Trump calls for new stronger pact as US-Russia nuclear treaty set to expire
The US president has indicated he wants China to be a part of a new pact.
With the US-Russia nuclear pact expiring on Thursday, US President Donald Trump is renewing calls for a new stronger pact instead of extending the current agreement known as the New Start treaty.
“Rather than extend “NEW Start” (A badly negotiated deal by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future,” Mr Trump said in a social media posting on Thursday.
The end of the treaty would effectively lift the last remaining caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century.
Mr Trump has previously indicated he would like to keep limits on nuclear weapons but wants to involve China in a potential new treaty.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said on Thursday it regretted the expiration of the last remaining nuclear arms pact between Russia and the United States that left no caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century.
Arms control experts say the termination of the New Start Treaty could set the stage for an unconstrained nuclear arms race.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last year declared his readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington followed suit, but Mr Trump had been noncommittal about extending it.
He has indicated that he wants China to be a part of a new pact — something Beijing has rebuffed.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Mr Trump has made clear “in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile”.
Mr Putin discussed the pact’s expiration with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday, noting the US failure to respond to his proposal to extend its limits and saying that Russia “will act in a balanced and responsible manner based on thorough analysis of the security situation,” Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said.
Even as New Start expires, the US and Russia agreed on Thursday to re-establish high-level, military-to-military dialogue following a meeting between senior officials from both sides in Abu Dhabi, the US military command in Europe said.
The link was suspended in 2021 as relations between Moscow and Washington grew increasingly strained before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
New Start, signed in 2010 by then-president Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, restricted each side to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on no more than 700 missiles and bombers – deployed and ready for use.
It was originally supposed to expire in 2021 but was extended for five more years.
The pact envisioned sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance, although they stopped in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic and never resumed.
In February 2023, Mr Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying Russia could not allow US inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its Nato allies have openly declared Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine as their goal.
At the same time, the Kremlin emphasised it was not withdrawing from the pact altogether, pledging to respect its caps on nuclear weapons.
In offering in September to abide by New Start’s limits for a year to buy time for both sides to negotiate a successor agreement, Mr Putin said the treaty’s expiration would be destabilising and could fuel nuclear proliferation.
