login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Is a new US-Russia arms race about to begin?
US President Barack Obama (L) laughs with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev as they sign the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in Prague on April 8, 2010. Obama and Medvedev signed a landmark treaty committing their nations to major nuclear arms cuts. Under the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the former Cold War foes will be allowed a maximum of 1,550 deployed warheads, about 30 percent lower than a limit set in 2002. It also imposes limits on the air and submarine-borne intercontinental ballistic missiles that carry warheads. | Jewel SAMAD/AFP via Getty Images
Key Takeaways
New START, a 15-year-old nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, is about to expire. It’s the last remaining treaty of its kind between the worlds’ two main nuclear powers. US-Russia tensions, particularly over the war in Ukraine, have made it difficult to negotiate a follow-up to the agreement; though, as Rose Gottemoeller, who led the original New START negotiations points out, Washington and Moscow have been able to separate the nuclear issue from other crises in the past. President Donald Trump has often spoken about holding “denuclearization” talks with Russia and China — and certainly isn’t averse to cutting a deal with Putin — but, for the moment, there appears to be little progress toward reviving nuclear diplomacy.Barring a major unforeseen announcement from Washington or Moscow, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia will expire on Wednesday.
It’s been a long, slow death for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which went into force in 2011 to replace the earlier post-Cold War START treaty and place limits on both countries’ arsenals of deployed nuclear warheads and launchers. Originally slated to expire in 2021, it was extended for five years after an agreement between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, with just two days left before the deadline.
That proved to be one of the last moments of productive diplomacy between the two countries before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In February 2023, Putin announced that Russia was suspending its participation in the verification measures under the treaty, but would continue to abide by its numerical limits. Now, neither side is bound by those limits, raising concerns of a return to the era of arms races.
The world today is a much different place than it was in 2010, when New START was negotiated. The treaty was a product of the short-lived “reset” in US-Russian relations, during the President Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev presidencies, as well the optimistic era for arms control that followed Obama’s landmark 2009 Prague speech calling for a world without nuclear weapons.
Now, the world is on the precipice of what some call a new nuclear age, one in which these weapons are returning to the center of global politics after a post-Cold War lull. Russia has routinely threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine; Trump has called for a resumption of nuclear testing in the United States; and US allies, concerned about the reliability of American security guarantees, are more openly discussing developing their own nuclear capabilities. Meanwhile, the US and Russia still possess the overwhelming majority of the world’s nukes — but that could change. China’s rapid nuclear build-up is threatening to create a complex “three-body problem” for arms control. And the integration of new technologies like artificial intelligence into nuclear systems could lead to destabilizing new dynamics for deterrence.
It’s a pretty bleak picture overall, and the disappearance of the last major arms control agreement binding the world’s two nuclear superpowers only makes it bleaker. Still, for all his bluster, and the antipathy he showed to arms control agreements in his first term, President Donald Trump has suggested in the past that he’s open to........
© Vox
visit website