September 26, 2025

Why President Trump Should Put Off the New Nuclear Arms Race for One More Year

By: Jon B. Wolfsthal

This article was originally published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

On September 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia would be willing to abide by the limits in the New START nuclear arms control treaty for an additional year if the United States did the same. Both the United States and Russia are parties to the treaty. That agreement commits both countries to deploy no more than 1,550 strategic offensive nuclear weapons.

The agreement was negotiated in 2010 and is set to expire in February of next year.[1] After it expires, there will be no restrictions on the number and types of nuclear weapons that those two countries can build and deploy. The treaty was extended for one five-year term in 2021, but it cannot be legally extended as a formal treaty a second time.

Without a new agreement, the world’s two largest nuclear weapons states would coexist without any caps on their arsenals for the first time in two generations.

While both sides stopped fully implementing the verification provisions under the treaty during the COVID-19 epidemic, Russia refused to restart them in 2022 after it launched its war against Ukraine. Yet even so, both Washington and Moscow are complying with the treaty’s central numerical limits. Without a new agreement, however, the world’s two largest nuclear weapons states would coexist without any caps on their arsenals for the first time in two generations.

Extending the deal by a year, even informally, would be a security and diplomatic win for the United States. However, as with many things these days, nothing is simple.

Read the full article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

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