Last week, the United States and Russia agreed to extend the New START accord for five years. Due to expire on Feb. 5, the 2010 treaty caps both sides’ long-range strategic forces and is the last remaining bilateral agreement regulating Washington’s and Moscow’s nuclear arsenals.
The Trump administration had attached conditions to any extension that Russia judged unacceptable. The prospect of New START’s expiry without replacement prompted fears of a new arms race. This extension will avoid that situation for now.
What does this mean for arms control? Even with New START’s future assured, any follow-up talks to decide strategic arms control after 2026 will face a number of significant challenges. Here’s why.
Emerging technologies will make the next agreement harder
New START may regulate existing nuclear arsenals, but there is a range of emerging technologies that has the potential to complicate future efforts at U.S.-Russia strategic arms control. These include advanced conventional and hypersonic weapons and increasingly capable missile defenses, as well as cyber and space capabilities.
If one side held superiority in one or more of these technologies, it could a make a disarming attack on the strategic forces of the other side more feasible. New capabilities could therefore pose new risks of escalation in at times of crisis. The prospect of new technologies therefore complicates how Washington and Moscow will calculate the military balance between the two sides, and could make both more cautious about further reducing their nuclear retaliatory potential.
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The two sides disagree on how to manage new technologies
Moscow has proposed pursuing talks on the basis of what it calls a “new strategic equation.” The full details of Moscow’s proposal are not public, but it includes the broadening of strategic talks to cover missile defenses and advanced conventional weapons “that pose a threat to the national territory of each side.”
But limits on missile defense have been a red line for Washington ever since 2002, when the U.S. withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty. Moscow’s definition of advanced conventional weapons could encompass forward-deployed U.S. and allied systems in Europe — caps on these systems are unlikely to be acceptable to the United States and NATO. For its part, Moscow has resisted verified limitation of its larger holdings of shorter-range nonstrategic nuclear weapons, a key U.S. concern.
Whether the United States and Russia could find creative ways to manage these and other differences remains to be seen, but it will be an uphill struggle.
Poor U.S.-Russia relations bode ill for further arms control efforts
Despite its openness to the extension of New START, the Biden administration has pledged to push back against Moscow’s aggressive behavior in a range of areas. However, history suggests that it will be difficult to conclude a major strategic arms pact during a period of strained U.S.-Russia ties.
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While arms negotiations have survived periods of deteriorating relations between Washington and Moscow, all successful strategic arms agreements from the early 1970s onward have been adopted during periods of improving relations. The 1979 SALT II agreement is the only treaty that was signed at a time of increased tensions. On the recommendation of President Jimmy Carter, the U.S. Senate postponed its consideration after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the treaty never officially entered into force.
China is a complicating factor
Given China’s military modernization effort and increasingly capable nuclear forces, Beijing’s participation in strategic arms control is a matter of growing concern in Washington.
The Trump administration initially demanded that China join the next round of strategic arms negotiations as a precondition for New START extension, but later dropped this requirement. Beijing refused to join any such negotiations, citing the disparity between the arsenals of the nuclear superpowers and its own relatively small force. Russia has stated that any multilateralization of negotiations should include two U.S. allies — France and the United Kingdom.
Moscow and Washington could agree to leave the formal incorporation of other countries into the U.S.-Russia talks to one side. The Biden administration has already indicated its willingness to do so, while expressing its desire that China participate in other arms control efforts.
However, as a near-peer competitor with the United States in a range of capabilities, China is likely to remain a factor complicating the U.S. position on key issues, particularly if talks broaden to include advanced conventional weapons.
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U.S. domestic polarization could hamper arms control efforts
The most difficult test for any new agreement may be at home. Treaty ratification requires a two-thirds majority in the U.S. Senate, which means a new arms control agreement would need the support of 17 Republican senators.
Research has shown that Democratic leaders, who are generally perceived to be more supportive of arms control, face greater resistance in securing ratification than Republican chief executives. The Obama administration was able to secure some Republican support for New START by pledging increased spending on nuclear modernization. However, that program is already facing significant budgetary challenges, making any further spending on nuclear weapons unlikely, while political polarization has only increased since 2010.
The Biden administration could explore alternative non-treaty formats to avoid the need for a two-thirds Senate majority. A congressional-executive agreement limiting strategic arms, for example, would require a simple majority in both houses of Congress. Alternatively, the United States and Russia could coordinate on unilateral measures that would not carry the force of law, though this approach seems unlikely given the low level of trust currently between the two sides.
Such non-treaty-based approaches could also encounter congressional resistance. They would also be politically awkward for Biden, who has previously argued that any agreement limiting “deployed U.S. strategic nuclear warheads” should “constitute a treaty subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.”
Even if possible, the path to a new agreement governing the world’s most powerful nuclear arsenals is likely to be a long and winding one.
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James J. Cameron is a postdoctoral fellow with the Oslo Nuclear Project in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. He is the author of “The Double Game: The Demise of America’s First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation” (Oxford University Press, 2017). Follow him on Twitter @cameronjjj.