nuclear-news

When Putin calls to congratulate the new U.S. president, Biden should seize the opportunity.   By GLENN NYE and JAMES KITFIELD,    At some point in the coming weeks President-elect Joe Biden will likely receive a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulating him on his election victory. Biden should seize the opportunity to provide an overdue reality check on nuclear weapons.Tensions between the two nations that possess roughly 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads are reaching levels not seen since the darkest days of the Cold War, even as the edifice of arms control agreements that kept Cold War dangers in check teeters on the verge of collapse. Under the guise of weapons modernization both nations are also engaged in an incipient nuclear arms race. Little wonder that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has reset its Doomsday Clock to just one hundred seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been to Armageddon.

When he takes office on Jan. 20, Biden can help arrest that dangerous spiral by fulfilling his campaign pledge to extend the New START Treaty before it expires in early February, and to use it as a foundation to pursue new arms control agreements. Recent jockeying between U.S. and Russian negotiators on a one-year extension of New START highlight just how complex and difficult arms control negotiations have become. In an era of renewed major power competition, destabilizing new technologies, and rising international tensions and distrust, managing U.S.-Russian relations already are difficult. They only will become more so as Moscow comes to terms with a new Biden administration unwilling to overlook, as President Donald Trump has, Russia’s history of cyber and disinformation attacks on the American political system.

Before the election, talks between U.S. and Russian negotiators on extending New START bogged down over the Trump administration’s insistence that a one-year extension include a freeze on strategic nuclear weapons that are currently covered by the treaty, as well as tactical nuclear weapons that are not. As is often the case in arms control talks the devil was in the details of a verification regime to monitor such a “freeze.” But the goal of constraining shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons was laudable and should be pursued in follow-on talks.