The Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty raises questions about the last nuclear arms control agreement between the US and Russia. The New START treaty limits the number of nuclear warheads the US and Russia can deploy and is set to expire on February 5th, 2021.
The New START treaty also includes a verification regime, which includes up to 18 on-site inspections each year. Talks between the two nuclear powers to renegotiate the treaty have begun, and in-person meetings are set to take place after the coronavirus pandemic subsides.
The treaty, negotiated under the Obama Administration, comes with an option to extend for five years, something the Russians have offered. President Trump declined to renew the treaty, saying China needs to get involved in arms control. However, including China in the New Start does not make any sense, since the Asian country only has a fraction of the nuclear warheads the US and Russia have.
The New START limits the number of nuclear warheads the signatories can have deployed to 1,550. Current estimates put Beijing’s stockpile at 320 warheads. Even if China doubles its stockpile, it still falls well short of the New START limit. Unless Washington and Moscow are willing to reduce the number of warheads deployed drastically, Beijing will not benefit from the treaty. Currently, the US has 3,800 warheads in its stockpile, and Russia has 4,310.
The Trump administration withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 2019. The INF prohibited the US and Russia from developing medium-range nuclear and ballistic missiles, something the Pentagon began testing shortly after Trump’s withdrawal from the treaty.
A recent report from The Washington Post said the possibility of a nuclear test explosion had been discussed within the Trump administration, and that discussion is ongoing. If the test happens, it would be the first nuclear test conducted since 1992.
Marshall Billingslea, the man Trump appointed as special envoy for arms control, recently said the US is willing to spend Russia and China “into oblivion” to win a new arms race. Concerning the New START, Billingslea has previously said the main problem with the treaty is that it “does not include the Chinese.”
Good article, but discounts geostrategic reality. The bipolar Cold War I world is long over and the U.S. and Russia aren’t the only nuclear players anymore..
Only 37 countries of the needed 50 have signed the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2017). None of them are nuclear powers, naturally. Banning nukes is never going to happen even if that treaty gets 50 sigs.
Practically, nuclear weapons keep the peace between great powers. Proxy combats waged in stead have been ugly, and if COVID-19 isn’t a natural outbreak, as many suspect, the inability to war openly is inspiring too much shadow creativity.
Banning nukes is never going to happen. What is needed is a multi-tiered, multi-lateral world nuclear arms treaty involving all nuclear armed nations. Including Israel, and any other nation that newly develops nuclear arms (North Korea) or potentially could (Iran).
Throughout most of the Cold War, China more or less sheltered under the Soviet nuclear umbrella as did Britain and France under the U.S. The cost of maintaining a nuclear arsenal in thousands of missiles and warheads was beyond these middle powers.
Nuclear middle powers were a back door for the U.S. and Russia to, if not possess, certainly have access to, a few hundred more nukes and redundant tech base.
Things have changed. Chinese nuclear independence is backed by a far larger economy not yet even close to realizing its full potential. As Eurasia grows in influence, China will not be a middle power, but a global power.
‘Trust me’ is not a thing in geostrategic politics. China cannot be trusted any more than the U.S. or Russia can.
Western sinophobia over COVID-19 certainly made China blink and should make Western peace advocates flinch. Fear of war is not there with China, nor respect for Chinese sovereignty, the way it is for Russia.
China would not assent to being constrained in nuclear arms as long as Pakistan, India, and Israel, also independent but very U.S.-friendly nuclear powers, remain unfettered.
Nor can the U.S. count on European nuclear powers remaining under U.S. control forever; they are very demanding of U.S. heavy lifting. A European Army as envisioned by France and Germany, would almost certainly eventually include provisions for their own nuclear forces.
What is needed is a comprehensive arms treaty involving all nuclear armed powers; no ‘undeclared’ games like Israel, or potential without oversight like Iran. Trump may not be the President to accomplish this, but he does seem to recognize (at least intuitively), a nuclear arms treaty with just the U.S. and Russia signatory, is meaningless in a multipolar world order.
Trump just wants to include China. He doesn’t give two sh*ts, nor recognizes intuitively(seriously?), about whether a treaty between the US and Russia is meaningless because of some multipolar world order. Ask him if he thinks Israel should be included. It’s all about China.
Trump goes by his gut instincts. While his love of junk food is far from encouraging, that’s essentially intuition.
The guy probably watches enough TV to have seen a few Discovery military fanboy docs.
[While its all about China, China comes attached to a lot of stuff that can’t be set aside or ignored.]
“Trump goes by his gut instincts.”
That and whatever the folks at Fox suggest.
Crudely, that’s democracy, doing what most people want.
Fox News speaks for a broad populist demographic, just not the progressive one.
Bipartisan sinophobia may have caught on too well, though.
Racism is catching on big time in the U.S. (and Canada…)
Here is an article that looks at the potential outcome of failed nuclear talks:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-human-cost-of-nuclear-brinksmanship.html
Unfortunately, it is civilians that pay the high price for the ultimate failure of nations to control their nuclear arsenals.
They assume Russia fires the first shot; that’s highly unlikely.
The simulation more likely reflects U.S. doctrine, which may include dropping a nuke ‘warning shot’.
There’s no such thing as a nuke warning shot.
A Russian use of nukes would be defensive and would be intended to remove a threat whose materialization would pretty much mean a nuclear war was underway.
The US will again blame Russia for another US Withdrawal from a treaty.
Again, the US will use its NATO top puppet fool, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, to push the blame on Russia.
Russia will not fall for this. NATO (-US) is attempting to do an Iran on Russia.