Arms-control advocates are warning of a new arms race, not only between the U.S. and Russia, but also involving China. Failure to agree on keeping the expiring New START Treaty’s limits will likely encourage a bigger deployment, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington. “We’re at the point now where the two sides could, with the expiration of this treaty, for the first time in about 35 years, increase the number of nuclear weapons that are deployed on each side,” Kimball told Associated Press. “And this would open up the possibility of an unconstrained, dangerous three-way arms race, not just between the U.S. and Russia, but also involving China, which is also increasing its smaller but still deadly nuclear arsenal.”
Kingston Reif of the RAND Corporation, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, also warned during an online discussion that “in the absence of the predictability of the treaty, each side could be incentivized to plan for the worst or to increase their deployed arsenals to show toughness and resolve, or to search for negotiating leverage.”
Former Undersecretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, the lead U.S. negotiator for New START, said that despite what she called Russia’s non-compliance, the agreement has given the U.S. important insight into Moscow’s nuclear arsenal and has constrained production to the established limits—1,550 deployed warheads, 700 delivery vehicles, and 800 launchers. While she agrees with U.S. President Donald Trump’s argument for a new, more expansive treaty, Gottemoeller told members of Congress during a Feb. 3 hearing that she’s worried that, without an agreement in place, Russia will rapidly increase, or “upload,” its inventories once New START expires, that is, load up its existing ICBMs with additional warheads.
