Dangerous nuclear arms race to follow, if New Start Treaty is not renewed

Clock’s ticking on one of world’s most important nuclear treaties. A dangerous arms race may be next, By Eliza Mackintosh, CNN, July 20, 2019 This week, senior American officials traveled to Switzerland to deliver President Donald Trump’s “vision for a new direction in nuclear arms control.” That vision is to strike a wide-ranging deal that would limit the arsenals of not only the US and Russia, but also China for the first time.

At a meeting with their Russian counterparts in Geneva on Wednesday, the US delegation relayed their concerns over Moscow’s development of “non-strategic nuclear weapons,” the State Department said. Another concern is the fact that China, which did not participate in the talks, has rejected negotiations out of hand.

But the President’s ambition for an all-encompassing deal is clouded by his track record, and observers are increasingly worried that the unraveling of existing accords under the Trump administration could lead to a more unstable future for nuclear proliferation globally.

In May 2018, Trump quit the Iran nuclear deal, sparking an ever-widening rift with Tehran and heightened tensions in the Middle East. In February, the US suspended the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), a key pact with Russia that has been a centerpiece of European security since the Cold War, saying Moscow had violated its terms.

And as the talks were taking place in Geneva, the clock continued to run down on the last remaining major nuclear deal between the US and Russia, which control 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads.

The New Start treaty, signed by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, restricts the US and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads across 700 delivery systems. While Russia has signaled an interest in renewing the pact, Trump has previously described it as a “bad deal,” and there is no sign that it will be extended beyond 2021, when it expires.

If the New Start deal is scrapped, experts fear a return to a world without limits on nuclear stockpiles……..

The presence in the administration of National Security Advisor John Bolton — a longstanding hawk and critic of arms control agreements — also has some observers concerned that the White House’s true goal may be to find an exit strategy for a nuclear pact it sees as constraining and outdated.

President Vladimir Putin, who has suggested Russia would be open to renewing the New Start treaty, has warned that letting the pact lapse could risk an arms race……..

The ditching of nuclear treaties by the Trump administration has already contributed to the weakening of norms, and casts other multilateral agreements, like the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) into doubt, experts said.

Under the NPT, one of the world’s most important foundational nuclear treaties, nuclear-weapon states — the US, Russia, China, France and the UK — commit to ending the arms race and achieving nuclear disarmament, while non-nuclear-weapons states agree to forgo developing or seeking nuclear weapons…….. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/20/world/us-russia-new-start-nuclear-weapons-analysis-intl/index.html