President Donald Trump suggested in an interview published Monday he would pursue a nuclear arms reduction agreement with Russia, with sanctions relief as a sweetener, a notion that some Russian officials and now-former President Barack Obama dismissed as two separate issues.
“They have sanctions on Russia — let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russia. For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it,” Trump said in a pre-inauguration interview with the London Times.
The United States and its allies in 2014 placed sanctions on Russia over its incursion into Crimea and involvement in the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Relations have deteriorated since then, in recent months marked by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s withdrawal from nonproliferation and nuclear security partnerships with the United States. For example, Putin late last year suspended his nation’s participation in a bilateral plutonium disposition agreement; among several conditions for returning to the deal, one involved lifting U.S. sanctions against Russia.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was reported as saying Monday that the sanctions and nuclear arms reductions issues should not be tied together – though he also expressed optimism over restarting a strategic stability dialogue with the United States under the new president. Obama also commented Wednesday the two issues should not be linked, as the sanctions were not imposed in relation to nuclear weapons issues in the first place.
Obama and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which requires their nations by February 2018 to reduce their deployed arsenals of long-range warheads and delivery systems. The Trump administration will be responsible for negotiating a follow-on agreement to New START; it could also opt to extend the existing agreement for another five years or abandon a bilateral arms control deal altogether. Trump’s latest statement suggests he could try to negotiate a follow-on deal.
This would represent a significant shift in position since last month, when Trump tweeted in support of expanding the United States’ nuclear capability. His tweet came after Putin’s remarks suggesting a strengthening of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces. Trump was then quoted as saying, “Let it be an arms race.”
