Bad Beginnings: The End Of New START – OpEd

How awful could it get?  The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expired on February 5, terminating an era of arms control and imposed limits on lunatically contrived nuclear weapons programs of the United States and Russia.  The New START Treaty entered into force on February 5, 2011 and initially imposed a timeline of seven years for the parties to meet the central limits on strategic offensive arms.  Those limits would then be maintained for the duration of the Treaty.

Till its expiry, the countries maintained limits on the following nuclear arms and systems: 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and deployed heavy bombers capable of using nuclear armaments; 1,550 nuclear warheads on all three deployed platforms; and 800 deployed and non-deployed nuclear capable systems (ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and nuclear capable heavy bombers).

Such limits were hardly laudatory, or even exceptional.  The cap of 1,550 nuclear warheads is the sort of thing that would only impress the limited crazed circle that passes for arms negotiators in this field, and the various thanocrats who populate such institutes as RAND.  Such a show is merely intended for both Moscow and Washington to tell other countries with, or without nuclear weapons, that they could impose restraints on their own gluttonous conduct.  Even then, New START, as with all such instruments dealing with limiting nuclear weapons, came with the intended, gaping lacunae.  It failed to cover, for instance, tactical nuclear weapons, nor limit the deployment of new strategic weapon systems.

The treaty also fell into neglect with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Suspended on-site inspections never resumed after 2022.  As François Diaz-Maurin of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists points out, “Russia has not shared data on its deployed strategic nuclear forces since September 2022, it suspended its treaty participation altogether in February 2023, and the United States has not published any aggregate numbers since May 2023.”  New START came to increasingly look like a gentleman’s agreement being sniffed at by truculent adolescents.  

In September last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin dangled the prospect of extending the treaty’s core limits for a year.  At a September 22, 2025 Russian Security Council Meeting, he promised that  Moscow was “prepared to continue observing the … central quantitative restrictions” stipulated in New START for twelve months provided the US acted “in similar spirit”.  Following the year’s extension, “a careful assessment of the situation [and] a definite decision on whether to uphold these voluntary self-limitations” would be made.  Putin was also of the opinion that “a complete renunciation of New START’s legacy would, from many points, be a grave and short-sighted mistake”, having “adverse implications for the objectives of the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty].”

When word of this reached the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt expressed the view that the proposal sounded “pretty good”.  Two weeks later, President Donald Trump responded to a question posed by a TASS reporter that Putin’s proposal sounded “pretty like a good idea to me.”  Little, however, was subsequently done.  Indeed, Trump has cut the number of diplomats tasked with nuclear matters in the State Department and made public statements last October that nuclear testing might be resumed.  He has also complicated arms control matters by insisting that China be added to the limitation talks, something Beijing has shown little interest in doing.  In January this year, the president seemed unfussed that the international document was about to pass into the archives of diplomatic oblivion. “If it expires, it expires.  We’ll do a better agreement.”  

The US political establishment had been struck by a distinct lack of interest, even lethargy, on the subject.  New START seemed to be yet another irritating fetter on an administration more enthused by ignoring international obligations than following them.  Only a clutch of Democrats seemed to show concern in reflecting about what would follow the treaty’s expiration in House speeches given on January 14.  This month, Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Ed Markey, co-chair of the Senate’s Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, held a press conference urging the Trump administration to renew the vows of fidelity to arms control agreements.  “Let’s be honest. America needs another nuclear weapon about as much as Donald Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.”

Trump’s cool disposition is not shared by Barack Obama, the US President who signed New START.  Earlier this month, he warned that letting the treaty expire “would pointlessly wipe out decades of diplomacy, and could spark another arms race that makes the world less safe.”  His Russian co-signatory, then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, saw no reason to disagree in remarks made to Reuters, TASS and Russian war blogger WarGonzo.  “I don’t want to say this (letting the treaty expire) immediately means a catastrophe and a nuclear war will begin, but it should still alarm everyone.”  

Certain nuclear negotiation wonks are certainly concerned about an imminent canter nuclear states will break into after New START’s passing into history.  The chief US negotiator for the treaty, Rose Gottemoeller, proposes the less than cheery scenario that Russia might be able to get a head start in any new dash by adding more Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs, or multiple warheads capable of striking independently targeted locations) to it missiles, something colloquially termed “uploading”.  This was more likely given that the US had removed the last MIRV from its missiles in 2014, while Russia never stopped fielding such missiles.  “They can sprint away from us in an upload campaign while we’re still struggling to get the technical wherewithal in place to begin uploading existing missiles.”

The two powers most responsible for keeping nuclear weapons unforgivably attractive to those who would acquire them show promise of blotting their copybook further.  There is a serious sentiment in Washington that the nuclear stockpile will and should grow.  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, in a fit of gloominess, moved its metaphorical Doomsday Clock just that bit closer to “midnight”, the point where biblical calamity will be assured.  It now stands at 85 seconds to midnight.  Not long to go now.