Feb. 6—On Feb. 5, the New START Treaty regulating the strategic nuclear weapons arsenals and other relevant transparency agreements between the United States and Russia was allowed to expire, with nothing to replace it. For the first time in over fifty years, there is no existing regulatory framework for arms control between the world’s two largest nuclear superpowers.

The same day, independent U.S. presidential candidate Diane Sare held a press conference, titled “For a New, New START,” where she and others discussed the strategic crisis the world faces, and laid out a pathway for how the world can get out of it. Talk show host Garland Nixon moderated the event, which also featured arms control expert Scott Ritter, who was the first American weapons inspector on the ground in the Soviet Union as part of the American Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) verification team in 1988. The event took place over Zoom and fielded questions from around the world.

The event marked a significant display of moral courage, not only in addressing the importance that arms control agreements hold for the sake of world peace, but also the higher vision required to elevate mankind’s thinking to overcome the childhood disease of war itself.