Upon entering office on January 20, 2021, President-elect Joe Biden will have 16 days before the last remaining treaty limiting US and Russian nuclear arsenals, the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), expires.
The treaty limits the two countries' strategic nuclear arsenals to no more than 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 deployed missiles and heavy bombers each. The two countries met these limitations by the implementation deadline in 2018.
If the treaty expires on February 5, it will be the first time since 1972 that the United States and Russia would have no negotiated constraints on their strategic nuclear arsenals.
Read the full op-ed, published Dec. 14, 2020, in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.