By hinting that Russia’s nuclear weapons are available as a last resort, president Vladimir Putin has already played the nuclear card in Ukraine. Not for the first or, probably, the last time. Now the New Start treaty, the last surviving arms control agreement between the two largest nuclear-armed powers, the US and Russia, is also on the table.
Putin announced in his state of the union speech that he would suspend Russia’s participation in the important treaty that limits both their strategic missile deployment to 1,550 warheads apiece. This week he formally moved to suspend Russian participation.
It appears to be an attempt to bully the US into curbing its support for Ukraine or to face the dismantling of the last vestiges of the multilateral disarmament regime. Moscow may reckon that the prospect that the treaty could run out next year without replacement could threaten a new costly arms race, pushing the world back half a century into an era of dangerous nuclear unpredictability. Is that a gamble the US is willing to make in its support for Ukraine? Yes, it appears so – Moscow has again miscalculated.
Not that Putin intends an immediate arms build-up – he has promised to keep his strategic stockpile at its current level. The announcement’s main effect in the short term will be to continue the freeze on the treaty’s mutual inspection regime, leaving each side in the dark about the other’s capabilities, though in practice the US retains considerable satellite oversight over the Russian arsenal. A breakdown in communications also, however, makes accidents far more likely.
Zelenskiy says Ukraine must try to ensure war with Russia ends next year through diplomacy
Trump’s treatment of Zelenskiy as a spoiled child does not bode well for Ukraine
Putin repeats Ukraine demands in first call with German leader since 2022
Donald Trump’s return adds urgency and uncertainty to third winter of full Russia-Ukraine war
Putin is retreating from New Start at a critical moment. China, ultimately as much a threat to Russia as to the US, is estimated by the Pentagon to be capable of deploying 1,500 ballistic weapons in the next decade, matching America and Russia. And there is new evidence that Iran is making rapid progress towards near-bomb-grade nuclear fuel, while North Korea has stepped up testing its own intercontinental ballistic missiles. What chance of encouraging others to join in multilateral disarmament when the whole system appears to be falling apart?
New Start did not in any case even cover the sort of nuclear weapons that cause most alarm, the tactical or “battlefield nukes” which are likely to have been what Putin had in mind for use in Ukraine when he made his threats. Russia has 2,000 or so; the US, a few hundred.
It’s all a far cry from the day 14 years ago when president Barack Obama, author then of New Start with Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev, in a speech in Prague, called on all powers to work toward “a world without nuclear weapons.”
It is yet further evidence of how the war in Ukraine has set the world on a dangerous new course.