With the expiration of the New START treaty on 5 February 2026, the international system is facing a danger where the constraints of nuclear force use are implemented on paper only. The proposal by Russia to have one year of New START ceilings without verification is not much of an assurance. Without legally binding restrictions and inspection mechanisms, these informal commitments do not provide a good source of stability.
In 2010, the United States and Russia signed a new START the Treaty on Measures to the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, which was put in force in 2011 after its bipartisan acceptance in the U.S. Senate. The treaty was originally meant to be effective over a period of ten years, but there was an option of five years extension that both states utilized in February 2021. When it expires in 2026, it will not only be the final bilateral agreement limiting the U.S. and Russian nuclear forces but will terminate a much larger arms control tradition that began with the SALT I talks in 1969.
The treaty was also hastily negotiated to bring back transparency and predictability following the expiry of START I in December 2009. The Obama administration and Russia needed to move fast because negotiations concerning arms control had not started before because of the less interest that the Bush administration had in the same. The negotiations started in the middle of 2009 and the treaty was signed in 2010 and was brought into force in early 2011. New START therefore acted as stabilizing bridge when there was a possibility of strategic uncertainty. New START is the last of a series of accords, which contributed to bringing down the world inventory of nuclear warheads, which had been about 70,000 in the mid-1980s, to about 12,000 today. Particularly, the treaty also gives each party no more than 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, 800 deployed and non-deployed strategic launchers, and up to 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and heavy bombers.
In addition to numerical ceilings, the value of New START has to do with its wide verification and transparency regime. These involve the short-notice on-site visits, periodic exchanges of data and notification of treaty-accountable systems, display of new types of systems, and the functioning of a Bilateral Consultative Commission (BCC) that convenes at least twice a year to discuss the compliance and implementation concerns. All these mechanisms minimize misperception, worst-case planning, and improve strategic predictability. In the United States, the discussion of the treaty has shifted more to whether its further commitment would limit deterrence against China, or whether it should continue to prevent a broader arms race.
Opponents believe that a continuance or unofficial extension of New START restrictions would restrict American flexibility to add more warheads on deployment or strategic forces. Proponents respond that these limits would buy a great deal of time to evaluate Chinese nuclear capabilities without necessarily confronting the unmonitored Russian forces. In general, the U.S stance is one of caution and hedging- of focusing on the flexibility and readiness of the United States, as opposed to the commitment to either an increase in force level or the renewal of a peace treaty. The strategic ambiguity and increased compliance issues define the position of Russia. The most notable US claim against Russia has been that it has breached New START undertakings, with its suspension of treaty verification operations in 2023 being one that has compelled Washington to conduct national technical efforts, which include satellite monitoring. Recent offers by Russia to maintain treaty ceilings without checking have thus been treated with suspicion as most experts doubt their sincerity and good will.
Others suggest that some restoration of inspections and data exchanges before expiration would assist in informal stabilization of force levels. Meanwhile, there is still unresolved issues surrounding the situation with Russia developing new types of nuclear systems, its large nonstrategic nuclear forces, and its possible moves such as the deployment of nuclear weapons into the orbit all of which make future agreement harder. In the absence of the similar restraints, the strategic outcomes may be fast and dire.
The United States and Russia both have technical potentials to install hundreds of additional nuclear warheads in weeks and in a few years’ time, the strategic forces that are deployed by these two superpowers would perhaps have doubled. This direction would be a clear turnaround of decades of cuts motivated by the arms control. Central to this discussion is a basic fact namely, informal commitments cannot replace binding arms control agreements. In the absence of binding constraints and agreed-upon verification, the worst-case planning is the default assumption. Although national technical instruments, including satellites and sensors, are still useful, they will never be able to substitute the stabilizing impact of on-site inspections and formalized information exchange.
Loss of transparency heightens doubt about the upload potential and breakout risks and forces the military planners to take on greater adversary capabilities. The atmosphere created by this is not an atmosphere of stability, but an atmosphere led by suspicion, escalation and growth in competitive force as opposed to restraint.
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