Last September, Russian President Putin offered to extend the quantitative limits on deployed nuclear weapons of intercontinental range contained in that Treaty for one year. If President Trump does not accept his offer, the U.S. and Russia will no longer be mutually subject to those limits.
After Feb. 6, 2021, there was no option available to renew the Treaty, which was ratified with that expiration date included, with one possible 5-year extension.
Those limits are: 700 deployed launchers equipped for strategic nuclear weapons, namely intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched missiles (SLBMs), and heavy bombers; no more than 1,550 warheads on those deployed launchers; and a total of 800 or fewer deployed and nondeployed launchers. (One heavy bomber counts as one warhead, no matter how many bombs it carries.)
The U.S. and Russia both maintain substantial reserve arsenals of warheads, which could be uploaded onto intercontinental missiles, and the number of launchers on each side could be increased somewhat if desired. In the U.S., this could be done by loading ICBMs into up to 50 spare silos, reconverting older B-52s to nuclear service, and restoring currently-blocked nuclear missile tubes on Ohio-class submarines.
"Trump could and should have extended the Treaty limits. It was a no-brainer. The benefits would have been modest, but the cost of not doing so could be great. While the U.S. and Russia are unlikely to take drastic steps beyond what the two countries are already doing, and in any case cannot suddenly build more weapons for technical and fiscal reasons, China for example will be further encouraged to build up its own arsenals in order to achieve an impregnable deterrent of its own.
"In addition, non-nuclear countries are even more likely to conclude that the present nonproliferation regime, anchored by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is dishonest. Article VI of that Treaty reads:
"Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."
Those negotiations haven't happened in many years. By way of clarification, the International Court of Justice unanimously
ruled in 1996 that the NPT and other laws required not just negotiations but also a definite outcome:
"There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control."
"Thinking citizens now have even more reasons to reject working on U.S. nuclear weapons.
"Could Trump have extended the Treaty? No, he could not. People tend to forget that after Feb. 6, 2021 there was no option to renew this Treaty. To continue strategic arms control, it would have been necessary to first begin negotiations toward a new treaty, a multi-year process for which the expertise -- on the U.S. side at least -- has almost evaporated.
"Instead of conducting timely negotiations, the Biden Administration completely cut off all diplomatic contact with Russia. The situation vis-a-vis Russia is better under Trump, but he has not indicated any inclination to extend these particular mutual restraints, absent the New START inspection and verification regime. During the New START ratification process, it was that regime that was constantly touted as the principle raison d'etre for the Treaty.
"After attacking Russian early warning radars, strategic bombers, and more recently Putin's residence with its co-located nuclear command and control center, inspection of Russian strategic assets is not coming back anytime soon. As events have shown, Russia was prudent in disallowing those inspections.
"In his first term, Trump never had any visible intention to negotiate a new treaty. We have to remember that his entire presidency was being attacked as illegitimate due to alleged Russian election interference, alleged Russian influence, and so on. He was impeached over this. It would have been fruitless and self-destructive for Trump, in his first term, to even consider a new treaty with Russia, and perhaps even to extend New START, a political briar patch which he could and did avoid. This impasse -- the political inability for Trump to work with the Russians on anything -- was a political reality engineered by Democratic Party and intel community actors to undermine Trump's presidency and prevent his re-election, as should now be clear to all parties.
"Russiagate, enduring anti-Russophobia, and the strategy of defeating Russia once and for all are the primary reasons there are no arms control treaties left today. For this, Trump is definitely partly to blame. But those who loudly and solely blame Trump for this need to take the log out of their own eye first.
"Biden, on the other hand, was (rightly) praised for immediately renewing the Treaty. He could do that and survive, politically. Meanwhile the Treaty was going to die by a date certain, as everybody knew. The Russians, in December 2021 and January 2022, offered a draft comprehensive security treaty for Europe -- a golden opportunity to begin discussions on wider issues as well as strategic arms. Biden's hawkish foreign policy desk had a very different goal in mind, as did he himself. The goal was to destroy Russia, as Biden admitted.
"The long-provoked
Ukraine War was then launched by Russia, initially as a militarily-lightweight "Special Military Operation" designed to force peace negotiations, a gambit which worked at first. Then the U.S. and U.K. told Ukrainian peace negotiators they must reject the peace deal that was at that point substantially complete. The U.S. then blew up the Nordstream pipeline, as Victoria Nuland and President Biden both said the U.S. would make sure happened. Congress, including all but a few Republicans and 100% of Democrats, funded the war massively. All this made sure there would not be any successor to New START, for a long time to come.
"While failure to extend the New START limits is definitely not good, it is not the end of the world either. There will be new opportunities and we need to prepare for them. Meanwhile, the day-to-day work of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and laboratories will continue either way.
"Real nuclear stability -- which is more than New START ever offered -- requires real peace in Ukraine first and foremost, not just a ceasefire. This peace will require good-faith investments of various kinds, which can only be based on real guarantees, not just handshakes. Mutual disarmament first requires mutual security.
"The U.S. Congress is unfortunately still infected with a bad case of Russophobia, which limits Trump's freedom of action.
"New START was dead long before Trump was elected. Treaty extension was not on the table. What remained was a presidential-level agreement (not a treaty) to not exceed New START's numerical limits. Trump should have chosen that quickly, and been done with it, within the broader context of negotiating peace with Russia.
"In this context, let's not fool ourselves about the nature and actions of the enduring U.S. national security state in the formation of this rather ho-hum Treaty, which never really had any mutual disarmament content and resulted, in the U.S., in a political deal that has become a $2 trillion nuclear weapons modernization program. THAT, not the final death of this Treaty, is the bigger problem.
