President Joe Biden wants to extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia for five years, his press secretary confirmed Thursday.
“The United States intends to seek a five-year extension of New START,” Biden’s press secretary, Jennifer Psaki, said during a Thursday briefing at the White House. “The president has long been clear that the New START treaty is in the national security interest of the United States. This extension makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is adversarial as it is this time. New START is the only remaining treaty constraining Russia nuclear forces and is an anchor of strategic stability between our two countries.”
The Donald Trump administration, which ended Wednesday at noon, wanted to replace New START with a trilateral treaty that also constrained China’s nuclear arsenal. When China refused to participate in multilateral nuclear arms control talks, the Trump administration attempted to condition a New START extension with Russia on Moscow’s willingness to help bring China to the table for a follow-on agreement.
Russia declined to do so, but, prior to the 2020 presidential election, offered the Trump administration a one-year New START extension with a bi-lateral warhead freeze that Trump officials hoped would include Russia’s relatively smaller tactical nuclear weapons, which are not covered by New START.
But the Trump administration did not finalize that deal, or wouldn’t take it. Then, Trump lost the election and the presidency. On Jan. 20, the same day Biden was sworn in, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggested a five-year New START extension to the incoming U.S. President.
“We believe that the extension of New START for five years would create conditions for success in this sphere,” the Russian ministry wrote in an English-language press release. “We hope that the new US administration will take a more constructive stand in its dialogue with Russia … For our part, we are ready for such work on the basis of equality and respect for each other’s interests.”
New START took effect in 2011 and limits the number of strategic nuclear weapons that Washington and Moscow may deploy on a mixture of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), heavy bomber aircraft and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). Both signatories reached the treaty-prescribed limits in February 2018. A five-year extension would stretch the treaty out to Feb. 5, 2026.
In total, New START, lets the U.S. and Russia deploy no more than 1,550 warheads across 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers, while possessing no more than 800 deployed and non-deployed bombers, ICBM, and SLBM launchers. Bombers count as a single warhead, under the treaty.
Arms control advocates, who pressed the Trump administration for years to simply extend New START and seek a follow-on treaty afterward, cheered the news — including one who helped the Barack Obama administration clinch the deal.
“Glad to hear #Biden team will seek 5-year extension of New START,” Rose Gottemoeller, Obama’ lead New START negotiator and former deputy secretary general of NATO, tweeted Thursday. “NST sustains a stable US-Russian nuclear balance and provides predictability as the US modernizes its nuclear forces. Russia and the US must stay within New START limits, avoiding an arms race.”
There was no shortage of more hawkish takes this week too, including from Trump’s former national security advisor, who in a pre-inauguration day op-ed urged Biden to go for a much shorter-term extension.
“Mr. Biden should offer six months, thus keeping the heat on, and showing that his team will be more than stenographers for Moscow’s diplomats,” longtime Republican hand John Bolton wrote Jan. 17 in the Wall Street Journal. Bolton, who guided the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, called all arms control with Russia “a fool’s paradise. Whatever relatively small near-term fiscal savings might accrue will be outweighed in the long term by increased threats not only from Moscow, but also from Beijing and rogue states aspiring to become nuclear powers.”
