Diplomacy finally front and center again with extension of U.S.-Russia New START Treaty

We should pay atten­tion to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s deft and swift move to re-enter the New START (Strate­gic Arms Reduc­tion Treaty) agree­ment with the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion and extend its imple­men­ta­tion through Feb­ru­ary 4th, 2026.

Biden’s first weeks as Pres­i­dent fore­shad­ow an intense and inten­tion­al pur­suit of diplo­ma­cy to re-enter treaties, renew alliances, and man­age part­ner­ships to tack­le threats to the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of all Americans.

Yes, it may be dif­fi­cult to focus on nuclear weapons and nuclear war when we’re fight­ing right now to save our democ­ra­cy against domes­tic extrem­ists and per­sis­tent attacks on vot­ing rights and elections.

It’s even hard­er to look ahead to the next decade of threats from cyber­at­tacks, cli­mate dis­as­ters, and home­grown ter­ror­ism – not to men­tion the risks of nuclear war — when the nov­el coro­n­avirus has killed more than 500,000 Amer­i­cans and 2.5 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide in the past twelve months.

But we should nev­er take our future secu­ri­ty for grant­ed when thou­sands of nuclear war­heads are deployed right here in Wash­ing­ton State and are top tar­gets of Russ­ian strate­gic nuclear forces. Cur­rent U.S. bud­get pro­pos­als include mas­sive invest­ments in a mod­ern­ized U.S. nuclear tri­ad. So it’s clear: we still need nuclear force reduc­tion treaties to reduce the risks of nuclear disasters.

What is New START?

For­mer Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and for­mer Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Dmit­ry Medvedev signed New START on April 8, 2010.

Fol­low­ing its rat­i­fi­ca­tion by the U.S. Sen­ate and the Fed­er­al Assem­bly of Rus­sia, the treaty went into force on Feb­ru­ary 5, 2011.

It’s impor­tant to know a few things about this piv­otal nuclear treaty between the Unit­ed States and Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, which NPI strong­ly supports:

• It’s not real­ly “new” – it is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the orig­i­nal START treaty in force from 1994 through 2009.
• New START was orig­i­nal­ly in force from 2011 to 2018
• Under New START, the Unit­ed States and Rus­sia met the treaty’s lim­its on strate­gic offen­sive weapons and deliv­ery by the treaty dead­line of Feb­ru­ary 5th, 2018.

In 2020, Don­ald Trump and his entourage sig­naled that Unit­ed States agree­ment to an exten­sion would depend on includ­ing Chi­na in the nego­ti­a­tions.

New START ensures that the Unit­ed States and Rus­sia con­tin­ue to imple­ment nuclear force reduc­tions nego­ti­at­ed under the orig­i­nal START agreement.

Arguably the most his­toric nuclear arms reduc­tion agree­ment ever nego­ti­at­ed, START went into force in 1994 and with­in sev­en years Amer­i­cans and Rus­sians had destroyed near­ly eighty per­cent of their strate­gic nuclear weapons.

The treaty barred its sig­na­to­ries from deploy­ing more than 6,000 nuclear war­heads on a total of 1,600 inter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­siles (land-based and sea-based com­bined) and long-range bombers.

Under New START, the treaty’s mon­i­tor­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion pro­to­cols will ensure con­tin­ued com­pli­ance through the Feb­ru­ary 2026 exten­sion just adopt­ed by U.S. Pres­i­dent Biden and Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Putin.

Accord­ing to the U.S. State Depart­ment:

Both the Unit­ed States and the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion met the cen­tral lim­its of the New START Treaty by Feb­ru­ary 5, 2018 and have stayed at or below them ever since. Extend­ing New START ensures we will have ver­i­fi­able lim­its on the main­stay of Russ­ian nuclear weapons that can reach the U.S. home­land for the next five years. As of the most recent data exchange on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2020, the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion declared 1,447 deployed strate­gic war­heads. The Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion has the capac­i­ty to deploy many more than 1,550 war­heads on its mod­ern­ized ICBMs and SLBMs, as well as heavy bombers, but is con­strained from doing so by New START.

The same restric­tions apply to U.S. land- and sea-based bal­lis­tic mis­siles and nuclear war­heads. Right here in Wash­ing­ton State, the Ohio-class strate­gic bal­lis­tic mis­sile sub­marines (SSBN) pro­vide a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the sea-based leg of the U.S. nuclear tri­ad. Each SSBN was pre­vi­ous­ly armed with up to twen­ty-four Tri­dent II sub­­­ma­rine-launched bal­lis­tic mis­siles.

As part of the New START treaty, four tubes on each SSBN have been deac­ti­vat­ed, leav­ing each ship with 20 tubes for bal­lis­tic mis­siles with nuclear warheads.

These mon­i­tor­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion regimes are cen­tral to the whole “trust but ver­i­fy” com­po­nent of treaties requir­ing per­ma­nent destruc­tion of weapons and their means of deliv­ery. With­out the New START Treaty exten­sion, we would have no abil­i­ty to ver­i­fy con­tin­ued Russ­ian com­pli­ance with these mis­sile and nuclear war­head lim­its. Nor would the Rus­sians have the abil­i­ty to ver­i­fy Amer­i­cans are still hon­or­ing the deal. More­over, the treaty pro­vides the mech­a­nisms for both par­ties to address con­cerns about poten­tial or actu­al non-com­­pli­ance and to take actions to rem­e­dy vio­la­tions should they be confirmed.

Any time we suc­ceed in destroy­ing weapons – nuclear, chem­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal, con­ven­tion­al, long-range or short-range, bat­tle­field or inter­con­ti­nen­tal – we’ve reduced risks of cat­a­stroph­ic loss. That’s a good thing for all of us.

How will nonproliferation diplo­ma­cy influ­ence twenty-first century negotiations?

Here’s why Biden’s deci­sion to re-enter and extend New START mat­ters to this century’s diplo­mat­ic challenges:

• It reaf­firms the essen­tial respon­si­bil­i­ty of all par­ties to con­sent to equal, trans­par­ent, and account­able on-site mon­i­tor­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of weapons destruction.
• It estab­lish­es the legit­i­ma­cy of using sim­i­lar intru­sive inspec­tion regimes for future treaties.
• It com­mits to the prin­ci­ple of enter­ing treaties to man­age risks and reduce threats to people.

It’s time for diplo­ma­cy to take cen­ter stage again.

As one of the intel­li­gence ana­lysts and sub­se­quent­ly fed­er­al gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors who helped U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence offi­cials define and imple­ment nuclear treaty mon­i­tor­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion regimes for START, the Inter­me­di­ate Nuclear Forces Treaty (1987), and the nev­er-rat­i­fied Com­pre­hen­sive Test Ban Treaty (1996), I had a fig­u­ra­tive front-row seat to high-stakes diplomacy.

I saw what worked (and didn’t work) and I helped nego­tia­tors find solu­tions to com­ply with the most com­plex and con­tentious treaty terms and conditions.

From the Kennedy to Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tions, pres­i­dents have used diplo­ma­cy as a means to pre­vent con­flict, reduce esca­la­tion of con­flict, or ulti­mate­ly to resolve con­flict. Going after ter­ror­ists and regimes har­bor­ing ter­ror­ists dom­i­nat­ed the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­da dur­ing the Bush II and Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tions, yet both of these pres­i­dents sus­tained America’s com­mit­ment to treaties nego­ti­at­ed by pre­de­ces­sors while also nego­ti­at­ing new treaties and diplo­mat­ic agreements.

Then came Don­ald Trump.

Through­out his four-year term, Trump withdrew.

He was the great unrav­el­er, pulling Amer­i­ca out of treaties, inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, and mul­ti­lat­er­al part­ner­ships. Four years of dis­miss­ing sea­soned diplo­mats and den­i­grat­ing the val­ue of diplo­ma­cy under­mined the core mis­sion of diplo­mats in embassies and con­sulates around the world. Pre­dictably, Amer­i­cans lost touch with what diplo­ma­cy looks like and what it can accom­plish. And the rest of the world could no longer trust Amer­i­ca to hon­or its commitments.

There are so many chal­lenges ahead for the new administration.

In the wake of the Trump mob’s assault on the Capi­tol, the secu­ri­ty threats are per­sis­tent and con­cur­rent: Ter­ror­ism. Cli­mate dam­age. Pan­demics. Cyber­at­tacks. Geno­cide. Human traf­fick­ing. Civ­il war. Nuclear threats.

When liv­ing through tur­bu­lent times, diplo­ma­cy mat­ters more than ever.

In Pres­i­dent Biden’s first thir­ty days, diplo­mats around the world had Amer­i­cans back to work at sev­er­al nego­ti­at­ing tables:

• New START
• Paris Cli­mate Accord
• Joint Com­pre­hen­sive Plan of Action with Iran
• World Health Organization
• UN Human Rights Council

Diplo­ma­cy is mak­ing a come­back with the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion. We can­not under­es­ti­mate the sheer mag­ni­tude of the chal­lenges we col­lec­tive­ly face.

Impor­tant­ly, when asked how the admin­is­tra­tion would jug­gle the pan­dem­ic, eco­nom­ic crises, cli­mate threats, domes­tic extrem­ism and more, Kamala Har­ris said: “We know how to mul­ti-task.” Diplo­mats are born mul­ti-taskers. They will make diplo­ma­cy work for all of us. I’m cheer­ing for all of them.