With a 16-year U.S.-Russia nuclear agreement expiring Feb. 5, three former national security officials testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Tuesday to advise on next steps and whether a year-long extension is best.
Signed in 2010 by then U.S. and Russian Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), expiring Thursday, limits each country to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and 800 non-deployed launchers and bombers. Defense analysts believe the expiration of New START may lead to a new nuclear arms race, especially as Russia backed out of on-site treaty verification inspections in 2023 amid the Joe Biden administration’s support of Ukraine in its campaign to turn back the Russian invasion.
Timothy Morrison, one witness at the Tuesday SASC hearing and former Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from the first Donald Trump administration, said New START was a “bad deal,” and another witness retired Adm. Charles Richard, former Commander of the Strategic Command from 2019 to 2022 in both the Trump and Biden administrations, said he “would not recommend a one year extension to the New START Treaty, absent verification procedures being reinstated.”
Richard added that to conduct a future arms control treaty “correctly,” it “has to include all weapons,” it “has to have verification mechanisms built in with consequences for non compliance,” and it must be multilateral and “at minimum,” include Russia, China and the U.S.
Current Russian President Vladimir Putin said in September Moscow would respect the treaty for one year past its expiration, and Trump said in July he would like to still maintain the limits set by New START after it expires. While the treaty limits can be respected past its expiration date, New START cannot be extended on paper, since the agreement had one extension used in 2021 by Putin and then-President Biden.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) asked the panel if there were any downsides to extending the treaty for a year. Ambassador Rose Gottemoeller, former Deputy Secretary General of NATO during the first Trump administration and former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department, where she was the chief negotiator for New START, said there was “no downside.”
“I do agree with both my colleagues that it is, yes, very necessary to respond to the Russian and the Chinese threats,” Gottemoeller said. “I know that we are preparing and planning to upload, I agree with that activity. I think it’s very important. But in my view, we can take another year, limited by New START, continue our planning and preparing to upload, and at the same time then have an opportunity to try to get to the negotiating table and see if we can put in place some new restraints at the negotiating table with both China and Russia.”
Gottemoeller told SASC that a one-year extension of New START could prevent Russia “from sprinting away from us in a [nuclear warhead] upload campaign.” While the U.S. and Russia are held to 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads, treaty critics have said that it has lost its utility, as it does not take into account China’s 600 nuclear warheads, nor Russia’s tactical nuclear advantage and Russian advancements in such areas as hypersonic nuclear missiles.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in keeping with Trump’s current stance and that of his first term, said on Wednesday that “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.”
Gottemoeller said on Tuesday that she does not believe a year extension of New START “would prejudice anything that we need to do to in order to prepare and respond to the Chinese build-up, but I will also say that there are certain aspects of New START that are quite interesting for having more flexibility.”
“The bombers are actually a great option for further flexibility because the counting rule under New START is quite flexible,” Gottemoeller said. “You can load more long-range cruise missiles or even gravity bombs, on bombers, and they are counted as one under New START. In fact, there’s a lot of flexibility in the limits of the treaty that could help us with these problems at this moment.”
Richard, however, said without amending the treaty in the ways he suggested, “simply extending the New START Treaty for one year does not constrain Russia to the same way that it constrains us. It prevents us from answering the challenge that China has added to this, and it increases the uncertainty because it doesn’t have the verification mechanisms built in that were so successful in the past.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Richard whether, “given the growing nuclear threat environment now without the bounds of New START,” he most favored re-establishing multiple warheads on U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles, re-converting four of the 24 missile tubes for Lockheed Martin Trident II D5 missiles on each U.S. ballistic missile submarine, re-activating the B-52 bombers for the nuclear mission, or reforming the National Nuclear Security Administration to speed fielding.
“I would put the highest priority actually on removing the four missile tube covers on our Trident submarines and returning them to 24 tubes, vice 20, uploading intercontinental ballistic missile warheads… and I would just go down the list you just described,” Richard replied.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), chair of the SASC Strategic Forces subcommittee, said that when New START was first drafted, “the geopolitical environment was fundamentally different. All the assumptions made back then, they were wrong. Russia is not a friendly potential partner. China is not a lesser threat.”
“Here’s the reality today,” Fischer continued. “Russia has been in non compliance with the New START since 2022 and continues to hold a massive numerical advantage in tactical nuclear weapons. China is growing its nuclear arsenal, as Admiral Richard likes to say, at breathtaking pace. Both countries are outpacing us in developing novel, destabilizing weapons.”
Her Democratic colleagues disagreed for the most part.
“For the first time in 54 years, the United States and Russia will have no binding framework to regulate our respective nuclear forces,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of SASC, said at the beginning of the hearing. “Although Russia suspended its verification practices in 2023, public reporting indicates Moscow has continued to observe the treaty’s central limits of roughly 1,500 warheads and 700 deployed delivery systems. I believe the opportunity still exists to pursue a successor agreement. The alternative—an unconstrained arms competition—would serve neither country’s interests.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) agreed with Reed, saying she thought it was a “mistake” to let New START expire, and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said the treaty’s expiration marks the beginning of an “environment of nuclear proliferation.”