New nuclear arms-control agreements should focus on all Russian nuclear weapons, including those unrestricted by the New START treaty, and “pursue new risk reduction measures” with China to address Beijing’s “rapid and opaque nuclear buildup,” the new U.S. under secretary of state for arms control and international security said this week.
Bonnie Jenkins, confirmed to the senior State Department arms-control post in May, made the remarks Monday in Copenhagen, Denmark during the 17th annual NATO Conference on Weapons of Mass Destruction Arms Control, Disarmament and Nonproliferation.
Shortly after President Joe Biden took office in January, the U.S. and Russia agreed to extend the bilateral New START arms control treaty that limits each country to no more than 1,550 warheads deployed on a mixture of 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers, while possessing no more than 800 deployed and non-deployed bombers, intercontinental ballistic missile, and submarine launched ballistic missile launchers. Bombers count as a single warhead, under the treaty.
Any follow-on agreement between the Washington and Moscow should “look to capture new kinds of intercontinental-range nuclear delivery systems [and] address all nuclear warheads, including those which have not been limited previously, like so-called non-strategic nuclear weapons,” Jenkins said in her prepared remarks.
A New START follow-on should also “seek to retain limits on Russian intercontinental-range ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments after New START expires in 2026,” said Jenkins.
Jenkins also said that the U.S. would continue overtures to China, which has so far refused to limit its nuclear arsenal, in light of Beijing’s plans “to substantially expand its nuclear arsenal,” including with “novel nuclear-powered capabilities and a massive increase of its silo-based [intercontinental ballistic missile] forces.”
