<\/p>\n
The New Start treaty between the US and Russia<\/a> will expire on Thursday, removing the last remaining mutual limits on the world\u2019s two biggest nuclear arsenals.<\/p>\n The milestone will be a death knell for more than five decades of arms control at a time of surging global instability, contributing to a general collapse of the rules-based international order established after the second world war.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a new moment, a new reality \u2013 we are ready for it,\u201d Russia\u2019s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told Russian news agencies during a visit to Beijing.<\/p>\n Alexandra Bell, the president and chief executive of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: \u201cWhen it comes to nuclear risks, everything is trending in the wrong direction over the course of 2025. Nuclear risks have become more complex, more dangerous and we have seen leaders fail in their obligation to manage those risks.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we are two days away from watching the United States and Russia fritter away half a century of work to maintain nuclear stability between the two largest nuclear states.\u201d<\/p>\n Dmitry Medvedev, who signed the New Start deal<\/a> with Barack Obama in 2010 when Medvedev was Russian president, said the treaty\u2019s expiry should \u201calarm everyone\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen there is an agreement, it means there is trust but when there is no agreement, it means that trust has been exhausted,\u201d Medvedev, who has become an outspoken Moscow hawk, said.<\/p>\n Obama wrote on social media that the expiry of the treaty \u201cwould pointlessly wipe out decades of diplomacy, and could spark another arms race that makes the world less safe.\u201d<\/p>\n Arms control advocates have appealed to the world\u2019s two nuclear weapon superpowers to act at the 11th-hour to salvage the treaty, which limits each country\u2019s deployed strategic arsenal to 1,550 warheads and the total number of delivery systems (missiles or bombers) to 800.<\/p>\n In September, Vladimir Putin proposed extending the New Start agreement<\/a> by another year, which Donald Trump at the time said \u201csounds like a good idea\u201d.<\/p>\n But the remarks did not appear to have been followed by any substantive negotiations. Moscow said it had not received a formal response to Putin\u2019s one-year suggestion.<\/p>\n \u201cThe lack of an answer is also an answer,\u201d Ryabkov added on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Trump signalled his readiness to dispense with the treaty in January. \u201cIf it expires, it expires,\u201d he told the New York Times. \u201cWe\u2019ll just do a better agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n A White House official later briefed that Trump wanted a deal that also involved China, which has a considerably smaller arsenal of 600 warheads, very few of which are deployed and ready for use, according to Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimates<\/a>.<\/p>\n By comparison the FAS assesses the US arsenal at 5,177 (including stockpiled and retired warheads) and Russia\u2019s at 5,459.<\/p>\n Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at the Defense Priorities arms control advocacy group, described Trump\u2019s hopes of a \u201cbetter deal\u201d after New Start\u2019s expiry as \u201cwishful thinking\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the administration thinks getting a new \u2018better\u2019 treaty after this one lapses will be easy, they are mistaken,\u201d Kavanagh said. \u201cAn agreement with Russia is \u2026 likely a requirement to get China<\/a> onboard with nuclear arms control. Trump may be the ultimate dealmaker, but in this case he would be better off hanging on to the agreement he has a little longer before trying to get a better one.\u201d<\/p>\n Unofficial reports suggested the Trump administration could make an announcement about its nonproliferation ambitions, but only after New Start has expired.<\/p>\n As well as imposing numerical limits on arsenals, New Start established an extensive system of mutual monitoring, data sharing and inspections, though Putin suspended Russian participation in that aspect of the treaty in 2023 in response to US support for Ukraine in the face of his full-scale invasion.<\/p>\n The end of New Start would be a last gasp for worldwide arms control, which has been unravelling over a number of years. Agreements limiting missile defence systems, intermediate-range forces and mutual overflight rights have already crumbled. The nuclear weapons powers have invested hundreds of billion dollars in modernising their arsenals, Putin and Trump openly brandish their countries\u2019 nuclear arsenals in their rhetoric, and the US president has also threatened to end his country\u2019s moratorium on nuclear tests<\/a>.<\/p>\n Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association in Washington, said the end of New Start could ignite a new arms race quite rapidly.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are many in the nuclear weapons establishment who want to rapidly build up the size of the US force in order to counter China\u2019s strategic buildup,\u201d Kimball said.<\/p>\n The demise of New Start could in turn threaten the 1970 nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT), under which states without nuclear weapons pledged not to acquire them, as long as the weapons states made good faith efforts to disarm. The NPT is next up for review this year.<\/p>\n \u201cThis would represent a direct violation of the United States\u2019 legal obligations under the NPT, and would shake the foundations of yet another core set of rules undergirding the important, if imperfect, rules-based order,\u201d Kimball said.<\/p>\n One of the historical justifications for nuclear deterrence has been that it made the world more stable, by making nuclear powers cautious about risking direct conflict. But even before the death of New Start, there were many signs that rival nuclear arsenals were losing any stabilising effect they might have had, particularly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, consequent western arming of Ukraine and a steep rise in friction along the Russia-Nato border.<\/p>\n