End of New Start: Nuclear stability in peril

In a chilling reminder of Cold War-era brinkmanship, The Financial Times warns that the lapse of the New Start treaty marks the first time in over half a century that the United States and Russia have no legal limits on their deployed nuclear arsenals. What once provided a measure of predictability and restraint now lies in ruins, leaving the world exposed to miscalculations, renewed arms races, and dangerous proliferation risks.

The article explains that New Start, which capped deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 per country, also included a verification regime—on-site inspections, data exchanges, and notifications of missile or bomber movements—that helped prevent misunderstandings between the two nuclear superpowers. Although these mechanisms had been suspended since February 2023 amid the Ukraine conflict, the treaty’s formal expiry on Thursday removes even the legal framework to reinstate them. Without inspections or transparency, neither side can reliably know whether the other is increasing deployed warheads, creating the very environment that sparked the Cold War arms race decades ago.

The lapse also raises profound global implications. A renewed U.S.-Russia build-up could pressure other nuclear powers to accelerate their programs. China, already projected to reach 1,000 warheads by 2030, might feel compelled to expand faster to counterbalance a combined Russian-American arsenal. Regional powers like Turkey or Saudi Arabia, observing the breakdown of legal constraints, could even consider developing nuclear capabilities, increasing the risk of proliferation and destabilising sensitive regions. The article emphasises that the U.S. president’s insistence that future arms control frameworks must include China, while strategic in concept, misses the immediate need: a short-term rollover of New Start would have preserved stability while negotiating broader, multilateral agreements.

The Financial Times critiques both Washington and Beijing for missed opportunities. By refusing a one-year extension proposed by Russia, the United States signalled a preference for a “new, improved, and modernised” treaty but left no safety net to prevent rapid escalation. Meanwhile, China’s reluctance to participate, citing its comparatively smaller arsenal, ignores the indirect incentives that an uncontrolled U.S.-Russia arms race creates for Beijing itself. The article argues that cooperative engagement between these three nuclear powers, starting with restoring the last legal safeguards, is crucial to containing proliferation and avoiding the return of large-scale arms competition.

Ultimately, the opinion piece frames New Start’s lapse as more than a bureaucratic failure; it is a geopolitical turning point with existential stakes. The world’s two largest nuclear powers, accounting for nearly 90 per cent of the global stockpile, have abdicated the last binding legal mechanism designed to prevent miscalculation and escalation. The article underscores that a prudent path forward requires immediate reinstatement of limits, transparency measures, and multilateral dialogue—including with emerging nuclear states—to avert a spiral into instability that could reverberate far beyond Washington and Moscow.