PRESIDENT TRUMP AND NEW START
By Jason Sibert
While the outbreak of Covid-19 has consumed the international community, one cannot forget the importance of other dangers to our security like nuclear war.
We are at a key moment in the fight against the current worldwide pandemic, but we are also at a key moment in arms control history. Billions of dollars are spent on the upgrading of the United States’ nuclear arsenal – a process started in the administration of President Barack Obama and continued under President Donald Trump. Tensions are rising amongst nuclear powers – tensions that could lead to a power-balancing act where the world’s power blocks spend more and more on nuclear arms in a time when public health should be a bigger issue.
The first step toward a more extensive arms control regime is renewing the 10-year-old New Start Treaty. The treaty capped the arsenals of the United States and Russia – the world’s two biggest nuclear powers – at 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 missile and bomber platforms. The treaty worked well for both powers. According to the latest recorded data, Russia has 1,326 deployed warheads and 485 deployed platforms – the lowest Russian total since the treaty went into force since 2011. The U.S. currently deploys 1,373 warheads and 655 delivery systems.
New Start will expire on February of 2021. So far, the Trump Administration has not given a definitive answer on renewing the treaty. These actions are worrying due to the willingness of the administration to withdraw from treaties, as it withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear-Forces Treaty. Reports say the Trump Administration will unilaterally withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, another U.S.-Russia treaty.
President Trump said that the number of nuclear weapons possessed by the U.S., China, and Russia “is ridiculous.” However, in February, the administration proposed a 19 percent increase in nuclear weapons spending, – from $37.3 billion to $44 billion – for 2021.
If New Start is not renewed, there will be no limits on the two biggest nuclear arsenals in the world. The already strained U.S.-Russian relationship will grow even more strained. A renewing of New Start would pave the way for more extensive arms control between our country and Russia.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) wrote in 2007 that the U.S. must engage in “intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to turn the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise.”
This project will take time and face-to-face diplomacy – hard in the Covid-19 environment. Trump said he would like a U.S-Russia-China deal, but such an agreement would be hard in the rising geopolitical tensions amongst a worldwide pandemic. Some have faulted Trump for ignoring Covid-19 in the early weeks and he has faulted China, and it’s hard to argue that China’s response wasn’t slow. The lesson learned is that countries, and the international community in general, cannot ignore early signals on a threat that can destroys lives. Let us start to fulfill the goal of Nunn, Kissinger, and Perry and renew New Start!
Jason Sibert is the Executive Director of the Peace Economy Project in St. Louis.
