In 2010, the US and Russia got a New START. That’s the name of the treaty they both signed to limit nuclear proliferation.
That treaty expires tonight (midnight between 4th and 5th Feb), and there’s no sign of a new one in sight.
Naturally, that’s a big deal that I don’t think people are talking enough about.
So let’s talk about it.
What Was The New START Treaty?
Well, before we get to the New START, we should probably talk about the first START, which was signed between the US and Russia at the tail end of the Soviet Union in 1991.
This was two years after the Berlin Wall collapsed, and a time when the threat of nuclear warfare between the US and Russia was a major existential threat to most of the world.
START I limited both countries to having a maximum of 6,000 nuclear warheads (which are the bits that sit at the top of the missile and make it nuclear) and 1,600 intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers (which is how a nuke gets from the US to Russia, or vice versa).
This was a world of over-armament, and both Gorbachev and Bush the Senior wanted to reduce their nuclear weapons by 30% over the next seven years. By 2001, it had reduced about 80% of all nuclear weapons in existence.
That treaty expired towards the end of 2009, but both sides agreed to continue observing the terms of the treaty whilst negotiations went on, and the New START was signed four months later in April 2010.
New START continued along much of the same lines, aiming to reduce nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles further, effective for ten years from 5th February 2011 onwards, with an optional five-year extension taking the expiration date to 5th February 2026.
Putin then announced in 2023 that Russia was suspending its participation in the treaty, although both sides seem to have broadly stuck to the terms of the treaty since then.
So The Russians Have Been Out For 3 Years Anyway? Non-Story??
Well, not really.
It’s true that the Russians suspended their participation in 2023, and despite that seem to have continued to stick to the terms of the treaty. Nor did the treaty cover other nuclear powers, such as Britain, France, and China - although Russia and the US do have c.80% of the world’s supply, which is plenty enough to destroy the world multiple times over.
It’s also true that the treaty didn’t put any limits on operationally inactive nuclear warheads, which covers those in storage (and often with some time-decaying components removed), and so there remains a non-zero stockpile that could, slowly, be reactivated and made operationally ready.
But this now puts us in a world where, for the first time since 1991, the world’s largest nuclear powers aren’t treaty-bound to reduce their nuclear stockpiles. This comes just as both countries have been developing new and more sophisticated weapons, such as long-range hypersonic missiles, which are more manoeuvrable than ICBMs and therefore harder to shoot down. The Pentagon was also ordered to restart nuclear testing on par with Russia and China last year.
That then puts us at the precipice of a 21st-century arms race. In an increasingly unstable world, that’s a scary trajectory.
RH
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