Oct. 28 marked 100 days until the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) between Russia and the United States. Russian President Vladimir Putin said publicly he would like to extend it. President Trump said it sounded like a good idea. We have gone nowhere since. Here is a source for this paragraph from an Oct. 6, Associated Press story. It fills in some details.
MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin on Monday welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments about Russia’s offer to extend the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the United States, saying it raises hope for keeping the pact alive after it expires in February.
Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared his readiness to adhere to nuclear arms limits under the 2010 New START arms reduction treaty for one more year, and he urged Washington to follow suit. When asked about the proposal, Trump said Sunday it “sounds like a good idea to me.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed Trump’s statement, noting that “it gives grounds for optimism that the United States will support President Putin’s initiative.”
While offering to extend the New START agreement, Putin said its expiration would be destabilizing and could fuel proliferation of nuclear weapons. He also argued that maintaining limits on nuclear weapons could also be an important step in “creating an atmosphere conducive to substantive strategic dialogue with the U.S.”
The Russian leader reaffirmed the offer Thursday, noting that Russia and the U.S. could use the one-year extension to work on a possible successor pact.
New START is the last major remaining bilateral, U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control agreement.
The president should support a U.S.-Russian agreement to respect New START limits after the treaty expires, then use the time to negotiate a new framework to slash the massive Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals. Likewise, the parties should call on other nuclear-armed states, including China, to immediately freeze the number of their long-range nuclear launchers. It used to be the case the U.S. would lead.
Will Trump act, put America first, and do what is best for the United States? Who knows? In the meanwhile, tick tock on the last remaining arms control treaty.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility April 8, 2008 Photo Credit: Reuters
I remember watching one of the Soviet Sputnik satellites flying over the back yard of our Iowa home. Besides launching a “space race” between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Sputnik heightened tensions between the two countries over potential use of nuclear weapons. Back in the 1960s, we graders practiced school drills for a nuclear attack. This period of competition became known as the Cold War. To this day, the U.S. and Russia own most of the nuclear weapons that exist. The NASA website makes a point:
The Sputnik launch changed everything. As a technical achievement, Sputnik caught the world’s attention and the American public off-guard. Its size was more impressive than (the U.S.) Vanguard’s intended 3.5-pound payload. In addition, the public feared that the Soviets’ ability to launch satellites also translated into the capability to launch ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons from Europe to the U.S. Then the Soviets struck again; on November 3, Sputnik II was launched, carrying a much heavier payload, including a dog named Laika. (NASA website).
Our life of living with nuclear weapons changed dramatically since Sputnik. The public is vulnerable to being caught off guard again because few are paying any attention to nuclear weapons proliferation. Last year, Annie Jacobsen published Nuclear War: A Scenario, which provided an update on where the country stands regarding our nuclear weapons complex. Jacobsen’s work is part of the picture.
Our compliance with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which commits all parties to negotiate in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race, nuclear disarmament, and general and complete disarmament, is at a stand still. The story of how that happened is less interesting than the diversion from this core compliance issue caused by attention to North Korea and Iran’s development of nuclear technologies. It avoids the basic question of when will the U.S. and Russia comply with Article Six of the treaty?
Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, addressed the recent bombing of Iran by Israel and the U.S. He argues, “U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel’s illegal military attacks against Iranian scientists and safeguarded nuclear sites represents an irresponsible departure from his earlier pursuit of diplomacy. It will increase the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran and erode confidence in the nuclear nonproliferation system.”
The nuclear deal that Trump unilaterally abandoned in 2018, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), imposed limits, prohibitions and intrusive inspection requirements on Iran that were to last for 10 or 15 years, with some being permanent, Kimball wrote. He expressed hope that the negotiating framework can still be salvaged, even if it has been severely damaged by this year’s U.S. military operations in Iran.
In the meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on our nuclear complex. We don’t hear much about that, except when it’s federal budget time. Ann Suellentrop, vice chair of the PeaceWorks Kansas City board and a member of the Physicians for Social Responsibility Board, noted in the Kansas City Star, “Kansas City’s nuclear bomb parts plant is ramping up significantly.” She provided details:
There is a new federal government plan to increase production of plutonium pits — the trigger that starts the bomb explosion in nuclear weapons — to 80 pits per year in each of the next 50 years. This is in comparison with the current production of fewer than 30 per year. The sites that are supposed to work together on what amounts to a new nuclear arms race include Kansas City’s federal nuclear bomb parts plant, managed by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies. That is the Kansas City National Security Campus located in the south part of the city. The recent allocation of taxpayer funds for this National Nuclear Security Administration site reveals a huge jump from the 2025 budget from $1.3 billion to $1.7 billion in 2026. The plant is now doubling in size as it produces electrical and mechanical parts for seven new nuclear weapons programs simultaneously. (Kansas City Star, July 9, 2025).
Despite the efforts of Suellentrop and others, the nuclear weapons spending issue gains little media traction. “We need a mass movement of people to speak up and hold the government accountable,” Suellentrop said. The fact is we need a mass movement to speak up and hold the government accountable in many areas. If such a thing exists, it hasn’t ramped up fast enough.
The irony with the war between Israel and Iran is we appear to be returning to the days of Sputnik. Joe Cirincione recently opined, “we look at the unintended consequences of this 12-day war: the risk of dragging us back to the nuclear anarchy of the 1950s, when many nations — friends and foes — sought nuclear weapons.” The 1950s may be a fond memory for some of us. We definitely don’t want to go back, especially as it pertains to proliferation of nuclear weapons.
We received news on Tuesday afternoon the New START Treaty was extended.
“A week ago, the United States and Russia ‘exchanged diplomatic papers’ in order to extend the New START treaty for 5 years,” wrote Physicians for Social Responsibility in a Feb. 2 email. “Biden and Putin got this done in time — before New START was set to expire this Friday, Feb 5.”
Recent Republican administrations have not favored arms control treaties. In fact, the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations exited existing agreements. U.S. Admiral Charles Richard recently wrote in the U.S. Naval Institute journal Proceedings, the potential for nuclear war remains present.
“There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state,” the four-star admiral wrote.
There’s nothing new in the Richard’s statement. While our relations with Russia and China require scrutiny, not only with regard to nuclear weapons, but with every facet of their complexity, a few things remain clear about the course the United States should be taking to prevent the detonation of nuclear weapons which may escalate into a full on war. In their new book, The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power From Truman to Trump, William J. Parry and Tom Z. Collina outline a framework that includes these items:
The president should not have sole authority to launch a nuclear weapons attack. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress sole authority to declare war. They should be engaged with any decision to launch nuclear weapons against another state or non-state actor. There is no need for the “nuclear football” that has been shadowing the president since the Kennedy administration.
We should never rush into nuclear war. Experience has shown us time is required to gather all the information needed to verify an attack is in progress. There is simply no need for the president to decide to retaliate based on sketchy or incomplete information in a matter of a few minutes. Launch on warning should be prohibited.
First use of nuclear weapons should be prohibited. Given U.S. conventional force superiority, there is little reason to use nuclear weapons.
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with nuclear warheads, positioned in silos to launch on warning are obsolete. If the U.S. were attacked with a large-scale nuclear missile launch, ICBMs in silos would be the among the first targets. They are part of the so-called nuclear triad which includes submarines and bombers ready to launch a nuclear attack or counter attack. If there were a nuclear attack on the U.S., submarines and bombers would comprise our primary retaliatory response. ICBMs are obsolete sitting ducks.
Strategic missile defense systems don’t work, despite billions of dollars spent developing them. Russia sees U.S. missile defense systems as a threat to their ability to retaliate in the event of a U.S. nuclear attack. U.S. missile defense systems, by their existence, block advancement of arms control negotiations between the world’s two owners of 90 percent of nuclear armaments.
The bigger picture is nuclear states should take seriously Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and work toward elimination of nuclear weapons. For those nuclear states which haven’t joined the treaty, they should. Countries should reduce and eliminate spending on weapons of mass destruction.
While I don’t agree with the Biden administration’s military spending priorities, I’m glad to receive the news they extended New START for five more years. Now build upon it.
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