The influence of Russia’s war on Ukraine is growing day by day, most recently to the point that everyone fears is affecting the nuclear arms race between Russia and the United States.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. State Department notified Congress that Russia had ceased mutual inspections of nuclear facilities. The move violates the Third Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction and Limitation Treaty (START-3).
Meanwhile, a reading by Russian experts confirms that Washington’s continued supply of arms to Kyiv has become an obstacle preventing Moscow from resuming negotiations with Washington on the future of the treaty.
Days earlier, Russia had warned that the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement with the United States might not be renewed until 2026. Because it believes that the United States is trying to cause Russia a “strategic failure” in Ukraine.
《START》Agreement
Russia and the United States have about 90 percent of the world‘s nuclear warheads. These weapons are partly limited by previous treaties, including the New START treaty that came into effect in 2011 and was extended in 2021 until February 2026.
The New START treaty restored cooperation and joint leadership between Moscow and Washington in the field of nuclear weapons control and reduction in the number of nuclear weapons, and has indeed made great progress in this area.
The treaty deals with long-range and intercontinental nuclear missiles. The treaty stipulates that with 800 fixed and non-fixed nuclear missile launchers, the two countries’ land-based intercontinental missile nuclear arsenals shall not exceed 700 nuclear warheads, and submarines and strategic air bombers shall not exceed 1,550 nuclear missiles.
It is the only remaining nuclear arms control agreement after the two countries withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Weapons Treaty in 2019.
Russia welcomed U.S. President Joe Biden’s proposal to extend the agreement for another five years more than a year ago.
The agreement calls for the two sides to conduct 18 annual inspections of the nuclear weapons base, as well as exchange data to verify compliance with the terms of the treaty.
Maintain existing agreements
While Russia’s official position stresses the importance of the treaty, it also sees the need to create the right conditions for negotiating its future. Therefore, Moscow justified the indefinite postponement of the meeting of the Bilateral Advisory Council scheduled for November 2022 in Cairo.
Against this background, international affairs researcher Dmitry Babić ruled out the possibility of a new agreement between the United States and Russia in the field of arms control in the near future. The two countries have once again entered the first stage of the arms race. On this basis, it is difficult to agree on any comprehensive legally binding limits in the short or medium term.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Babić further stated that it would be wise to focus on maintaining existing agreements. Because he believes that the “START” treaty will hardly escape the fate of other agreements that Washington unilaterally withdrew.
He added that Russia and the United States have an indirect conflict in Ukraine, making it difficult to conduct bilateral diplomacy. In addition, Washington continued to supply Kiev with weapons and greatly increased the level of escalation by supplying Kyiv with long-range, high-precision weapons and advanced air defense systems. Under these circumstances, it would be strange to sit down and talk about the START treaty.
The gap between START and Ukraine
On the other hand, Steve Pifer, a European affairs and disarmament expert at the Brookings Institution, wants Moscow to understand that limiting their nuclear competition has an overwhelming interest in both sides, especially at a time when the broader relationship is in turmoil.
Pifer added in an interview with Al Jazeera, “For almost 50 years, this has been the idea of both sides. But now, apparently because of President Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, the Kremlin is mortgaging New START with US support for Kyiv. implementation of the Treaty, which will not achieve Putin’s goals.”
Political analyst Sergey Persanov, on the other hand, pointed out that Western sanctions against Russia have created additional obstacles to control and inspection tasks, such as lack of regular air traffic, ignoring Russian confirmation of aircraft The requirement to fly over the airspace of the transiting country with the inspector, the visa problem at the time of entry, the difficulty of paying the service fee during the inspection, etc.
He said U.S. monitoring groups were increasingly interested in conducting intelligence operations on Russian soil under the guise of inspections. And he believes that the Russian side also took this into consideration when deciding to continue the negotiations.
At the same time, Persanov believes that even without on-site inspections, the “START” treaty can theoretically continue to operate in the current situation. The premise is that the parties continue to exchange notices and public information remotely.
As he expected, over time each side would demonstrate that it could not be sufficiently sure that the other was complying with its obligations, including the number of weapons. He also noted that whether the issue would lead to a breakdown of the agreement, or a bipartisan resolution, depended on the political will of the leaders of both countries.
biden has no choice
Steve Pifer acknowledged that President Joe Biden “has no good options to force Russia to allow inspections to resume or to participate in bilateral advisory committee meetings.”
While the agreement is in the interests of both parties, Pifer noted that “the Russians should ask themselves what would happen if the New START treaty collapsed. Without treaty constraints, the U.S. military could significantly increase intercontinental ballistics at relatively low cost.” missiles and intercontinental missiles by loading spare warheads on missiles that currently carry less warheads than their capacity.”
On the other hand, Matthew Wallen, CEO of the American Security Project (ASP), a think tank specializing in military affairs, said, “Russia did not necessarily violate the START agreement, but used it to The possibility of future expiration to create more fear of nuclear escalation, aimed at reducing Western support for Ukraine.”
Warren believes that threatening to deploy more strategic nuclear weapons is a waste of money. Because the 1,550 weapons that can be deployed under the framework of “New START” are enough to completely destroy the opponent.