has become an outspoken Moscow hawk.
Arms control advocates have called for 11th-hour action by the world’s two nuclear weapons superpowers to save the agreement, which limits each country’s deployed strategic arsenal to 1,550 warheads and the total number of delivery systems (missiles or bombers) to 800.
In September, Vladimir Putin proposed extending the agreement. New Start contract another year, Donald Trump said at the time it “seemed like a good idea.”
However, it seems that no substantive negotiations took place following these statements. Moscow said it had not received an official response to Putin’s year-old proposal.
“If it expires, it expires,” Trump told the New York Times in January. “We’ll get a better deal.”
A White House official later reported that Trump wanted a deal that included China, which has a much smaller arsenal of 600 warheads, with very few deployed and ready for use. Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimates.
By comparison, the FAS assesses the U.S. arsenal (including stockpiled and retired warheads) at 5,177 and Russia’s arsenal at 5,459.
Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the arms control advocacy group Defense Priorities, called Trump’s hope for a “better deal” after the end of New Start “wishful thinking.”
“If management thinks it will be easy to get a new ‘better’ deal after this period has passed, they are wrong,” Kavanagh said. “A deal with Russia… is probably a necessity to get China involved in nuclear arms control. Trump may be the ultimate dealmaker, but in this case he’d be better off sticking to the deal he has a little longer before reaching a better deal.”
Unofficial reports have suggested that the Trump administration may make an announcement about nuclear nonproliferation goals only after New Start expires.
In addition to imposing numerical limits on arsenals, New Start established a comprehensive system of mutual monitoring, data sharing and inspection; however, Putin suspended Russia’s participation in this aspect of the agreement in 2023 in response to its support for Ukraine in the face of a full-scale US invasion.
The end of New Beginning will be the last gasp for worldwide arms control, which has been unraveling for several years. Agreements limiting missile defense systems, intermediate-range forces and reciprocal overflight rights have already collapsed. Nuclear-armed powers have invested hundreds of billions of dollars to modernize their arsenals; Putin and Trump have openly flaunted their countries’ nuclear arsenals in their rhetoric, and the US president has also threatened to end his country’s moratorium on nuclear testing.
Daryl Kimball, president of the Arms Control Association in Washington, said the end of New Beginning could ignite a new arms race fairly quickly.
“There are many in the nuclear weapons agency who want to rapidly expand the U.S. force to counter China’s strategic advances,” Kimball said.
The end of New Start could threaten the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which promised non-nuclear-weapon states not to have nuclear weapons as long as they made good-faith efforts to disarmament. The NPT is expected to be reviewed this year.
“This would represent a direct violation of the United States’ legal obligations under the NPT and would undermine the foundations of another core set of rules that, while flawed, undergirds the important rules-based order,” Kimball said.
One of the historical justifications for nuclear deterrence is that it makes the world more stable by ensuring that nuclear powers are wary of the risk of direct conflict. But even before New Start’s demise, there were many signs that rival nuclear arsenals were losing any stabilizing influence they might have had, especially after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the West armed Ukraine, and friction along the Russia-NATO border soared.
“Simply put, nuclear weapons no longer function as a decisive factor in global security.” Alex KolbinThe nuclear weapons analyst said in an article titled Nuclear Deterrence is Dying in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last week. And Almost No One Notices.
