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On January 14th, humanity went the longest span of time without detonating a nuclear weapon since the dawn of the nuclear age. 21 days later, the last arms control treaty limiting US and Russian nuclear stockpiles, launchers, and deployments, expired.
These contrasting milestones spell an uncertain future for global safety, with the Trump Administration arguing there should be a return to nuclear testing and the Russian Federation already using its new nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Oreshnik, a nuclear-capable delivery system with unlimited range, in her conflict with Ukraine.
The New START treaty, which limited the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 and delivery systems to 700 on each side, and permitted on-site inspections and other reassurance measures, was set to expire during Trump’s first Administration. After his defeat to Joe Biden, the democratic successor agreed to a blanket extension of the treaty with an expiration date last year. Then it was Vladimir Putin who announced a voluntary extension of the treaty in order to set the stage for future negotiations.
With Trump back in the White House, the treaty, just as other arms control measures were allowed to, expired. There is now nothing other than mere convention stopping the US and Russia from returning to the Cold War parity of systematic nuclear deployments and near-misses.
President Trump’s position in 2020 and in 2025 was that any US-Russia arms control agreements must include China, which has a much smaller stockpile than the former two, and about 300 when Trump was last in office.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said some nonsense to reporters on Wednesday about how it was “impossible” to include China because of their current efforts to build up, despite the country still possessing substantially fewer warheads.
“China’s nuclear forces are not at all on the same scale as those of the US and Russia,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Thursday in Beijing. “Thus, China will not participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations at the current stage,” referring to the stockpile sizes of the other two.
The Chinese government’s position during the first Trump Administration was that any negotiations that involved China would have to see the US and Russia reduce their weapons down to the level of China, a level that would still have the power to destroy civilization several times over.
“We assume that the parties to the New START Treaty are no longer bound by any obligations or symmetrical declarations within the context of the Treaty, including its core provisions, and are fundamentally free to choose their next steps,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a separate statement on Wednesday evening, though Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov stated the country would “retain its responsible, thorough approach to stability when it comes to nuclear weapons”.
CBS News reported that Lin, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, urged the Trump administration on Thursday to resume negotiations with Russia and accept Moscow’s suggestion for the US and Russia to continue adhering to the expired treaty’s core limits for the time being.
“The US should start talks for a new agreement focused initially on deployed strategic warheads and launchers,” said Pavel Devyatkin, Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Senior Associate at the Arctic Institute.
“This new deal could cover emerging technologies, like hypersonic weapons and advanced missile defenses. If they can agree to put a lid on the most dangerous systems, it will make future negotiations (maybe even with other nuclear-armed states) a whole lot easier than just leaving things up in the air”. WaL
