What Will Be The Future After Last Of US-Russia Nuclear Treaty Expires Next Year?

With few months remaining for the nuclear arms control agreement between the US and Russia to expire, both Presidents have already spent weeks trading threats to start nuclear tests.

In late October, Putin

boasted about tests of the Poseidon nuclear powered missile. Later, Trump announced that he had ordered the first US nuclear test in three decades.

Former President Joe Biden had signed a five-year extension of the New START treaty, which will expire on February 4. According to CNN, the treaty limits both countries to a maximum of 1,550 deployed long-range nuclear warheads on delivery systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bombers.

CNN quoted sources as stating that Trump’s National Security Council had called a meeting with nuclear weapons experts during the lead-up to summit between Trump and Putin in August.

The discussions included the potential benefits of extending the current cap on deployed nuclear weapons that the US and Russia have agreed to, whether or not to expand the size of the US nuclear arsenal and the status of the US nuclear triad.

When Putin proposed an extension of the single lasting nuclear arms control agreement between the US and Russia, Trump responded: “It sounds like a good idea to me”.

Last week on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there are conversations about “potentially” speaking to Russia about the treaty.

According to CNN, though experts are not worried about an overnight calamity if there is no form of an agreed to cap, it would be the first time in decades the US and Russia could deploy long-range nuclear weapons without restraint.

“The biggest worry is that for the first time since 1991, the US would not have any mutual restraint with Russia on strategic weapons,” said Corey Hinderstein, the vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for Nuclear Peace. “Along with the restraint also came lots of other mutual verification – and to be blind in that way for the first time in more than 30 years has the potential to lead to misunderstanding, miscalculation, and a lack of engagement that could be important in fending off a crisis.”

“The President will decide the path forward on nuclear arms control, which he will clarify on his own timeline,” said a White House official. “President Trump has spoken repeatedly of addressing the threat nuclear weapons pose to the world and has indicated that he would like to keep limits on nuclear weapons and involve China in arms control talks.”