Russia and America now have zero bilateral nuclear arms control agreements. This has not happened in over 50 years. Although the New START Treaty has expired, Moscow has offered to maintain the treaty’s warhead caps informally while both sides negotiate a replacement. Washington should say yes because it is in America’s interest to avoid another arms race while buying time for a new, formal deal.
Without any framework, both sides will be tempted to base their military planning around worst-case assumptions about the other’s arsenal. That dynamic of uncertainty and instability risks sparking a new arms race. New START’s caps gave each side a known ceiling for deployed warheads, reducing the need to build more weapons out of fear of the unknown.
Critics will say Russia wasn’t complying with New START, because it suspended verification and data exchanges in 2023. It is also true that America has formally accused Russia of violating nine arms control agreements since Vladimir Putin took power.
These legitimate concerns should be handled in future negotiations and agreements. But informal caps still matter because they anchor expectations, giving planners a baseline to work against. In this scenario, having no bilateral arms control agreement (informal or not) means less predictability and risks more destabilization.
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