President Donald Trump told the New York Times that if a U.S.-Russia nuclear agreement “expires, it expires” and he would “just do a better agreement,” a statement the Union of Concerned Scientists thinks could be dangerous.
The New Strategic Arms Reduction (New START) Treaty, signed in 2010 by then U.S. and Russian presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, expires Feb. 5. The treaty limits each country to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and 800 non-deployed launchers and bombers.
A statement Monday by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said the treaty’s expiration would “leave the countries without any cap on the number of deployed nuclear weapons each is allowed to have, creating conditions for a fast-moving and destabilizing nuclear arms race.”
“Both countries already possess the technical capacity to rapidly increase the number of nuclear weapons ready to launch,” the statement continued. “With existing stockpiles, the United States and Russia could deploy hundreds of additional warheads in a matter of weeks,” and both countries “already have enough deployed nuclear weapons to kill tens of millions of people in less than an hour. Letting New START lapse will erase decades of hard-won progress and make the world less safe.”
Current Russian president Vladimir Putin said in September Moscow would respect the treaty for one year past its expiration date, 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 Joe Biden.
Trump also told the New York Times he would want to add China to any treaty that replaces New START, which the Chinese Embassy in Washington said would be “neither reasonable nor realistic” to ask of China.