America Enters Uncharted Nuclear Territory as New START Treaty Dies

With the last major arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, the New START treaty, officially expired as of earlier this month, no emergency summits, no dramatic diplomatic interventions, no clear path forward to prevent mutually assured destruction appear imminent.For the first time in more than half a century — and 15 years after the last negotiation limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals took effect — no bilateral agreements constrain the development of American and Russian strategic nuclear weapons.New START, signed by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April 2010, capped each nation’s deployed strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550 and limited delivery systems to 700. The treaty, good through February 2026, also maintained an intrusive verification regime that allowed American inspectors regular access to Russian nuclear facilities and vice versa.Adherence did not go well. Inspections ended in February 2023 when Moscow suspended its participation, citing Western military aid to Ukraine. The treaty itself limped along for another three years before going out with a whimper. Neither Washington nor Moscow show serious interest in renewal as both nations accuse each other of undermining strategic stability.However, in the final hours before the treaty’s expiration on February 5, President Trump’s top envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, did meet with Russian officials on the sidelines of Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi, according to Axios. One American official told the news outlet that the two sides had agreed “to operate in good faith and to start a discussion about ways it could be updated.” Sources familiar with the talks also said both parties agreed to observe the treaty’s terms for at least six months while negotiations on a potential new deal continue. The extension will not be legally formalized, a U.S. official confirmed.Mr. Trump has made clear that he has no intention of reviving the last START as written.“Rather than extend ‘NEW START’ (A badly negotiated deal by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty,” he wrote on Truth Social.Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Russia’s parliament on February 12 that Moscow will abide by New START limits as long as Washington does — backtracking on comments his ministry made a week prior that Russia considered itself no longer bound by the treaty’s terms.The Verification BlackoutBefore the Covid-19 pandemic, the United States and Russia each conducted 18 on-site inspections annually at each other’s military sites. Those inspections never resumed after the pandemic eased, and Moscow’s suspension of data exchanges compounded the intelligence gap.The former National Security Council senior director for arms control and nonproliferation and now a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, Lynn Rusten, told The New York Sun that the damage is cumulative.“The absence of robust verification provisions means that over time both sides will have reduced confidence in their knowledge of the other’s nuclear forces and activities,” Ms. Rusten said. “Uncertainty tends to push militaries to worst-case assumptions and planning that can lead to dangerous miscalculations and drive a new arms race.”Without the ability to verify compliance through on-site inspections and data exchanges, both countries are now forced to rely on satellite imagery and intelligence gathering — methods that lack the precision and confidence that treaty-mandated access once provided.“One of the values of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control agreements has been establishing greater predictability and insight into adversary capabilities; without that, it is more likely that worst-case thinking takes hold and each side is tempted to counter suspected moves by the other, creating a dangerous action-reaction cycle, more weapons, and more uncertainty,” the executive director of the Arms Control Association, Daryl Kimball, told the Sun.Arms Race or Restrained Modernization?Whether the expiration of New START triggers an all-out nuclear arms race will depend on decisions made in the coming months by leaders in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing.“An arms race 2.0 is not inevitable, but without the New START limits or a bilateral understanding to continue to respect those limits, a buildup of U.S. and Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons is very possible, and if that begins, then we are looking at a period of dangerous, costly and unpredictable three-way arms racing,” Mr. Kimball said.Ms. Rusten noted that reciprocity will be crucial.“Russia has already stated it intends to remain at the New START levels if the United States does, but will respond if the U.S. increases its forces,” she noted. “Should the U.S. increase its deployed nuclear forces, Russia is likely to follow suit, and China will be even more motivated to grow its force. This is a classic arms race dynamic.”Both sides could upload several hundred additional nuclear warheads within months, Ms. Rusten said. However, real-world technical and fiscal constraints will ultimately put boundaries on how far any renewed arms race could go.“The U.S. and Russia already face significant technical and fiscal constraints in their planned modernization programs, so real-world conditions will inevitably put some boundaries on the pace and end point of a renewed arms race,” she said.America’s modernization program, including the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, B-21 Raider stealth bombers, and the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent ICBM, is already projected to cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion over the coming decade.The China FactorComplicating matters further is Beijing’s rapid nuclear expansion. American intelligence assessments indicate China will possess over 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030, tripling its arsenal in less than a decade. Unlike Russia, China has never been party to bilateral arms control agreements. As the treaty expired, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Lin Jian, made Beijing’s position explicit: China will not be joining arms-reduction talks.The Trump administration has made trilateral arms control, covering America, Russia, and China, its stated ambition. Such an agreement would require all three nuclear powers to negotiate limits simultaneously; a diplomatic feat never before attempted. The complexity is magnified by the vast disparity in arsenal sizes and the absence of any prior framework for three-way negotiations.Experts are skeptical such a negotiation will come to fruition.“Three-way talks are theoretically possible but are not practical and are not going to be accepted by the Chinese, who will argue, correctly, that they have a much smaller nuclear arsenal and the U.S. and Russia have a greater responsibility to limit and reduce their nuclear stockpiles,” Mr. Kimball said.Ms. Rusten offered a similar assessment. The Trump administration is “very unlikely to draw China into a three-0way negotiation to limit nuclear forces,” she said“A more promising approach would be to negotiate a new bilateral agreement with Russia and, in parallel, to engage China in discussions about nuclear forces and confidence-building measures as a first step,” she added.Despite the grim headlines, experts are not yet writing arms control’s obituary.“Nuclear arms control is not ‘dead’ so much as it is suffering from inattention at the presidential and congressional level, fraught relations between the great powers, and a lack of creative thinking,” Mr. Kimball said.He outlined a pragmatic path forward: if Messrs. Trump and Putin pledge to maintain mutual restraints on their strategic nuclear arsenals and resume bilateral talks on further reductions, they can prevent unconstrained competition and provide leverage to press China, France, and the United Kingdom to freeze their forces at current levels.That path forward requires political will that has thus far been absent despite recent public polling that shows a vast swath of the American public, across the political spectrum, would support it.“President Trump can and should agree now as a political commitment to abide by New START limits, and he should direct his government to prepare for and begin negotiations with Russia on a new agreement,” Ms. Rusten said. “To succeed in these efforts, President Trump must trust and rely on the experts in his government. Meaningful, verifiable nuclear agreements can’t be done on the back of a cocktail napkin by a few top aides.”

America Enters Uncharted Nuclear Territory as New START Treaty Dies

America Enters Uncharted Nuclear Territory as New START Treaty Dies

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