Despite discussing arms control in private meetings Tuesday in Washington, the top diplomats for the United States and Russia gave no hint in a subsequent press conference that the countries would extend the New START nuclear treaty.
Speaking with reporters, Mike Pompeo, President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, stuck to the administration’s position that New START should be replaced with a treaty that also constrains China’s nuclear arsenal, as well as current and planned Russian nuclear weapons that are not limited by the present accord.
Speaking alongside him, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated President Vladimir Putin’s statement last week on New START: that Moscow is prepared to “right now agree on its extension.”
In a Wednesday press conference, a day after his appearance with Pompeo, Lavrov reiterated that Russia believes it is “essential to adopt a decision” on a New START extension “before the end of this year.”
Signed by then-U.S. President Barack Obama and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the treaty limits the two nations to each deploying no more than 1,550 warheads across 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers.
The treaty and its hard cap on deployed strategic nuclear forces — those with enough city-destroying destructive power to influence the nuclear and conventional military calculus of adversaries — will expire on Feb. 5, 2021, unless the U.S. and Russian presidents agree to extend it for another five years, to Feb. 5, 2026.
In Congress, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have urged the White House to extend New START, and then negotiate other arms control agreements that cover other nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles, and possibly additional nations.
Although Congress has no power to extend New START, lawmakers can still influence the debate about whether Trump should do so. The final version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), approved Wednesday by the House, requires the Pentagon and the intelligence community to whip up a few reports, including an unclassified report, about arms control broadly and New START specifically.
An unclassified New START report, which could include a classified annex, would be due Feb. 15. Among other things, it would require the agencies to tally up nuclear weapons the U.S. and Russia already possess, plus systems these countries are planning. That list would include research and development timelines for future systems, including those not presently covered by New START, according to the NDAA bill text.
In a nod to predominantly Republican concerns about China’s nuclear arsenal, the NDAA would require the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to also assess Beijing’s planned and future nuclear systems.
Meanwhile, the NDAA would also require the Pentagon, the director of national intelligence, and the State Department to deliver “[a]n assessment of the threat to the United States of Russia’s strategic nuclear force in the event the New START Treaty lapses,” according to NDAA bill text. That separate report would be due 120 days after the 2020 NDAA becomes law.
The House approved the NDAA on Wednesday. The Senate is set to consider it Monday. President Trump has said he will sign the bill.
