By Jonathan Power

Nuclear arms control is close to collapse. On Wednesday, February 4, the so-called New START Treaty, signed in 2011 by the United States and Russia, expires. It capped long-range strategic nuclear warheads at roughly 1,500 each—a dramatic reduction from Cold War levels.

Even so, today’s arsenals remain capable of destroying civilisation many times over. Since the era of John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, leaders on both sides have understood the dangers. The supposed logic of Mutually Assured Destruction—MAD—has always been hollow. Nuclear weapons cannot be used rationally; nearly everyone accepts this. Yet they persist. As Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan both warned, catastrophe could still arrive through a false alarm or the fatal coincidence of two officers turning their keys in a missile silo.

Despite these lessons, the United States is pressing ahead in 2026 with new nuclear initiatives. I do not believe President Donald Trump is beholden to Russia; if he were, he would hardly pursue such an overtly anti-Russian strategy. Washington is replacing older nuclear missiles with a new generation and deploying the radar systems to accompany them.

Officially, the expanding missile defence shield is........

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