It wasn’t easy, but in 2010, Barack Obama and his team negotiated a landmark treaty with Russia called New START. The nuclear powers agreed to significantly reduce their nuclear stockpiles, capping the number of nuclear warheads in each country’s arsenal, limiting the number of nuclear missile launchers and expanding inspections.
The terms of the agreement lasted 10 years, though the policy included the option for a five-year extension, which Joe Biden embraced.
That kept the policy intact through Feb. 4, 2026. It’s now Feb. 5, 2026. The Washington Post reported:
For decades, the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals have been constrained by a series of treaties. But that changed Thursday, when the last remaining nuclear arms limitation treaty between the United States and Russia, known as New START, expired.
Russia said in September it is willing to continue adhering to the central limitations of the treaty for at least another year, if Washington does likewise — but the Trump administration has yet to officially respond to the offer.
This wasn’t inevitable. In fact, it was easy to predict the opposite outcome after Trump said last summer that New START is “not an agreement you want expiring,” adding that it would be “a big problem for the world.”
That was seven months ago. The Republican not only made little effort to rescue the policy before its expiration, he also hasn’t presented an alternative to replace it.
“If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement,” he told The New York Times last month.
That might sound vaguely encouraging, were it not for the fact that Trump has a history of showing humiliating weakness toward Vladimir Putin, coupled with the fact that it would take roughly a year to negotiate the terms of a new treaty — which may or may not receive ratification in the Senate, where it would need 67 votes.
This is also the same Trump who walked away from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in his first term for reasons he struggled to explain, which dovetailed with his abandonment of the international agreement with Iran, which he also rejected for reasons he struggled to explain.
Nevertheless, with the expiration of New START, what happens now? Georgia Cole, a research analyst at British foreign policy think tank Chatham House, told the Post that in the absence of the policy, the U.S. and Russia could build up their nuclear warheads and launchers “unchecked.”
“This would raise the risk of miscalculation, accidents and unintended escalation — especially in a crisis,” she added. “It would also encourage China to continue accelerating its nuclear buildup to reach parity.”
Reuters reported that U.S. and Russian officials might yet agree to temporarily maintain the terms of New START despite its expiration, which would likely ease the fears of many international observers.
But in the meantime, amid growing uncertainty, many are wondering whether the nuclear arms control era is over, and the underlying question needs an answer from a White House that barely seems to care.
