The top foreign affairs Democrats in Congress asked the State Department for a briefing from the State Department about efforts to extend — or not extend — the New START arms control treaty that limits U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons.
House Foreign Affairs Chair Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) were especially concerned that there “is no Senate-confirmed senior leaders at the State Department with responsibility over nuclear negotiations,” according to a letter the two published online Tuesday.
The two asked for a briefing on the White House’s New START strategy “as soon as possible and on an ongoing basis.”
The Donald Trump administration has said it prefers creating a tri-lateral nuclear arms control treaty with Russia and China to extending New START for another five years, beginning in February 2021. The Chinese government has said it will not join such a treaty. Russia has said it is open to extending New START, which went into effect in 2011 during the Barack Obama administration.
Some who support the New START treaty have accused the Trump administration of setting impossible standards for a follow-on treaty in order to create a pretext for walking away from New START.
New START limits deployed U.S. and Russais strategic nuclear weapons — essentially, those with more destructive power than required for use on a battlefield — to 1,550 warheads deployed across across 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers. In addition, each state may posses no more than 800 deployed and non-deployed bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles launchers.
