nuclear-news

Trump aiming for nuclear arms deal with Russia before Election Day.    Axios   Dave Lawler, author of World,  9 Oct 20,   The Trump administration is pushing to get a nuclear arms control agreement with Russia ready for President Trump and Vladimir Putin to apply their signatures before Election Day.

The big picture: Election day is not the only deadline driving this process. New START, the last major bilateral treaty limiting the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, is due to expire on Feb. 5.

• Putin wants to extend New START for five years. So does Joe Biden.
• But Trump’s arms control envoy, Marshall Billingslea, has said the administration is only interested in extending New START — an Obama-era deal which the Trump administration has repeatedly criticized — in conjunction with a parallel agreement on the future of arms control.
• Otherwise, he says, they’d be willing to see it lapse and gear up for a potential arms race.

The stakes: Russia knows that if Trump loses, it can expect Biden to agree to an extension shortly after taking office on Jan. 20.

• But if Russia hasn’t agreed to a deal by election day and Trump wins, America’s asking price for New START extension will climb much higher, Billingslea told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.
• The other side: His Russian counterpart, Sergei Ryabkov, told WSJ last week that the U.S. position is a non-starter, and Russia is prepared to expand its own nuclear arsenal if New START expires.

The latest: That deadlock may have broken following a meeting in Geneva last Friday between National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev………..   https://www.axios.com/trump-russia-nuclear-arms-agreement-new-start-4fe42c37-83e0-4088-aa26-b37f8a07bf7f.html