New START Agreement Negotiations Underscore Need for a More Ambitious Nuclear Arms Control Approach

Statement by Laura Grego, Senior Scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists

Published Oct 21, 2020

WASHINGTON (Oct. 21, 2020)— The United States and Russia are negotiating a one-year extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) that would also freeze the total number of warheads in the nuclear stockpiles of both countries.

The New START agreement, signed in 2010, keeps the number of deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons and their long-range delivery vehicles to levels below previous arms control agreements. If it expires, which it will do on February 5, 2021 unless the two countries agree to extend it, the U.S. and Russia will be without any nuclear arms limitation agreement for the first time in 50 years.

Below is a statement by Laura Grego, senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists:

“While extending New START for one year is preferable to the treaty expiring, it is a short-term fix. The reality is that there is an urgent need to approach future nuclear arms control, whether under President Trump or a possible Biden administration, in a much more ambitious way than either political party has proposed in the last 20 years.

“No matter who wins the election, the next steps are clear. The American president must work to dramatically reduce the nuclear threat by pursuing a new round of nuclear arms reductions. To get there, the United States will have to consider putting limits to strategic missile defense on the table. The unconstrained pursuit of missile defense has encouraged Russia to develop multiple new types of nuclear options to attack the United States and pushed China to expand and improve its nuclear arsenal. This dynamic needs to change because it is a roadblock to nuclear reductions. The United States should undertake a fundamental reassessment of how nuclear weapons, strategic missile defense and the inevitable interaction between them contribute to – or undermine – our national security. That is the only path to achieving the next generation of arms control agreements.”