This week, history was made. For the first time in nearly a half-century, the United States and Russia, the world’s two biggest nuclear weapons powers, don’t have any restraints on their arsenals.
The New START Treaty, the 2010 accord that restricted the U.S. and Russia’s number of deployed nuclear-capable missiles and launchers, expired on Thursday. As expected, proponents of that agreement spent the last several days urging the powers that be in both capitals to extend its provisions by at least another year. Former president Barack Obama, who negotiated and signed the deal, has warned that New START’s demise ”would pointlessly wipe out decades of diplomacy, and could spark another arms race that makes the world less safe.” Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev claimed that the club of nuclear-armed states will likely grow with the treaty’s demise.
President Donald Trump, however, hasn’t demonstrated much concern over this development—a somewhat odd response given that he’s expounded about the dangers of nuclear proliferation in the past. “If it expires, it expires,” Trump told the New York Times in early January when asked about New START. “We’ll do a better agreement.” Of course, this is what he said when he pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal during his first term. Eight years later, a new, better nuclear agreement with Tehran remains elusive (although U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to meet in Oman on Friday).
On the whole, New START has been dead on the vine for a while. Although the U.S. and Russia kept to the numerical limits spelled out in the treaty, the transparency, verification and reporting protocols that were designed to ensure both sides had a complete understanding of one another’s nuclear stockpiles became inoperable after Putin withdrew from them in February 2023. Inspection visits between Washington and Moscow never recuperated after the COVID pandemic, and information exchanges have stalled.
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