Life After New START: Navigating a New Period of Nuclear Arms Control

January/February 2025
By Mike Albertson

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) will expire on February 5, 2026, with little likelihood that any of its provisions will remain in force. Accepting this fact should allow for clear-eyed thinking about the realities of what follows.

There will be short-term pressures as the treaty enters its endgame over the next year and in the anticipated interregnum thereafter. These largely will distract from the serious homework needed to determine what arms control, if any, comes next. The early 1980s, a period of deterrence competition and arms control stalemate, offers insights into how an interregnum can generate useful ideas, but pouring current complexities into the old bottle of “peace through strength” attempts to recreate a past that cannot be recreated. Unpleasant questions must be faced: What does the United States want, what do China and Russia want (and fear), and what is the U.S. strategy for getting them to the table? With the end of New START and a host of other agreements over the last decade, many people have said the world should move on from arms control. Yet, after considering alternatives, a legally binding approach may be the least implausible option for what comes next.

Recognizing the Inevitable

Some analysts express hope that New START can be retained somehow or extended further beyond its expiration deadline. Ideas have surfaced. Unfortunately, these alternatives range from impossible to implausible.

One alternative is extending the treaty. The 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) was negotiated and ratified with a provision on future extension beyond its initial duration. The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty had an unlimited duration. Simply put, New START cannot be extended. It was concluded with a 10-year duration that began in 2011 and a single five-year extension that was exercised in 2021.

The duration rationale was simple. Policymakers expected that the treaty would be replaced by some future agreement, following the natural progression of strategic arms control agreements over previous decades. Replacement was prevented, however, by Russia’s refusal to engage substantively on U.S. terms, set by Democratic and Republican administrations, for a successor to New START.

Another alternative is continuing just the New START verification provisions, such as inspections and notifications, after the treaty expiration. In this way, the two sides would have at least some transparency into what the other was doing with its strategic modernization programs. Unfortunately, such provisions are largely dependent on the legally binding agreement. Due to Russian domestic laws on state secrets, Moscow would argue that it cannot provide classified nuclear weapons-related information via notifications or data declarations to the United States absent a legally binding agreement. The United States would not host Russian military inspectors at their bases willingly without a treaty directing them to do so. Cost payments, protections, and immunities are the gears of complex agreements. All are extremely difficult to implement absent the forcing function of New START.

Replacement by an entirely new treaty or agreement theoretically is another alternative, but it has proven impossible even in better geopolitical times. One year remains before New START expires. Even achieving New START, in an era when there was mutual desire, a long history of work, and a precedent document in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), proved difficult to negotiate in this time frame. The next year looks far less promising for rapid action. There is a lack of focus and goals in Moscow and Washington. Arms control is hostage to Russian hostilities in Ukraine. Even a short negotiated treaty, such as the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, would lack an underlying agreement such as START I or New START on which to base verification obligations. A bilateral fig leaf can be agreed anytime, but it would not substitute for the comprehensive agreement that is about to disappear.

The last alternative would be a mutual agreement to stay below New START limits.¹ This is what Russia and the United States have stated as a possibility over the last several years, despite all the challenges in the bilateral relationship. In engineering terms, this is a point of unstable equilibrium.² Internal or external factors could lead either party to upend such an agreement by declaring a unilateral willingness to exceed or by concretely exceeding New START limits. Russia has tried numerous ways through its nuclear rhetoric to deter Western military support to Ukraine. Moscow lacks other bilateral mechanisms or dialogues to take hostage or rip up to signal displeasure and attract U.S. attention. Threatening to bust New START limits probably is too tempting an eventual target for Moscow to ignore.

Moreover, China’s growing nuclear arsenal is spurring talk of the United States needing to move beyond New START limits. The 2023 Strategic Posture Commission report described the U.S. nuclear program as being “necessary but not sufficient” to deter potential adversaries.³ Pranay Vaddi, senior director for arms control at the U.S. National Security Council, remarked that “absent a change in the trajectory of adversary arsenals, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required and we need to be fully prepared to execute if the President makes that decision.”⁴ Vipin Narang, acting assistant defense secretary for space policy, commented that this process was underway: “We have begun exploring options to increase future launcher capacity or additional deployed warheads on the land, sea and air legs that could offer national leadership increased flexibility, if desired, and executed.”⁵

Navigating the Coming Endgame

As New START enters its endgame, competing short-term pressures of urgency and worry can be expected. The United States needs to lead on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation issues even if expectations should be set appropriately low. There is a moral imperative to do so and downsides to not doing so, primarily in letting adversaries dictate the boundaries of future negotiations.

Some analysts and legislators argue that the United States needs to get out of the treaty as soon as possible because Russia is in violation and the United States is held back from taking the necessary deterrence steps to respond numerically to China and Russia. Weighing the pros and cons, this late in the game there appears to be little strategic advantage gained by withdrawing. The treaty is not holding back the United States because it probably cannot do much concretely this year to move beyond the New START limits. The United States can take steps while the treaty is in force to prepare for the future because U.S. advantages that were negotiated into New START make it easier for Washington to increase the size of its arsenal, for example by reconverting launchers that were taken off the books and uploading warheads from the uncounted reserve onto deployed systems. Yet, executing these steps still takes time and money, likely pushing their completion and thus an increase in the number of deployed weapons beyond the treaty limits past the February 2026 expiration.

How treaties end matters for what deals come next. New START’s natural death offers a clean slate. Conversely, a U.S. decision to prematurely terminate the agreement would incur costs. China and Russia would occupy the global high ground on arms control and nonproliferation matters. The United States would face challenges in pushing its own agenda if it must spend time responding to the criticisms of others. Other states would have difficulty trusting the political whims of U.S. nuclear deals. It would be more difficult for Washington to set the table for what comes after New START.

Whether the treaty ends naturally or abruptly, the focus inevitably will be on the numbers of weapons as the New START limits end. The expert discourse will focus on the dangers unleashed by unrestrained nuclear competition. Talk of arms racing will grow. Buildups, whether in China, Russia or the United States, will be termed “rapid,” “unnecessary,” “mindless,” and “costly.”

The end of New START will not usher in a new arms race. The nuclear competition will not arrive when the treaty ends or because it ends. The new arms race is underway. Competitive contours among the Chinese, Russian, and U.S. nuclear programs already are set; and it will be Chinese force expansion, a factor not even captured by New START, that will be the dominant factor after the treaty expires.

What unfolds post-New START is unlikely to seem much of a race. If so, it will be a 10-kilometer race over the next decade rather than a dash in 2026. Only China is really racing to some unknown point. Russia has hot warhead and missile production lines, but has completed much of its modernization program. It suffers from a host of economic and military challenges, which may be prioritized before another major nuclear weapons expansion. Although the United States can increase the size of its arsenal by doing reconversions and uploading, its nuclear infrastructure challenges are well understood.⁶ The near-term U.S. nuclear question is less “How much is enough?” than “What can be done?”

In the decade after New START expires, the players likely will move to higher numbers of weapons. Numbers will dominate the headlines, but the real loss will be the intangibles that the strategic arms control process provides, the little things that are taken for granted when agreements are in place and that have deeper impacts when they are missing. Without New START data, both sides will rely more on national technical means, that is, intelligence gathering by satellite, radar, and other remote technology, to estimate what the other side is doing. Where national technical means are more difficult, these estimates will have greater uncertainties and broader ranges. Theories and assumptions about an adversary’s capabilities will have fewer checks. People-to-people engagements, involving treaty implementers, inspection teams, host-nation escorts, and technical experts, will end as well, leaving all sides less prepared to sit down and seriously engage on what comes next.

The Temptations of ‘Peace Through Strength’

Given the near-term challenges post-New START, some arms control interregnum should be anticipated.⁷ It will be an uncomfortable period without guardrails. The desire of those seeking to avoid the dangers and costs of competition will be for quick fixes, such as political agreements; but deep systemic problems have caused the interregnum; and they will require more reflection to diagnose and a stronger prescription to cure.

The last major interregnum was almost four decades ago. The Soviet-U.S. détente ended after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That is when, after a decade of work, the agreement reached during the second round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) was withdrawn from U.S. Senate ratification. Both sides stated their commitment to the SALT II limits, but there was little confidence it would last. Serious Soviet-U.S. military incidents occurred. Gerontocracy and economic stagnation created domestic political problems in Moscow. Negotiations were curtailed as NATO deployed countermeasures to Soviet nuclear deployments. Western governments faced domestic pressure from anti-nuclear protests.

A romanticized story has coalesced to explain what happened next. The United States was weak. There was consensus among the United States and its allies on how to fix the problem. The United States built more nuclear weapons. It worked with allies to deploy them. The Soviets grew worried and returned to the negotiating table. The United States bargained from a position of newfound strength. Agreements favoring the United States were reached. The Cold War was won. When faced with an arms control stalemate and nuclear competition again, the prescription seems to be that the United States should revisit this 1980s “peace through strength” formula.

In reality, little from roughly 1980 to 1985 was easy or straightforward. It was a time of contentious soul-searching in the U.S. deterrence and arms control community.⁸ Many articles were written.⁹ Many workshops and discussions were convened.¹⁰ There was little consensus among top policymakers and experts on what to do next. Some wanted to revive the SALT process. Others saw arms control as lost or at a dead end. Some wanted to build new nuclear delivery systems or deploy more warheads. Others proposed cuts. Some wanted to emphasize non-nuclear systems such as the Strategic Defense Initiative to break the nuclear stalemate.

Attempting to create a “peace through strength” redux after New START lacks necessary elements. Peace requires a willing and desirous negotiating partner. Russia and China today lack a counterpart to the reform-driven Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and the next people in charge of those political systems are unlikely to be one either. Strength requires a robust U.S. defense industrial base to build the systems that the adversary cares about limiting. The U.S. industrial base today is far reduced from its 1980s equivalent. “Through” involves understanding the use of competition and cooperation together to leverage a desired outcome. The “redux” formula suggests that mere repetition will duplicate results. It oversimplifies the challenges and complexities with allies, adversaries, and domestic politics that it took to get from strength through to peace in the 1980s.¹¹

There are useful lessons from the intellectual discussions on arms control in the 1980s that have applicability to the upcoming questions to be faced. First, determining the place of arms control in broader U.S. policy requires understanding bigger strategic objectives vis-à-vis adversaries. Lawrence Freedman was blunt and correct when he wrote in 1983 that “[a]rms control has become an incompetent and inadequate alternative to the reappraisal of strategic objectives and an honest confrontation of political differences.”¹² In addition, the United States must know what it wants arms control to accomplish. Concepts such as risk reduction are uncontroversial in arms control discussions, but they have proven to be unhelpful in finding concrete ways forward. In 1981, U.S. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft stated, “Unless we get below this level of ethereal abstraction that everyone can agree on, and decide in fact what we want arms control to achieve, we’re not going to get anywhere.”¹³

Arms control must balance complacency and alarmism. Advocating for a reassessment of the 1980s arms control discourse, Thomas Schelling challenged arguments that nuclear war was imminent or inevitable and made more so by the absence of formal arms control. “There is no prudential wisdom in exaggerating the danger of nuclear war by an order of magnitude, as both sides of the political spectrum in this country have been doing for half a dozen years,” he wrote.¹⁴

Moreover, the desired balance between competition and cooperation is not about finding absolute comfort, but some degree of mutually acceptable discomfort. James Schlesinger wrote in 1985, “Although I am a strong proponent of arms control, it can never reduce the Soviet threat to a point at which we would be comfortable…. There is no conceivable set of arms control measures that would persuade the Soviet Union to ease the discomfort that the United States feels in bearing risk. For to do so means that the Soviets would be obliged to accept what would appear to them to be an intolerable level of risk.”¹⁵

Arms control should be asked to do less rather than more in times of flux. Although some U.S. experts in the aftermath of SALT II advocated for a “a new set of grandiose goals for a new round of negotiations,” Richard Burt, later chief START I negotiator, saw value in 1981 in “asking arms control to do less instead of more.”¹⁶ A goal could be as simple as “registering and codifying an existing balance of forces,” a useful outcome given the uncertainties that plagued U.S. political leaders and military planners during the early 1960s.¹⁷

Finally, the United States must articulate a simple proposal grounded in the realities of strategic modernization cycles. George Kennan wrote a short article in 1981 titled “A Modest Proposal,” in which arms control negotiations were conceived as “not a way to escape from the weapons race; they are an integral part of it.”¹⁸ Kennan’s proposal was geared to his moment: immediate, across-the-board 50 percent reductions of nuclear arsenals, affecting in equal measure all parts of their delivery.

The Least Improbable Option

The end of New START represents an important moment, asking arms control and deterrence experts to avoid temptations toward alarmism and silver bullets. If something is to take the place of this treaty, it needs to be a meaningful proposal. It needs to reflect an understanding of why New START itself was meaningful.

New START worked for several reasons. It was suited for the moment, when each side was set on its strategic modernization track and when New START knew where it was headed over the next 15 years. In the United States, the treaty represented a bipartisan consensus, balanced between the desire for a follow-on agreement and for a nuclear recapitalization program. It was well constructed and durable, providing needed predictability and dialogue for a problematic relationship over 15 years. It was limited in scope to what it could do well and left thornier issues to other dialogues.

What then should replace it? Arms control can take many forms. Legally binding treaties are difficult, risky, and time consuming. Unsurprisingly, lengthy searches have been made to find easier paths. Yet, making political agreements with Beijing and Moscow have been just as difficult as legally binding ones. Those states have shown little interest in following U.S.-proposed norms. U.S. conceptions of transparency, strategic stability, and risk reduction have largely failed as organizing principles. Curbing non-nuclear technologies has proven challenging amid competition for advantage.¹⁹

As a result, alternative paths to legally binding agreements have not been found. There is the famous Sherlock Holmes line, “[W]hen you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” The truth is that legally binding arms control remains improbable in the short term and yet likely the best path forward in the long term.

The value is due to process. Process forces agencies to do their homework on what systems to limit and what the limits should be. Process creates mutual buy-in within the U.S. interagency bureaucracy, between the U.S. executive and legislative branches, between the United States and its allies, and between the countries participating in the negotiation. Process encourages the sides to table and agree on a framework before real negotiations begin, forcing a balance between desirable and achievable goals. Process generates the formation of a group of people who participate in something tangible that solders deterrence and arms control together.

After New START ends, the United States should take the lead in proposing a new legally binding agreement. It should be on the one thing where the contours of nuclear competition are clear: Over the next decade, China, Russia, and the United States will move together toward a multilateral world at higher levels of nuclear weapons. At the end of this road, they will all be at higher numbers but with the same deterrence challenges as today. The goal would be to offer a U.S.-proposed vision of how to manage the transition to this new point and what we should do when we get there.

The U.S. vision should be developed in consultation with Congress because nothing meaningful can be done without its support. There is a new bipartisan consensus to build between those preparing for the complexities of the “two-peer” deterrence environment, those desiring to focus on China and its nuclear expansion, those seeking renewed diplomacy with allies and partners, and those wanting to limit the costs of defense spending or nuclear modernization. With limited means, the United States must decide on what to focus, and a sound arms control policy plays a role in this choice.

The United States should make the framework of the negotiation clear: it is prepared to talk about numerical limits grounded by its own internal calculations of U.S. deterrence requirements if China and Russia come to the table and are clear about what they have in their arsenals and where they are going with those weapons systems. The parties then can talk about how best to manage this process together. If only one of those two adversaries comes to the table, the United States should be willing to discuss an information-based agreement without numerical limits. The United States should not constrain itself numerically if one of the other major parties is not constrained.

The United States also should bring France and the United Kingdom to the table. They should be unafraid to come. A united effort among these three allies would create more leverage on China and Russia. It would improve bipartisan consensus in Washington. It would highlight France and the UK as independent centers of nuclear decision-making. It would transform the P5 format recognized under the NPT into a productive venue for discussing this framework.

The United States also should be willing to discuss non-nuclear weapons systems of concern to the nuclear balance and bring its own list of concerns to the table. There is no harm in listening, in seeing what adversaries fear, and in discerning how much they are willing to pay in other areas to alleviate those fears. The United States should make clear that this is an agreement centered on nuclear weapons. Progress on other issues, if proven fruitful, can be spun off onto their own tracks.

Many policymakers and analysts are likely to judge such a modest proposal as too limited. Yet, it is meaningful and realistic, something the moment requires. This legally binding agreement can be criticized as codifying the anticipated future status quo at higher numbers, but such a future is likely beyond the power of arms control to alter. If arms control is asked to do less, it can help make the probable transition to higher numbers more stable.

Such a proposal also is probably too vague for many people. An agreed proposal takes real time, bandwidth, and energy to develop and execute. Specifics cannot be anticipated in advance or exist independent of internally calculated deterrence requirements. They also will take time to negotiate. The most important point after an end is where 
to begin.

China and Russia might very well dismiss this modest proposal. The United States should not chase after them. It simply should make clear that absent a finished agreement, it will continue with its nuclear modernization program. It will cooperate closely with London and Paris. When other countries press Washington for further action, it should point to its post-New START proposal and suggest that their diplomats engage Beijing and Moscow directly. If nothing else, the United States will have put out its marker on what should follow New START.

ENDNOTES

1. New START central limits are 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments; 1,550 nuclear warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments; and 800 deployed and nondeployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.

2. Science Direct, “Unstable Equilibrium,” n.d., (accessed December 31, 2024).

3. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, “America’s Strategic Posture,” October 2023.

4. “Adapting the U.S. Approach to Arms Control and Nonproliferation to a New Era,” remarks 
at the Arms Control Association meeting, June 7, 2024.

5. Theresa Hitchens, “DoD ‘Exploring’ Options for Nuclear Buildup as Part of Strategic Review,” Breaking Defense, August 1, 2024.

6. Brad Roberts and William Tobey, eds., “The Inflection Point and the U.S. Nuclear Security Enterprise,” Center for Global Security Research, October 2023.

7. For a discussion on the arms control interregnum topic, see Mike Albertson, “Facing the Coming Arms Control Interregnum: Workshop Summary,” Center for Global Security Research, n.d., (workshop held August 9-10, 2022).

8. This insight is increasingly finding its way into speeches by U.S. officials. See Alexandra Bell, “The Future of Arms Control,” U.S. Department of State, September 19, 2023.

9. For one excellent compilation of essays from this period, see Bernard F. Halloran, ed., “Essays on Arms Control and National Security (25th Anniversary Edition),” U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, No. 123, 1986.

10. A notable one took place at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in May 1981. For the conference discussions, see Warren Heckrotte and George C. Smith, eds., Arms Control in Transition: Proceedings of the Livermore Arms Control Conference (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983).

11. For an excellent recent publication, see Susan Colbourn, Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022).

12. Lawrence Freedman, “Arms Control: No Hiding Place,” SAIS Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter-Spring 1983): 4.

13. Heckrotte and Smith, Arms Control in Transition, p. 11.

14. Thomas Schelling, “What Went Wrong With Arms Control?” in Bernard F. Halloran, ed., “Essays on Arms Control and National Security (25th Anniversary Edition),” U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, No. 123, 1986, p. 336.

15. James Schlesinger, “Maintaining Global Stability,” in Bernard F. Halloran, ed., “Essays on Arms Control and National Security (25th Anniversary Edition),” U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, No. 123, 1986, p. 395.

16. Richard Burt, “Defense Policy and Arms Control: Defining the Problem,” in Bernard F. Halloran, ed., “Essays on Arms Control and National Security (25th Anniversary Edition),” U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, No. 123, 1986, p. 201.

17. Ibid., pp. 200-201.

18. George Kennan, “A Modest Proposal,” in Bernard F. Halloran, ed., “Essays on Arms Control and National Security (25th Anniversary Edition),” U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, No. 123, 1986, p. 133.

19. For an excellent recent analysis, see Anna Peczeli, “Recalibrating Arms Control for Emerging Technologies,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 4 (2024): 155-175.