The United States and Russia seek to “lay the groundwork for future arms control” with bilateral talks that will start “in the near future,” the presidents of both countries said in a joint statement this week following talks in Geneva.
In the English-language statement released Wednesday by the White House, President Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, pledged to “embark together on an integrated bilateral Strategic Stability Dialog in the near future that will be deliberate and robust.”
The statement, which included the Cold War mantra that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” appeared after top-level talks between Biden and Putin during Biden’s first trip abroad as president.
Biden and Putin agreed in January to extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty to Feb. 5, 2026. The deal limits Washington and Moscow to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads across 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers, and allows the sides to possess no more than 800 deployed and non-deployed bombers, intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, and submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers. Bombers count as single warheads, under the treaty.
It is unclear what another U.S.-Russia arms control treaty might look like. In the U.S., New START critics, and even some New START supporters, complain that the current arms control regime between the former Cold War adversaries does nothing to limit Russia’s expanding arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons — relatively smaller nukes intended for battlefield use, rather than for deleting an adversary’s ability to wage war.
Russia has complained, among other things, about U.S. missile defense systems.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate, which must approve treaty agreements, is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, with elections that could alter the composition of both chambers fewer than two years away.
Earlier this week, senior Air Force procurement officers said the U.S.’ next-generation, nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, was being designed to survive any foreseeable changes to U.S. arms control agreements.
Also in Geneva, Biden and Putin also discussed cyber security, which has gained even more national attention in the U.S. since the May ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline’s oil pipeline, following which some panicked Americans began hoarding gasoline in plastic bags.
