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The Trump Administration Should Strongly Push for a Viable New START Replacement
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) between the United States and Russia is set to expire on February 4, 2026, one year from today. The last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia is a pertinent foreign policy issue, and failure to progress negotiations and come to a new agreement threatens the wider global security environment and could further dismantle strategic stability.
Originally signed in 2010 and entered into force in 2011, the New START Treaty is the most recent nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia in a substantial line of bilateral pacts negotiated since the 1960s. The treaty primarily limits strategic nuclear warheads and launchers and enforces a robust communication pattern about the activities of their nuclear systems. New START has demonstrated the continued commitment to the drastic reduction in arms from peak inventories in the mid-1980s. In 2021, both countries agreed to a five-year extension with the expectation that there would be more comprehensive discussions later.
Russia has been non-compliant since 2023 in what appears to be an attempt to exert strategic leverage against the U.S. to stop military aid to Ukraine. It announced a suspension of implementation by discontinuing inspections indefinitely, though Putin publicly stated that Russia would still abide by the numerical limits set out in the original deal. However, the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak had already caused on-site inspections to be suspended in 2020, and now, five years have passed without the treaty’s full implementation.
The treaty’s imminent expiration risks disruption to the trend of greater nuclear security and disarmament that has spanned the last several decades. Maintaining stable relations around nuclear policy between Russia and the United States is imperative and should be a paramount issue for the Trump administration to lower the risk of nuclear war. Given that a breakdown of cooperation around nuclear policy creates a far more hostile relationship and creates a more unstable security climate, both countries should prioritize new nuclear talks.
Trump has the opportunity to reaffirm and stabilize the current fraught relationship between the United States and Russia around this matter. He has placed renegotiation at the forefront, mentioning “cutting way back on nuclear” in an address in Davos during the first week of his presidency. In response, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that the Kremlin wanted to renew arms control discussions right away given that they are “in the interests of the whole world” and that “the ball is in the court of the U.S.” to reignite talks.
Though disarmament has not been at the center of foreign policy like it was during the Cold War, the catastrophic scale of these weapons elevates the necessity of this discussion. Strategic stability, which decreases the likelihood of nuclear powers launching a first strike or building up forces, also ensures predictability and transparency, and remains a key element of international security. A new arms control treaty between the United States and Russia would provide a consistent thread of stability that has undergirded the relationship between great powers for more than half a century. The ability to find common ground through mutual arms control allows for increased mutual security and even invites the possibility of disarmament discussions with other nuclear powers, such as China, which has been rapidly growing its nuclear stockpile. This could lead to the potential of other bilateral, or even trilateral, agreements that aid in arms reduction.
Given the instability initiated by Russia’s war in Ukraine, reopening dialogue around a new treaty is particularly important. A new bilateral accord emphasizing communication, monitoring, and verification would provide insight into Russian nuclear arms and help assess the risk and possibility of an escalation in the conflict to a deadlier degree. The probability of a weapon being used in the region is difficult to determine with certainty as Putin continues to leverage the threat of nuclear confrontation in an attempt to reduce Western assistance to Ukraine’s efforts to remain free.
Ultimately, much is at stake if Washington and Moscow fail to exchange productive talks about future arms control agreements before the New START treaty expires. The strategic stability that has existed for over five decades is in danger of being lost between the two greatest nuclear powers if not quickly prioritized by the new administration. The United States cannot afford to crater this critical matter of security and diplomacy.
