President Trump has a lot on his plate with the planned July 16 summit with Putin. One of those things should be nuclear arms control, specifically extending the New START Treaty and working with Moscow to ensure that other treaties limiting nuclear arms remain respected with both countries in compliance.
New START, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, is a nuclear arms control treaty that entered into force in 2011 and limits the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the United Sates. The goal of the treaty is reducing competition and mitigating an arms race between the two nations.
Specifically, the U.S. and Russia are limited to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on no more than 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and nuclear bombers with nuclear armaments by February 2018.
To ensure compliance, the treaty also requires the semiannual exchange of data on existing nuclear capabilities and notification of a range of actions pertaining to nuclear arsenals. It also allows for eighteen inspections annually of each other’s capabilities to ensure the accuracy of information provided.
Both countries are currently in compliance with these provisions.
New START, however, is set to expire in 2021, although the possibility of extending it another five years was written into the initial language of the agreement.
Putin has repeatedly signaled his willingness to extend the agreement until 2026. In his first call with Putin in 2017, however, Trump indicated that he thought the agreement was a “bad deal” for the United States.
Although it is not a bad deal for the United States, Trump is likely, and rightly, upset about Russia’s ongoing modernization of its nuclear arsenal that includes the planned development of fast moving and low flying cruise missiles that could, supposedly, strike anywhere in the U.S. The weapons included in the modernization project, however, are not covered by the provisions of existing treaties and could easily be matched by similar efforts in the U.S.
Looking beyond New START, Trump should also take the chance to sit down with Putin to find ways to address the mutual accusations of violations that have threatened the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Resolving these accusations would likely require the examining U.S. capabilities in Romania, but would also press Russia to address its current ground-launched cruise missile, which U.S. officials view as in violation of the treaty. Although examining our own strategic missile positions may seem like giving ground to Moscow, the result of addressing allegations is a safer and more stable world order that ultimately benefits the United States.
Trump’s meeting with Putin is a great opportunity to reaffirm the commitment of the U.S. to cutting down on the nuclear arms held by both countries. These treaties and continued U.S. support of such agreements not only makes the world safer and more stable, but also prevents what could be an extremely costly arms race with Russia. With such agreements in place, the U.S. can direct money and resources that would otherwise be invested in learning about Russian nuclear capabilities and building new weapons to counter them, elsewhere.
