Time to End the Last U.S.–Russia Nuclear Treaty

The agreement is no longer in America’s interests.

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THE LAST BILATERAL U.S.–RUSSIAN nuclear arms control treaty, the New START treaty, is set to expire on February 6. President Trump, who recently indicated he is not troubled by the potential expiration of the treaty, must nevertheless make a decision before then either to allow the treaty’s central limits to be extended, as advocated by Vladimir Putin and several of his factota, or to allow the treaty to fall into history’s dustbin. As we have written on several occasions, a truly “America First” policy would end the treaty. Extending the treaty would put not only Russian but also Chinese desires above American interests. New START was defensible when it was concluded sixteen years ago, but times have changed, and now no treaty would be far preferable to an extension.

First, the treaty condemns us to an inferior position against the two major nuclear threats facing us. Thanks to China’s rapid nuclear buildup, for the first time in history, the United States faces the prospect of simultaneously deterring two peer or near-peer nuclear powers. New START, which dates from an era when China was a less significant nuclear power and Russia was less aggressive and bellicose, blocks the United States from modifying our current nuclear deterrent to address both Russia and China, two dictatorships whose leaders increasingly act in concert. The treaty, signed in 2010, allowed for a U.S. strategic force sized almost exclusively to deter Moscow from nuclear attacks against the United States and our allies. The world has changed, and the 2010 force size is too small for our current and future needs, but New START prevents us from increasing it.

Second, the treaty is toothless. Russia has already violated it by ignoring its inspection and transparency requirements. Putin’s proposal to extend only the warhead and launcher limits for both sides would leave unaddressed the many verification rules built into the original treaty to ensure it was being followed faithfully.

Given Putin’s well-documented practice of cheating on nine other arms control agreements, extending New START’s central limits without its protective verification rules would be massive diplomatic malpractice. Russia’s recent deployment of the Oreshnik missile (used with a conventional warhead to attack civilians in Lviv) to Belarus is the latest in-your-face violation that demonstrates the foolishness of taking at face value anything that Putin says. The missile, when it was first under development, appeared to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile that clearly violated the 500–5,500-kilometer range limits of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. When the United States complained about the apparent violation and began to raise its concerns with NATO allies, the Russians responded by insisting that it was an intercontinental ballistic missile that was not intended for uses at shorter range. Now that both countries have left the INF Treaty, the Russians insist that the deployment of the missile to Belarus is not a treaty violation because the Oreshnik is only an intermediate range missile. These linguistic gymnastics, worthy of Alice in Wonderland, prove that doing arms control business with Putin’s Russia under current circumstances is folly.

Third, before the New START treaty was even signed, Putin began projects to circumvent it by developing nuclear systems that wouldn’t be covered by the treaty’s limits. Three of these—a new cruise missile, a transoceanic torpedo, and the Oreshnik, which is really an intercontinental-range missile designated by Moscow to be of shorter range—are already fielded. New START therefore prevents the United States from increasing our force while preserving loopholes that already permit the Russians to increase their own, even as they fine-tune their new nuclear systems to ready them for initial operational capability.

Fourth, weakening the security of the United States in the face of a clear threat has never in the past been acceptable to the American people and their representatives in Congress. Nor should it be today. While Putin seeks to have President Trump agree to extending New START as part of a bundle of new bonds between Washington and Moscow, sacrificing America’s strategic deterrent just to make Putin smile is not an example of “peace through strength” but a deplorable surrender of American security.