The nuclear arms treaty between Washington and Moscow is about to expire. Europe ought to be worried.
85 seconds to midnight
New Start, the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia, will expire on Thursday, ending decades of legally binding limits on their stockpiles of weapons. Vladimir Putin suggested last September that the two sides should agree to stick to the treaty’s obligations for an extra year but Donald Trump has shown no interest in extending it.
“If it expires, it expires,” he told the New York Times last month.
“We’ll do a better agreement.”
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The treaty was negotiated by Barack Obama and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and came into force in 2011 for a 10-year term, which was extended by five years in 2021. It was the successor to the strategic arms reduction treaty known as Start 1, which was agreed in 1991 and saw the removal by 2001 of about 80 per cent of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence.
New Start limits the US and Russia to 1550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads each (although Russia has a further 2,500 and the US 2,200 undeployed); 800 deployed and non-deployed strategic launchers; and no more than 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. It also provides for extensive verification and transparency measures, including on-site inspections of each other’s nuclear bases at short notice, and regular exchanges of huge amounts of data about the number and status of weapons systems.
The inspections stopped during the coronavirus pandemic and Russia suspended the treaty in February 2023, citing Washington’s military support for Ukraine and other “hostile actions” of the western powers. The US also stopped implementing the verification provisions of the treaty a few months later but while they stopped sharing data, both sides continued to abide by the numerical limits on weapons.
Despite its limitations and the suspension of data sharing, allowing New Start to expire will make the world more dangerous because it removes one of the last remaining impediments to a renewed nuclear arms race. Russia and the US are already developing a new generation of nuclear weapons and China, which has about 600 warheads, has been expanding and upgrading its nuclear arsenal rapidly.
Six other states have nuclear weapons: France, Britain, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel, although they have far fewer warheads than the big three. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the US attacks on Iran and Venezuela have encouraged some non-nuclear states to consider developing a weapon.
This is one reason that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last week moved its estimate of the risk of a nuclear conflict, the Doomsday Clock, to 85 seconds to midnight. Announcing the change, the bulletin said that instead of heeding warnings about the likelihood of a catastrophe if they did not reverse course, the nuclear powers had become increasingly aggressive, adversarial and nationalistic.
“Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks,” it said.
The end of New Start could see an intensification of the so-called security dilemma whereby when one state takes steps to increase their security, others feel less secure and take action that makes everyone less safe. Trump’s planned Golden Dome missile defence system, for example, threatens to diminish the deterrent effect of Russian and Chinese nuclear weapons, incentivising them to develop new systems to circumvent it.
The treaty’s expiration carries an added risk for Europe, as the nuclear issue could become part of a negotiation between Trump and Putin about a new security order for the continent. This could see renewed pressure from Putin for the French and British nuclear deterrents to become part of a new agreement about the deployment of Nato and Russian forces.
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