A decade ago the world dreamed of a planet without nuclear weapons. On April 8, 2010, then-Presidents of the United States, Barack Obama, and Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, signed the New Start Treaty, the accord that put non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction back on track. The pact revived the spirit of the unborn Start II accord and its successor, the failed attempts at nuclear arms control during the turbulent years of George Bush and Boris Yeltsin. It was a fleeting dream: Against the backdrop of saber-rattling in Ukraine, Russian leader Vladimir Putin brought the New Start treaty one step closer to ultimate death by announcing its temporary suspension, which thereafter led to the dismantling of the security architecture around The Cold War waged nuclear weapons.
The fresh start is the final pillar of the security system built by both powers to stop the nuclear race. The other pillar of this peace architecture, the INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) treaty of 1987, was abolished less than five years ago. World faces future with more nuclear weapons, experts say; China is one of the countries that has increased the number of nuclear warheads the most over the past decade, and the US estimates that it will surpass 1,000 by 2030, while North Korea, among others, will be investing millions of dollars in it nuclear program operates .
A definitive break with the fresh start extended by five years by Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in 2021 would mean the arsenals of the two largest nuclear powers would be uncapped for the first time since the 1970s, when the series of treaties came to an end to avoid its spread. “I repeat, [Rusia] not withdraw from the contract, no. She is suspending her participation,” Putin tried to emphasize, so as not to end the new beginning.
In any case, the treaty was not fully implemented three years ago. With the excuse of the pandemic first and war later, Russia had violated one of the accord’s key principles by preventing a mission of US inspectors from checking its arsenals since 2020. For its part, Moscow demanded clarification from the Pentagon about the deployment of 41 B-52H bombers, 56 Trident II ballistic missile launchers, and four ICBM intercontinental missile silos that Washington had repurposed for other alleged purposes. The document provides for up to 18 annual reviews by teams of experts from both parties.
The New Start reduced the limit of nuclear warheads that could be deployed on a maximum of 700 active strategic platforms to 1,550, including ballistic missiles and bombers assigned to those deterrent forces. However, the treaty did not set a ceiling on all weapons of mass destruction that both powers could store in their bunkers.
The limit of this 2010 pact is well below the 2,200 nuclear warheads and 1,600 platforms allowed by the previous Strategic Offensive Reductions treaty sealed in Moscow in 2002 between Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush. The so-called Moscow Treaty was actually a patch to get out of trouble because the subsequent Start II and Start III disarmament treaties were not ratified.
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In 2010, Obama and Medvedev returned to the path begun with Start I. Signed by Presidents George HW Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev on December 31, 1991, this first pact was the result of the most ambitious disarmament agreement since World War II, the negotiation process opened in the middle of the Cold War by what was then the world’s only superpowers. It was considering reducing its arsenals from 10,000 to 6,000 nuclear warheads and its strategic bombers and ballistic missiles to 1,600 by December 2001.
Start II should have come into force in 2003, but the project was not ratified by either the Russian State Duma or the United States Senate. This program was never finalized because the George W. Bush administration abandoned the 1972 Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002. The contract was abandoned by Russia on June 14, 2002 in response to the US decision to do the same with ABM. which allowed Washington to set up in Poland and the Czech Republic the strategic anti-missile shield that Moscow sees as a direct threat to its security.
The disagreement was the prelude to Russia’s late 2007 withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (FACE, in English acronym), the cornerstone of continental security, which had been signed in Paris by nearly thirty European countries led by the US and Russia.
For their part, Start III negotiations should have started after Start II came into effect, as agreed by Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. Despite the fact that these talks did not take place, some of his ideas were saved in later contracts.
The situation worsened in 2019 when the two powers broke the historic 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, which restricted the use of conventional and intermediate-range nuclear missiles. A year later, Trump withdrew the US from the Open Skies Treaty, which allows unarmed surveillance flights over signatory states, after accusing Moscow of violating it. Russia rejected the allegations, but also withdrew.
Trump had already promoted his exit from the INF in 2018 and denounced that Russia had developed a missile (9M729) that could transport nuclear warheads up to a forbidden radius of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. For his part, Putin announced an arsenal of new nuclear and hypersonic weapons this year. And it accused Washington of having several Aegis platforms, which could also function as nuclear weapons, stationed in Romania’s missile defense installations.
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