The New START treaty has expired. For 15 years, the treaty served as an agreement between the United States and Russia to limit deployed nuclear weapons; its expiration signals the end of the old nuclear arms control regime and portents the world’s entry into a dangerous new period of unconstrained arsenals.
Although reported talks between the US and Russia in Abu Dhabi over the last 24 hours are a positive sign—the two sides have apparently agreed to spend at least six months holding talks about a follow-on agreement as reported by Axios—last-minute efforts are no way to manage nuclear risk. And it should not have taken this long for the US to begin to address the end of New START.
The original START treaty, a monumental step toward peace, was signed at the end of the Cold War in 1991 by United States President George H. W. Bush and Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev. New START, signed by United States President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in 2010, maintained START’s legacy through continued limits on strategic nuclear arms. But today, these limits no longer exist.
The post Opinion: ‘President of Peace’ Trump Just Blew Up a Major Nuclear Weapons Deal appeared first on The Daily Beast
