Senators in a hearing Wednesday pressed Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins about what the State Department is doing to deter Russia and China’s nuclear capabilities.
Jenkins was the sole witness in the hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which met less than a year before the February 2026 expiration of the New START nuclear arms control treaty with Russia.
“You actually sit here and are willing to tell this committee you think the Russians are going to return to the table to negotiate on the New START treaty?” Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) asked Jenkins, the undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department. “You are living in la-la land… they invaded Ukraine. They hate us.”
In February 2023, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said Russia would “suspend” its participation in the New START treaty on nuclear arms control with the United States, yet still adhere to the numeric limits of the treaty on deployed strategic nuclear weapons.
Jenkins reiterated throughout the hearing that Russia, as well as China, have come back to the negotiating table in the past.
Jenkins said that while Russia has used “irresponsible rhetoric” to describe their own nuclear policy and the New START treaty, other nuclear-weapon states have expressed support in engaging with Russia to discuss what will happen after 2026.
“We have expressed our readiness to work with Moscow,” Jenkins said.
When Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), chair of the committee, asked how discussions were going, Jenkins also admitted she was “concerned” about developments in China.
The last time the Joe Biden (D) administration had nuclear weapons talks with China was in November 2023 and there is no future meeting set, Jenkins said. The administration has not heard from China since then and cannot predict when they will hear back, said Jenkins.
“Our goal is to continue to see if we can bring [China] to the table,” Jenkins said.
In that vein, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said that in February of this year, China indicated interest in discussing a no-first-use of nuclear weapons policy with other nuclear-weapons states.
Jenkins said that while this proposal from Beijing was a positive step, the administration will have questions on what no first use will mean for China, as well as how sincere China is about this proposal.
“I hope you’ll at least enter into more of a dialogue with China,” Van Hollen said. “This seems to at least be an opening for greater discussion.”
Meanwhile, the hearing was interrupted by protesters holding up their painted-red hands. When Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) was speaking on the United States’ relationship with Israel, the protesters interjected for under a minute, delaying his comments.
