The Risk of Allowing the US and Russia’s Non-proliferation Agreement to Expire

President Trump and Vladimir Putin shake hands at the 2019 G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Obtained courtesy of Flickr media. Photo is in the public domain.

In 2010, the United States and the Russian Federation created an agreement called the New START Treaty which would limit each country’s production of nuclear weapons. The treaty was only written to last ten years — expiring on February 1, 2021 — so, as we start the new decade in 2020, questions of the legacy of the START program have been at the forefront of discussion between these two nations.  

START, which has not only limited each country’s nuclear arsenal to 1,550 nuclear warheads each, but also allowed for on-site inspections, data-exchanges, and transparency within each country’s nuclear programs, has allowed for critical accountability of each nation’s nuclear capabilities. However, Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections and Russian involvement in Ukraine has created a rocky divide between the two great powers. Additionally, general relations between the two countries centre around mistrust and poor communication. As a result, the future of the START program has been called into question.  

Last year, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), a treaty created in the 1980’s to prevent the use of intermediate-range land-based ballistic missiles that could be launched anywhere from 311 to 3,420 miles away, was terminated. Although the US said that this was because Russia had been violating the treaty for years, the dissolution of this landmark Cold-War agreement does not bode well for the future of the START program or nuclear nonproliferation between the US and Russia in general.  

In a joint opinion piece in the New York Times written by former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright and former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, the two discuss a conference they attended in Vienna this past year where a group of former foreign ministers from about a dozen different nations discussed the troubling circumstances of our current global security landscape. They came to the conclusion that the consequences of our world’s continuing global arms race and reluctance to renew nonproliferation agreements could have catastrophic consequences. They ended their meeting by issuing a joint statement urging leaders to consider the global nuclear problem more carefully — a statement the renewal of the START treaty would go a long way towards reinforcing.  

This spring, a group of 190 nations worldwide will meet in New York City to honour of the 50th anniversary of the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Agreement. There, they will discuss the future of this hugely important treaty; renewing the START program would also indicate a huge amount of progress. While Russia has indicated that it is willing to renew the program, Trump has been hesitant — arguing that there are grounds for a better agreement to be drawn up.  

However, as Albright and Ivanov articulate, there is no time for what they describe as this ‘nuclear game of chicken’. We must act now to continue the legacy of nonproliferation or we risk losing all the progress we have made since the end of the Cold War. While the options each country faces are either to ‘develop a new treaty, extend the terms of the existing treaty for five more years, or go treaty-less on strategic nuclear arms’, extending the treaty is the only way in which these countries can ensure global security while also allowing time for a new treaty to be negotiated and put in place — a delicate process which requires more time than the current treaty allows.  

If this treaty is allowed to expire, it will be the first time since 1972 that there have been no constraints on the US or Russian strategic nuclear arsenals. While Russia has agreed to extend the agreement for the past couple of years, the US has failed to resign. Although President Trump has said that this is because the agreement allows for Russia to “outsmart” the US by creating more warheads while the US cannot, this is not only untrue but also eerily similar to the reasoning he gave for allowing the INF treaty to expire last year.  

In an ideal world, Trump has said he would want a three-way deal with China to limit each power’s nuclear arsenal as opposed to renewing the current deal with Russia. He said, ‘We discussed the possibility of a three-way deal instead of a two-way deal. And China — I’ve already spoken to them. They very much would like to be a part of that deal’. However, China has been reluctant to get on board with this agreement, and having no deal is not an alternative to this newly proposed agreement. By resigning the START program, Trump would give himself the necessary time to create a more thoughtful and thorough nuclear nonproliferation agreement while still maintaining global nuclear security.  

As the START treaty’s time frame continues to wind to a close, one can only hope that Trump will be able to recognize its vital importance and extend the agreement before it’s too late. If he fails to do so, our already-unstable international political climate could descend into further chaos.