// Gage Skidmore; Firdaus Omar / Flickr
New START expires on February 5 and leaves the US and Russia on the brink of an era with no verified limits on nuclear arsenals for the first time since 1972.
The treaty New STARTthe last major bilateral nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, expires on February 5, at a time when talks for its renewal or replacement are, by all indications, at a standstill.
If there is no understanding, it will be the first time since the beginning of the modern arms control architecture in the 1970s that Washington and Moscow will be left without mutually verifiable limits on their strategic arsenals.
In force since 2011, New START establishes a ceiling of 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads “deployed” by each country and limits the number of missiles and bombers also deployed to 700, explains the . In addition to numerical limits, the treaty includes transparency mechanisms considered crucial by arms control experts, such as field inspections and regular data exchanges, designed to reduce uncertainty, prevent miscalculations and halt escalation dynamics.
The cycle of agreements began to take shape in the early 1970s and, for decades, served as a partial brake on the arms race. And now, what will it be like?
The first major START treaty (START I) was signed on July 31, 1991, by George H. W. Bush e Mikhail Gorbachevafter negotiations that began in the 1980s, at the end of the Cold War. The agreement would have several “children”, with new versions and updates, including the signing of New START in Prague, in 2010, by Barack Obama e Dmitry Medvedevin a climate of expectation of a “reset” in relationships. In 2021, at the beginning of the Joe Bidenthe treaty was extended for five years — the maximum extension envisaged.
Meanwhile, Russia suspended its participation in New START, although without formally canceling it, in December 2022, following the . The suspension left, in theory, an open door to resume implementation, but in practice worsened uncertainty.
Moscow accused the United States of seeking “unilateral advantages” under the treaty; Washington accused Russia of violating obligations by refusing inspections. In-person inspections had already been interrupted in 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and have not been resumed since then, according to .
Attempts to open negotiations for a successor agreement have repeatedly failed. The US State Department said in December that it remained available for “discussions without preconditions”, but Moscow has maintained that there can be no progress as long as it considers it to be involved in a “proxy war” with NATO.
Basically, it is everything on stand-by, due to lack of trust on both sidesalthough Trump has already said that “denuclearization” seems “a good idea”.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said this month that an understanding is unlikely to be possible as long as the US maintains policies that Russia considers incompatible with its interests.
The United States’ stance has also fluctuated, particularly under the Trump administration. Although the American president has declared that he wants to reduce the number of nuclear missiles in the world, talks with Moscow have not produced results so far.
Moscow will want any new deal to include other nuclear powers such as China and the United Kingdom; Washington admits the need for a multilateral approach in the long term, but insists that the immediate limits must continue to be bilateral between the US and Russia, as they hold the largest strategic arsenals.
Days away from the “tearing up” of the treaty, no one yet knows whether Washington and Moscow will put what separates the two nations behind them to resume talks.
