President Donald Trump welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 15, 2025. The United States and Russia were the two signatories to the New START Treaty, which expired on Feb. 5. (Department of Defense/Benjamin Applebaum)

Donald Trump Should Restart New START

Share this link on Facebook

Share this page on X (Twitter)

Share this link on LinkedIn

Share this page on Reddit

Email a link to this page

Though the New START Treaty expired on February 5, Russia has offered the United States a one-year informal extension. The White House should agree.

The New START Treaty, the only agreement imposing numerical limits on the US and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals, expired on February 5. Since 2011, New START has capped each side’s deployed nuclear forces at 1,550 warheads and 700 delivery vehicles. It has also required data exchanges about each side’s weapons, verification inspections by each side’s arms control experts, and a reciprocal commitment not to interfere with each side’s ability to remotely surveil the other’s arsenal, such as with spy satellites. Russia stopped complying with the data exchange and verification provisions of the treaty after it invaded Ukraine. Both sides still observe the quantitative limits, however, conferring some predictability on the world’s largest nuclear forces.

In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered US President Donald Trump an informal extension of Russia’s adherence to these limits for another year if the United States agrees to do the same. The White House should agree. The end of New START compliance would increase the chances of an unnecessary nuclear buildup and might complicate the negotiation of a successor treaty. It also runs contrary to Trump’s consistent record of calling nuclear war the “greatest existential........

© The National Interest