Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday reaffirmed the Trump administration’s disinterest in renewing a strictly bilateral U.S.-Russian New START nuclear arms control treaty past its expiration in February 2021.
As President Donald Trump and other administration officials have previously, Pompeo indicated China must be brought into the nuclear arms-control fold.
“President Trump will never allow America to enter into any arms control agreement that doesn’t make sense for the United States of America or to renew any existing arms control agreement that expires if it no longer makes sense for America,” Pompeo said during a media availability at NATO headquarters in Brussels. “So with that – with that as the central core principle, we – the president has spoken deeply about how the world has changed since New START was originally created. We now have an expanded threat from the Chinese Communist Party.”
Signed in 2010 by then-Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, New START limits the United States and Russia to deployment of no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on 700 fielded ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers. The treaty will expire a decade from its February 2011 entry into force, but can be extended for up to five years, to Feb. 5, 2026.
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergei Naryshkin last week played down the likelihood of an extension, Reuters reported.
As of Sept. 1, the United States had 1,376 warheads on 668 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers. Russia had 1,426 warheads on 513 of the delivery systems, according to the State Department.
“The president’s made clear that any time we begin to have a conversation about how to create a strategic – a strategic structure that secures America, it’s no longer the case that it can only be the United States and Russia,” Pompeo told reporters.
His comments drew quick criticism from arms control advocates. China currently has no strategic nuclear assets in the field, tweeted Vipin Narang, a security studies professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“So yeah if you ask Beijing to join and they say ‘sure thing Mike, we will go to 1550 too’….better for US security? Really?” he wrote. “This line is just a poison pill excuse to avoid extending New START, plain and simple.”
The nongovernmental Federation of American Scientists estimates Beijing now holds roughly 290 nuclear warheads, and that its arsenal should soon exceed the French stockpile of roughly 300 warheads.
Pompeo said the administration was also correct to formally withdraw in August from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. That 32-year-old accord prohibited the United States and Russia from deploying ground-based cruise and ballistic missiles, carrying nuclear or conventional warheads, with ranges from 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers.
The Obama and Trump administrations both said Russia had for years been in violation of the pact by developing and then deploying the 9M729 cruise missile. The Kremlin has denied the claim.
“We looked at reality. We recognized the facts. The facts had changed,” Pompeo said. “We had two parties to a treaty, only one of which was complying with that treaty. It made no sense to stay in it. And we worked with our European partners to make sure that there was unanimity, that we understood the risks, that we understood the costs, and then moved forward together, declaring that Russia was in violation and that the appropriate thing to do was for the United States to leave that treaty.”
Pompeo has served as secretary of state since April 2018, taking over from Rex Tillerson. The former House member and CIA director is widely rumored to be planning to resign to run for the U.S. Senate in Kansas.
The Trump administration’s position on nuclear treaties received a brief mention during Wednesday’s debate for candidates seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.
“When we look at international agreements, we must start negotiating back with Russia, which has been a horrible player on the international scene,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said, “but the president precipitously got out of the nuclear agreement with Russia and we must start negotiating, even though they were cheating, for the good of this world. And we must also start the negotiations for the New START treaty.”
