One More Step Towards Nuclear Obliteration? – OpEd

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.

Missile Defence and Russian Suspicion

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 aimed at Iran. In practice, it has the range and sophistication to blunt a Russian strike on U.S. territory and assets. How Iran could plausibly pose such a threat is the first of many unanswered questions.

Under an agreement negotiated by President Barack Obama’s administration, Iran voluntarily dismantled the technical capacity to build nuclear weapons. Even had Tehran violated the deal, it lacks missiles capable of delivering a nuclear—or even significant conventional—payload to Europe. It is therefore unsurprising that Russia interprets NATO’s plans as directed primarily against itself.

Star Wars Returns

According to The New York Times, the initial missile defence system relies on “a network of early-warning satellites, a high-powered X-band radar in Turkey, and at least one Aegis-equipped U.S. warship in the Mediterranean, capable of intercepting incoming missiles.” Two land-based defence sites were also planned—first in Romania, then in Poland.

When President Obama scaled back parts of this deployment, President Vladimir Putin publicly welcomed the move. But the project soon resurfaced. Under Trump, it has been rebadged as a “Global Dome,” a modern revival of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative—better known as Star Wars.

The controversy over Greenland fits neatly into this picture. Trump has argued that sovereign U.S. bases on the island are necessary to extend the reach of what he calls the “Golden Dome,” including the installation of new radar systems. From Moscow’s perspective, this only reinforces the sense of encirclement.

Dmitri Trenin, former director of the American-founded Carnegie Center in Moscow, sees U.S. missile defence as global in ambition. Strategic defence, he argues, inevitably affects strategic offence by “devaluing the deterrent value of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.”

Moscow, Trenin says, wants formal assurances and transparency about the system’s parameters—confidence that NATO’s shield cannot neutralise Russia’s strategic missiles. Washington’s refusal to provide either has deepened Russian mistrust.

Arms Control Unravels

Technical scepticism about missile defence only heightens the danger. Professor Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a leading authority on NATO nuclear policy, argues that the system is largely unproven. Tests, he notes, have been conducted under highly artificial conditions, carefully stripping away anything that might confuse the interceptor.

“In real combat,” Postol warns, “it is overwhelmingly likely to be a total failure.” The paradox is brutal: even ineffective defences provoke adversaries to build more offensive weapons to overcome them. The result is the worst possible outcome—no real defence and accelerated arms racing.

This comes on top of earlier damage. During Trump’s first term, the United States withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty, which allowed mutual aerial surveillance. More consequential still was his decision to abandon the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which had eliminated short-range missiles in Europe. Trump claimed Russia was cheating, but many senior American defence officials warned that terminating the treaty would undermine European security.

The Iran dimension could have been resolved as well. Had Trump upheld the Obama-era nuclear agreement, much of today’s hostility might have been avoided. Instead, he tore it up—fueling confrontation and threatening war.

Time is running out. President Putin has proposed a one-year extension of the New START treaty. Trump has not responded. Better still, both sides could declare their continued adherence to the treaty’s terms and then address the underlying disputes—Greenland, missile defence, and Iran—through serious diplomacy.