... Congress and the Pentagon, and it is possible to push for more.
How will Russia and China respond to a major build-up of U.S. strategic nuclear forces?
Aleksey Arbatov:... ... is not essential for credible nuclear deterrence. Russia has not even maxed out its New START limits, often falling well below them (especially in terms of deployed delivery... ... that the U.S. has nuclear-armed allies, a substantial arsenal of strategic-range non-nuclear weapons, which is growing both quantitatively and qualitatively (and can also...
... obligations, the country made notable strides in developing advanced missile systems. Yet, the regime governing missile and nuclear weapons continued to deteriorate. In 2019, the Trump administration initiated the withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range ... ... (including the ABM Treaty), suspicions of new system developments, and the presence of such systems in third countries, notably China. During Trump’s first term, the extension of New START was nearly derailed, only to be salvaged under the Biden administration. In 2023, amid the SMO, Russia suspended its ...
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Getting China involved in nuclear arms limitations is difficult. China, of course, has always been involved in the more extensive nuclear negotiations in recent decades: it has joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Unlike the U.S. and Russia, China has a No First Use (NFU) doctrine, saying the PLA will never use nuclear weapons first. Chinese officials say that they are uninterested in joining Russian-US agreements like INF and New START since they have fewer nuclear weapons than Russia or the U.S. They also claim, not very credibly, that their weapons do not threaten other countries. A more recent argument one hears in Beijing is that it's impractical and too complex to enlarge ...
... administration officials have focused more on the fact that the treaty imposes no limitations on China’s nuclear forces.
Second, traditional, legally-binding agreements that are subject... ... even impossible to ratify any national agreement today, especially with regards to nuclear weapons, the ongoing U.S.-Russia confrontation further complicates this process... ... forward, it is possible that instead of traditional bilateral regimes like INF and New START, future agreements will favor more flexible, multilateral formats like that...
