The expiry of the 2010 Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) tomorrow marks the end of an era in nuclear arms control. It was the last remaining bilateral treaty framework governing the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States—which hold 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons. The demise of New START ushers in a new phase of heightened nuclear dangers. Europe’s leaders must recognize the grave implications for European security and take action.
Long-standing plans for a follow-on treaty to New START were stymied by incompatible demands—the USA’s that China be part of any new treaty; Russia’s that France and the United Kingdom be brought into future negotiations—along with the breakdown in relations between the two signatories. China, for its part, has expressed no interest in limiting its own nuclear forces when they are dwarfed by those of Russia and the USA.
US President Donald J. Trump last year signalled his intent to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Russia that would also bring in China. However, this offers scant hope that a new arms control framework will emerge. Even with a presumption of seriousness on his part, Trump is likely to find that the transactional, personalized showmanship characteristic of his ‘art of the deal’ diplomacy does not lend itself to the highly complex, patient and disciplined negotiations required to secure viable arms control agreements.
Rather than an interregnum, the passing of New START is likely to mark a prolonged, perhaps indefinite, suspension of bilateral nuclear arms control with profound implications for global nuclear politics.
The world after New START
What, then, could a post-New START world look like? For one thing, it is likely to be a world with more nuclear weapons, driven by a renewed nuclear arms race, now including China. New START placed an upper limit of 1550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads for each side, but both have many more non-deployed and non-strategic (‘tactical’) weapons and are implementing extensive modernization programmes for their respective nuclear arsenals. China’s rapid nuclear build-up presents the newest driving factor towards a renewed nuclear arms race. China has doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal from 300 to 600 over the past five years and, according to some estimates, could have as many intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as Russia and the USA by 2030. This confronts US defence planners with the challenge of a ‘two-tier deterrence environment’—countering the combined threat of China’s and Russia’s nuclear forces. Unconstrained by any arms control framework, these dynamics will probably drive strategic nuclear competition towards higher numbers of weapons.
Another upshot of the expiry of New START will be less transparency and predictability around nuclear weapons. Without the verification mechanisms, data exchanges and confidence-building measures built into the treaty, the knowledge gaps with respect to Russian and US nuclear weapon numbers, operational status and force posture will grow over time.
Transparency and predictability are among the more intangible benefits of arms control and underpin deterrence and strategic stability. Without them, relations between nuclear weapon states are likely to be more crisis prone—especially with artificial intelligence and other new technologies adding complexity and unpredictability to escalation dynamics and a worrying lack of diplomatic and military communication channels between the USA and both China and Russia. Nuclear force planning will increasingly veer towards worst-case assessments as reliable data becomes more scarce and intelligence estimates become more politicized.
Repercussions for non-proliferation and international security
The end of New START also has implications for broader global nuclear politics. Specifically, it will likely further erode the credibility and effectiveness of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The core bargain of the NPT is that the non-nuclear weapon states will not develop nuclear weapons in exchange for the nuclear weapon states making progress towards nuclear disarmament. The demise of New START without a replacement makes the prospect of nuclear disarmament even more remote, thereby undermining that core bargain.
A weakened NPT will make it more difficult to address proliferation challenges in the Middle East, achieve progress towards the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and likely fuel the growing debates in Japan, Poland, South Korea, Ukraine and elsewhere regarding the merits of acquiring nuclear weapons to hedge against the fraying of the USA’s alliance commitments in Europe and East Asia.
Finally, the impact on global, not least European, security is likely to be profound. A successor treaty to New START was expected not only to mandate deeper cuts to strategic nuclear forces, but also to cover tactical nuclear weapons, of which Russia has about 1477, according to the latest SIPRI estimates, and the USA around 200.
These are seen as precisely the weapon systems that pose the greatest threat to Europe’s security and are likely to be a feature of the continent’s security landscape for the foreseeable future.
The risks associated with this threat are likely to be exacerbated by NATO’s conventional rearmament and particularly the acquisition of advanced long-range precision strike weapons. The accuracy, lethality and range of these systems render them capable of delivering strategic effects including the ability to hold at risk Russian nuclear forces; hence why they are often referred to as ‘strategic non-nuclear weapons’. European non-nuclear weapon states possessing these systems must therefore anticipate that they will figure into future nuclear escalation scenarios, making for a highly unstable military context.
An opportunity for European leadership
In short, the world after New START will be one of increased dangers for strategic stability, nuclear proliferation and European security. All of this should prompt serious consideration in European capitals of an arms control approach that would begin to address these challenges. The approach should prioritize devising a risk-reduction regime for Europe to mitigate the prospects for escalation along the contact zones between NATO and Russia; pressing the USA to return to a renewed arms control process, which is clearly in European interests; and encouraging France and the UK—NATO Europe’s two nuclear powers—to signal their readiness to engage in future strategic arms control processes that would also include China and Russia.
A European-led approach along these lines would not be a substitute for strategic nuclear arms control involving China, Russia and the USA; however, it would partly mitigate the effects of the collapse of New START and potentially hasten the resumption of negotiations on nuclear reductions.
Most of all, European leaders need to understand that the current focus on bolstering deterrence is insufficient on its own. Without a viable arms control approach, the risks of deterrence only increase in a way that compromises security rather than enhances it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Karim Haggag is the Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The expiry of the 2010 Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) tomorrow marks the end of an era in nuclear arms control. It was the last remaining bilateral treaty framework governing the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States—which hold 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons. The demise of New START ushers in a new phase of heightened nuclear dangers. Europe’s leaders must recognize the grave implications for European security and take action.
Long-standing plans for a follow-on treaty to New START were stymied by incompatible demands—the USA’s that China be part of any new treaty; Russia’s that France and the United Kingdom be brought into future negotiations—along with the breakdown in relations between the two signatories. China, for its part, has expressed no interest in limiting its own nuclear forces when they are dwarfed by those of Russia and the USA.
US President Donald J. Trump last year signalled his intent to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Russia that would also bring in China. However, this offers scant hope that a new arms control framework will emerge. Even with a presumption of seriousness on his part, Trump is likely to find that the transactional, personalized showmanship characteristic of his ‘art of the deal’ diplomacy does not lend itself to the highly complex, patient and disciplined negotiations required to secure viable arms control agreements.
Rather than an interregnum, the passing of New START is likely to mark a prolonged, perhaps indefinite, suspension of bilateral nuclear arms control with profound implications for global nuclear politics.
The world after New START
What, then, could a post-New START world look like? For one thing, it is likely to be a world with more nuclear weapons, driven by a renewed nuclear arms race, now including China. New START placed an upper limit of 1550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads for each side, but both have many more non-deployed and non-strategic (‘tactical’) weapons and are implementing extensive modernization programmes for their respective nuclear arsenals. China’s rapid nuclear build-up presents the newest driving factor towards a renewed nuclear arms race. China has doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal from 300 to 600 over the past five years and, according to some estimates, could have as many intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as Russia and the USA by 2030. This confronts US defence planners with the challenge of a ‘two-tier deterrence environment’—countering the combined threat of China’s and Russia’s nuclear forces. Unconstrained by any arms control framework, these dynamics will probably drive strategic nuclear competition towards higher numbers of weapons.
Another upshot of the expiry of New START will be less transparency and predictability around nuclear weapons. Without the verification mechanisms, data exchanges and confidence-building measures built into the treaty, the knowledge gaps with respect to Russian and US nuclear weapon numbers, operational status and force posture will grow over time.
Transparency and predictability are among the more intangible benefits of arms control and underpin deterrence and strategic stability. Without them, relations between nuclear weapon states are likely to be more crisis prone—especially with artificial intelligence and other new technologies adding complexity and unpredictability to escalation dynamics and a worrying lack of diplomatic and military communication channels between the USA and both China and Russia. Nuclear force planning will increasingly veer towards worst-case assessments as reliable data becomes more scarce and intelligence estimates become more politicized.
Repercussions for non-proliferation and international security
The end of New START also has implications for broader global nuclear politics. Specifically, it will likely further erode the credibility and effectiveness of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The core bargain of the NPT is that the non-nuclear weapon states will not develop nuclear weapons in exchange for the nuclear weapon states making progress towards nuclear disarmament. The demise of New START without a replacement makes the prospect of nuclear disarmament even more remote, thereby undermining that core bargain.
A weakened NPT will make it more difficult to address proliferation challenges in the Middle East, achieve progress towards the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and likely fuel the growing debates in Japan, Poland, South Korea, Ukraine and elsewhere regarding the merits of acquiring nuclear weapons to hedge against the fraying of the USA’s alliance commitments in Europe and East Asia.
Finally, the impact on global, not least European, security is likely to be profound. A successor treaty to New START was expected not only to mandate deeper cuts to strategic nuclear forces, but also to cover tactical nuclear weapons, of which Russia has about 1477, according to the latest SIPRI estimates, and the USA around 200.
These are seen as precisely the weapon systems that pose the greatest threat to Europe’s security and are likely to be a feature of the continent’s security landscape for the foreseeable future.
The risks associated with this threat are likely to be exacerbated by NATO’s conventional rearmament and particularly the acquisition of advanced long-range precision strike weapons. The accuracy, lethality and range of these systems render them capable of delivering strategic effects including the ability to hold at risk Russian nuclear forces; hence why they are often referred to as ‘strategic non-nuclear weapons’. European non-nuclear weapon states possessing these systems must therefore anticipate that they will figure into future nuclear escalation scenarios, making for a highly unstable military context.
An opportunity for European leadership
In short, the world after New START will be one of increased dangers for strategic stability, nuclear proliferation and European security. All of this should prompt serious consideration in European capitals of an arms control approach that would begin to address these challenges. The approach should prioritize devising a risk-reduction regime for Europe to mitigate the prospects for escalation along the contact zones between NATO and Russia; pressing the USA to return to a renewed arms control process, which is clearly in European interests; and encouraging France and the UK—NATO Europe’s two nuclear powers—to signal their readiness to engage in future strategic arms control processes that would also include China and Russia.
A European-led approach along these lines would not be a substitute for strategic nuclear arms control involving China, Russia and the USA; however, it would partly mitigate the effects of the collapse of New START and potentially hasten the resumption of negotiations on nuclear reductions.
Most of all, European leaders need to understand that the current focus on bolstering deterrence is insufficient on its own. Without a viable arms control approach, the risks of deterrence only increase in a way that compromises security rather than enhances it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)