The end of New START and a new era of nuclear rivalry, Pg16

Key Highlights:

• The New START treaty between the U.S. and Russia expired on February 5, 2026, removing all legally binding limits on their strategic nuclear arsenals.
• New START, which came into force in 2011, limited deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 for each nation and allowed for on-site inspections.
• Russia suspended its participation in New START in February 2023, citing the U.S. pursuit of its "strategic defeat" in Ukraine.
• With the treaty's expiration, verification channels have ceased, increasing reliance on less reliable intelligence methods like satellite imagery.

Detailed Insights:

• New START emerged from a period of improved relations between Washington and Moscow in the late 2000s, aiming to reduce and verify strategic offensive arms.
• Russia had concerns that U.S. missile defense systems could undermine the strategic balance, while the U.S. worried about Russia's conventional prompt global strike capabilities.
• Novel strategic systems, such as the Sarmat ICBM and Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, were included under New START, but systems like the Poseidon drone were not.
• The expiration of New START complicates the inclusion of China and other nuclear states in a broader nonproliferation regime, as each side cites the actions of others as reasons for not accepting constraints.
• The loss of predictability due to the treaty's end, along with the entanglement of nuclear and non-nuclear strategic systems, poses a threat to nuclear command and control.
• A potential path forward involves the U.S. and Russia restoring basic transparency, the P5 group standardizing definitions, and establishing nonproliferation tools involving more states.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD): A doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender.
• Nonproliferation Regime: International efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology.
• Strategic Stability: A condition where no country feels compelled to launch a first strike in a crisis, reducing the risk of nuclear war.