On nuclear warheads and global tensions: why the renewal of the New START treaty between the United States and Russia is important

The New START Treaty on Nuclear Weapons Control, the latter to settle the arsenals of the United States and Russia that survived, would end next Friday, paving the way for a qualitative arms race in the context of the worst Washington-Moscow relations in decades.

But almost at the last minute President Joe Biden’s administration announced its intention to extend it for another five years on January 26, after Donald Trump’s previous administration, which he defeated in the November 3 election, insisted for years on his willingness to terminate him without a replacement agreement.

A few days before Biden’s announcement, the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin had also expressed its intention to renew the treaty that it had not been able to negotiate with the previous White House tenant.

“News of the renewal of the agreement brought relief to the presidents of both countries, as well as gun control experts, diplomats and politicians on both sides. “Andrey Baklitskiy, a researcher with the American think tank Carnegie Endowment For International Peace, noted in a recent article.

“But while the five-year extension is undoubtedly good news, the excitement it caused shows the poor state of bilateral relations between the United States and Russia and arms control in general“, He added.

Historical rivals, the relationship between the United States and Russia has deteriorated by leaps and bounds over the past decade, especially during Putin’s third and fourth terms and in Obama’s final years and during the Trump administration. More recently, Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election, a series of large-scale cyber attacks on US infrastructure, ongoing disinformation campaigns attributed to the Kremlin, the strategic differences in relation to the civil war in Syria (where both powers defended opposing parties) and the attempted murder of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny they have been major stressors.

Baklitskiy, who works at the Carnegie Endowment headquarters in Moscow, believes the renewal should be something ‘routine’, but this changed as the Trump administration tried to use the treaty to obtain concessions from Russia on other areas and also to China, demands that both countries refused.

For his part, the director of the Washington-based NGO Nuclear Threat Initiative, Ernest J. Moniz, welcomed the news of the extension in a statement: The extension will maintain the boundaries of Russia’s nuclear weapons systems and inspection regime. It will ensure that Russia’s most powerful weapons – strategic weapons, including the Avangard hypersonic missile and the Sarmat ICBM – will be affected by the treaty.

“The United States and Russia have one responsibility and obligation to work together to reduce their arsenal and prevent nuclear warThe expert and former adviser to the United States government added during the Barack Obama administration.

The fundamentals of nuclear weapons control

The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (or Start) was signed in 1991 by the United States and the then Soviet Union, after a series of rapprochements between the two great powers with the goal of voluntarily limiting strategic nuclear arsenals through a bilateral agreement and after decades of latent tensions and the constant threat of nuclear war, as it almost reached in 1963 and during the so-called missile crisis.

It came into effect in 1994 and largely regulated relations between Washington and Moscow (now at the helm of the Russian Federation), until it expired in 2009, partially replaced by the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT).

The new START was signed in 2010 and entered into force a year later, and was scheduled to expire on February 5, 2021, until the parties announced their intention to extend it for another five years. Gone are the Convention on Medium Range Nuclear Forces (INF) and that of Open air, from which the Trump administration withdrew in 2019 and 2020, respectively, and the Treaty against ballistic missiles (ABM), of which George W. Bush retired in 2002, leaving New START as the last position in the legal architecture of nuclear arms control between the two countries.

In the case of the treaties that left the United States during the Trump administration, it was argued at the time that Russia had violated some of the agreements (Moscow denied it and instead accused Washington of violating them) and secondly that they did not think about China, an emerging nuclear power (Beijing rejected the idea, claiming that its relatively meager arsenal of 320 warheads did not deserve to be part of a tripartite agreement).

Evgeny Buzhinsky, researcher and vice-chairman of the Russian Council of International Affairs (RIAC), a thinktank affiliated with the government of Russia, believed that “ it is generally accepted that the arms control architecture developed at the end of the Cold War is inadequate in today’s multipolar world, but the complexity of the task (added to complacency, suspicions and other factors) have prevented its updating ”.

“Nevertheless, the dismantling of the arms control system, even if considered obsolete, could lead to a multilateral arms race including all types of nuclear weapons, cyber attacks and laser weaponsHe added in an article published this week.

The bilateral New START is based on two pillars: it sets limits for the number of nuclear warheads deployed and their means of launch, and implements control mechanisms to build trust between both sides.

These mechanisms include the requirement to provide notifications of locations, movements and dispositions of strategic nuclear weapons; the ability to conduct 18 on-site inspections per year; and the annual exchange of information on test launches.

While the limit is currently at 1,550 deployed warheads (ie, ready for use, and not stored and disassembled), 800 launch devices (ballistic missiles launched from land and from submarines and bombers) deployed and stored, and 700 launch devices deployed. These limits were not reached until February 2018.

Such a number of nuclear weapons can seem scary a decision-making process away from their launch, But it is remarkably fewer in number compared to the Cold War supplies. During that time, the United States had more than 31,000 nuclear warheads at their peak in 1966 and the Soviet Union about 45,000 in 1986, according to data collected by Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen in the academic journal Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. .

Of course, current or evolving nuclear weapons, especially ICBMs equipped with MIRV multiple-return vehicles (that is, they carry different warheads on the same warhead, aimed at different targets) or hypersonic, they are much more skilled than those of three or four decades ago And it could well be said that reducing arsenals is part of an effort to improve efficiency without sacrificing effectiveness.

“If produced, the arms race will be more qualitative than quantitative “, considered Buzhinsky in this regard.

However, the gradual reduction in the number of weapons plays a clear role in nuclear non-proliferation by reducing the chance of errors in the launch chain, and by discouraging the accumulation of nuclear warheads in the context of an arms race. Even given the criticism of the New START treaty and the countries’ compliance, having an existing agreement is better than none, thought Irma Argüello, president of the Argentinean think tank NPS Global.

“It is extremely important that New START spreads. It is the only bilateral treaty between the two powers that remains (accounting for 90% of the arms) and this treaty has been more effective than the NPT to control weapons, the deployment of which is diffuse ”, added the expert in dialogue with Infobae and with regard to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), widely accepted internationally since its adoption in 1970, but with limited scope.

“It is a very positive gesture that is being given, and it is essential because if New START had fallen, the powers would have felt free to develop new weapons and warheads. In addition, the renewal of the New START will positively impact the NPT Review Conference, ”which was canceled due to the pandemic in 2020 and will take place this year, he concluded.

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