Washington: For the first time in almost half a century time is running out on a US-Russian Treaty which on expiration would leave the world with no legal restrictions on US and Russian nuclear weapons.
If President Donald Trump doesn’t extend the — only remaining US-Russia arms control pact — or succeed in negotiating a replacement treaty, it will expire in February, 2021 which is just 16 days after Trump begins a second term or his successor is sworn into office.
Russia has offered to extend New START for up to five years, but Trump is holding out. He thinks China, which is expected to double its stockpile of nuclear weapons in the next decade, should have to sign on to a nuclear arms control accord, too.
The future of New START was further called into question with Trump’s announcement that the US intends to withdraw from over the US, Russia and more than 30 other nations.
Trump voiced his desire for a three-way arms control agreement months ago, but that effort is still in the starting blocks.
Marshall Billingslea, who was appointed last month as the president’s special envoy for arms control, said that he had his first secure phone call with his counterpart in Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. Billingslea said they agreed to meet, talk about their objectives and find a way to begin negotiations.
“Suffice to say, this won’t be easy. It is new,” Billingslea said, adding that the US fully expects Russia to help bring China to the table.
Russian officials and many arms control experts agree that China, as a rising power, should be part of a nuclear arms accord, but they are eyeing the calendar.
“It’s really hard to see how, in the midst of a pandemic that would make actual in-person negotiations quite difficult, you’re going to get something done and ratified and in force before the New START treaty expires on February five, 2021,” said Alexandra Bell.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Geng Shuang, said in January that China has “no intention to participate” in trilateral arms control negotiations. Billingslea, however, is optimistic that Beijing will want to join in and be seen as a world power.
Former under secretary of state for arms control and international security Rose Gottemoeller, said “every time they (the Russians) take a missile out of a silo and take it to a maintenance facility, they have to notify us that that missile’s going to move. … The intelligence community is simply going to have a much harder time knowing what’s going on.”
The US and Russia have about 91 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists. The US has 3,800 in its stockpile and Russia has 4,310. China has 320 nuclear warheads, although the prediction last year was that China was likely to at least double the size of its stockpile during the next 10 years.
With the US presidential election just five months away, the question is whether Trump has enough time to negotiate a grand, three-way deal, especially given China’s reticence to participate.
