A year later, the war in Ukraine continues to send global shockwaves to the foreign network in the form of heightened tensions, economic disruption and a deepening humanitarian crisis.
But from the veil of emerging tensions between Russia and the United States, another crisis is quietly emerging, a crisis that may become even more vital to the well-being of those living across the planet: the eventual death of the newest bilateral agreements. Nuclear weapons treaty between those two Powers that possess more than 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear arsenal.
The deal, known as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), suffered its latest blow this week when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he would suspend his country’s participation in the deal. Established in 2010, New START is the successor to the original START, which was signed a few months before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It limits the number of nuclear weapons Russia and the United States can possess and provides mutual verification measures essential to ensure mutual compliance.
On-site inspections have already been suspended in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the outbreak of the Russian war in Ukraine, coupled with Western sanctions implemented by Moscow in response, has thwarted efforts to resume them. Now, the Kremlin’s latest announcement has raised fears that the treaty will never get back on track.
Rose Gottemoeller, former NATO Assistant Secretary General and U. S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. U. S. Labor Force (US) who served as the U. S. chief negotiator. A U. S. citizen for New START, he told Newsweek that, under the terms of the treaty, “we have very 24/7 surveillance, which happens with the other posture of the strategic nuclear force and that’s valuable for predictability and global stability. “
“It’s being lost now,” he added. I think it’s a very, very serious matter. “
Gottemoeller sees the possible general collapse of New START as the biggest weapons risk the world has noticed in decades.
“Since the 1970s, the negotiated restriction of strategic nuclear weapons has been one of the foundations of strategic stability between our two countries,” he said. uncertainty, if there is no predictability. “
“And furthermore, if the Russians use this as an excuse to go beyond the limits of the treaty,” he added, “it could lead to a buildup of nuclear weapons systems and a nuclear arms race. “
In particular, Russia is confident that it will continue to respect the basic principles of the agreement, adding ceilings to its nuclear arsenal.
As it stands, those caps Russia and the United States deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and 700-inch heavy bombers; its warheads in deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and nuclear warheads counted for 1,550 deployed heavy bombers; and its ICBM, SLBM and heavy bomber launchers deployed and not deployed in 800.
While the full extent of Russian and U. S. warhead stockpiles is not widely available to the U. S. If the US would be closer to 5,977 and 5,428, respectively, the most recent figures released through either country in relation to their reserves in September last year showed that both countries within the limits of the 3 new START categories. And, despite the lack of on-site inspections, Moscow and Washington have claimed that the other remains compliant with the treaty.
Still, U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Putin’s recent announcement “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible” and said President Joe Biden’s administration would “conscientiously look at what Russia is actually doing. “He also said Washington would “make sure that, in any case, we stand for the security of our own country and that of our allies. “
Putin, for his part, has drawn a direct link between his resolve to suspend the Moscow club in New START and the confrontation in Ukraine, saying the U. S. is not expected to be able to do so. security through its announcement for Kiev.
“As if there is no connection between strategic offensive weapons and, say, the confrontation in Ukraine or other hostile Western movements that oppose our country. As if there were no vehement claims that they seek to inflict a strategic defeat on us,” Putin said. in his presidential speech on Tuesday. ” It is the height of hypocrisy and cynicism or the height of stupidity, but they are not idiots. After all, they are not stupid. They want to inflict a strategic defeat on us and access our nuclear power. “sites. “
While the connection to Ukraine is clear, the steady erosion of Russia and the United States. Arms control, seen as one of the few mutual victories of the Cold War, predates the existing conflict.
The first attack took place more than two decades ago, when U. S. President George W. Bush left the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002. The time came when the United States at that time. President Donald Trump renounced the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, saying Moscow is already in violation by its structure of a missile formula that would fall within the limited range of the agreement.
Moscow has its own long-standing grievances, accusing the US of being a long-standing grievance. The U. S. and its allies strategically surround Russia with missile defense systems that would also have offensive capabilities. Putin cited this argument when he presented a series of new complex, nuclear-capable missile systems in his 2018 presidential address.
When Biden took office in early 2021, New START was already on the verge of disintegration. Trump’s management had refused to enlarge the treaty because it sought a more comprehensive agreement involving more countries and more fashionable weapons platforms. Biden, however, accepted Putin offers to renew the deal unconditionally for five years, just two weeks after he is sworn in.
Two years later, when the fate of the treaty is still uncertain, Gottemoeller said he may not accept it as true with the longevity of New START or the comprehensive discussion about strategic stability between Russia and the United States, given the unfolding occasions surrounding the war in Ukraine.
“This moment is very serious. It’s a crisis,” he said. And I know that the United States will continue to do everything possible to convince the Russians that their interests are being served in this treaty regime. “
It remains to be seen whether this will be enough to calm Moscow’s concerns. Indeed, the Russian attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022 promptly preceded a breakdown in short-lived negotiations between Russia and NATO on security, adding arms control, in Europe.
“The struggle in Ukraine did not start from nothing and, in fact, is the manifestation of many things that have happened in European security and Russian-American relations,” said Dmitry Stefanovich, an expert at the Russian Council on International Affairs who serves as a researcher at the Center for International Security at the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. he told Newsweek.
Stefanovich pointed to the failure of talks in which Russia requested “security guarantees” in late 2021 and argued that while New START survived the early stages of the conflict in the first place, “growing animosity between Russia and the United States made it a matter of time before things got ugly. “
He knew the turning point for the Kremlin as the beginning of alleged Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory, adding bomber bases, which were allegedly carried out with the direct of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance services of the United States. This, he said, “has increased the topic to greater exposure, and now here we are. “
While either country continues to attach importance to arms efforts, Stefanovich said a lack of verification measures would only breed more mistrust.
“The greatest positive effect of arms treaties has been and continues to be greater transparency and understanding of each other’s arsenals and priorities,” he said. , first founded on perceived superior functions (both in quality and quantity) of everyone’s arsenals, augmented through mirror images. “
And if New START collapses completely, the scenario may be more serious.
“If we are indeed faced with a world with no agreed limits on strategic weapons,” Stefanovich said, “we could place ourselves in a real arms race. “
This is also the fear of Andrey Baklitskiy, senior researcher of the WMD program at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva and representative of the Center for Policy Research (PIR) in Moscow.
He also connected the Kremlin’s calculation by postponing Russian participation in New START to escalate the war in Ukraine, telling Newsweek that “as long as this war continues, I see no option to do anything” to revive arms control between Russia and Russia. the United States.
Baklitskiy’s theory is that Russia wasn’t looking for the kind of arms race the Soviet Union has gotten bogged down in with the United States in recent decades, but that Putin’s resolution was a way to “take his cake and eat it. “
“Russia seems to the West that it is strong, that it can harm them in places where they don’t like to be harmed, and it has also said that it will stay within the boundaries of New START, and probably hopes that the United States will do that. . . the same,” Baklitskiy said. Then you get the benefits of a treaty without allowing Americans to walk on the bases of your military during the war. So it’s kind of a strategy. “
But, he added, “if that’s the thinking of all this, then there’s a major flaw because it’s not certain for the United States to stick to it. “
While Biden’s management has sought restraint in reaction to Putin’s decision, the Trump era demands a more physically powerful nuclear posture in reaction only to Russia’s nuclear weapons, but also to a developing Chinese arsenal that is linked through any bilateral nuclear treaty. Pentagon and Congress, especially among Republicans.
And while some might argue that the current levels of nuclear weapons possessed by Moscow and Washington are already enough to destroy the world many times over, and the addition of several thousand more would not make much difference, Baklitskiy said it’s not just the option of some other nuclear buildup, but the motivations that make it so dangerous.
“We are breaking down those barriers in a procedure of worsening our relations, we are waging proxy wars, etc. ,” Baklitskiy said. “It’s not that we’re building for some reason, we made the decision to spend more money. It’s because we don’t accept as true to each other, we think the other side is looking to take credit for us, and there’s also China, which is supposedly increasing its arsenal now, and the U. S. is not going to be doing so. The U. S. is thinking about how to fix it. “
With those points eroding the confidence needed to put safeguards in place on nuclear weapons proliferation in the first place, he warned that the newest arms treaty between Russia and the United States would likely not take long in this world, and what’s next is anything. but sure.
“You can fully see how this broader dynamic crushes New START, in part,” Baklitskiy said, “but then reinforces the same processes and metastasizes into the nuclear sphere, which can lead to the arms race, and God knows where. “”
Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, also said Russia’s moves would likely further dampen Washington’s appetite for dealing with Moscow, even if the Biden administration continued with a more diplomatic course of action.
“Putin has now not only necessarily killed New START, but there is very little chance that the U. S. Congress will kill New START. “The U. S. will approve a new treaty with Russia after everything that happened,” Kristensen told Newsweek.
“If the United States makes the decision to increase its arsenal, which Biden’s management does not believe is necessary, it would not be a reaction to Russia or China,” he added. “Tension is rising in the new Congress and the new members of the conservative committee seem extremely happy that Putin is creating all those messes with New START because he is helping his argument to strengthen America’s nuclear posture toward China. “
While Beijing continued to move forward with expanding its nuclear arsenal, the Pentagon’s most recent assessment in November put China’s arsenal somewhere above 400, with an expansion of around 1,500 through 2035. The figure pales in comparison to the number of nuclear weapons it possesses. through Moscow or Washington.
As such, Chinese officials have consistently rejected U. S. proposals to conclude any kind of expanded START-type treaty and have called on Russia and the United States to live up to their nonproliferation commitments as the world’s leading nuclear powers.
If EE. UU. al end makes the decision to abandon those commitments in an effort to challenge China, Kristensen warned that this backlash may also backfire.
“The plan is stupid, of course, because a U. S. construction is not a matter of doing so. The U. S. economy would most likely result in construction in Russia and potentially additional construction in China, in which case the U. S. would not be able to do so. “The U. S. would go back to square one,” Kristensen said.
“The end result would be more enemy warheads aimed at the United States,” he added, “with no greater security and no solution. “
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