New Start Stops submission is provided with our thanks to Morton Holbrook III, J.D., adjunct professor of political science and a retired U.S. diplomat (foreign services officer).
As a diplomat, he served in Taipei (1976-78), Beijing (1979-83 and 1996-99), Shenyang (1990-93), Tokyo (1993-96), Manila (2000-04) and Paris (2004-07). In China, he helped open the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 1979, was involved in negotiating the U.S.-China Consular Convention and drafted human rights reports. He also served as principal officer (U.S. Consul General) in Shenyang.
Professor Holbrook is available at morton.holbrook@kwc.edu
New Start Stops
The most important American goal in the Middle East is to ensure that Iran, whose leaders openly proclaim hostility to the United States, does not produce nuclear weapons. Equally important, the US should ensure that hostile countries already possessing nuclear weapons, that is, Russia, China and North Korea, do not use them. The expiration this past February of the last remaining US-Russia arms control agreement, the New Start Treaty, serves is a clear warning signal for a problem that we ignore at our peril.
Cuba: good policy or good fortune?
The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was the closest the world has come to nuclear war. The USSR’s action in placing nuclear-armed missiles 90 miles from the United States was met by President Kennedy’s warning in the evening of November 22,1962, that, even today, or especially today, bears repeating: “It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.” As a college student in Nashville listening to country music on the radio, which was suddenly interrupted by President’s speech, even I knew that this was serious business! Whether the peaceful resolution of that crisis was due to adroit diplomacy, military pressure or blind luck remains in controversy today, with all three factors seemingly in play.
55 years of arms control agreements…
What is clear today, emphasized by the crisis in Iran, is that the danger of nuclear war has not gone away. It was Kennedy himself, in fact, who achieved an initial success, only a year after the missile crisis, in securing a test-ban treaty with the U.S.S.R. that remains in force today, calling for elimination of nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater. Later negotiations, starting with President Nixon and continuing under every President until this past February, produced the SALT I and II, INF, START I and II, SORT, and finally the New Start Agreement; these treaties (not all of which went into full effect) aimed to limit or reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons.
Inspection Arms!
Of particular note, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was the first and only agreement calling for the elimination of an entire class of weapons, intermediate-range nuclear-armed missiles. President Reagan himself played a key personal role in endorsing the “zero option” in this treaty in talks with USSR leader Gorbachev. Reagan’s chief assistant, and head of the US negotiating team, was Max Kampelman, then Counselor at the US Department of State. As a member of Kampelman’s staff, what impressed me the most was the unprecedented, extensive, and intrusive verification system, in keeping with Reagan’s then-famous call to ”trust but verify,” which the President learned to say in Russian, for emphasis!
This system, implemented in the United States by the newly-created On-Site Inspection Agency, included two permanent on-site stations, exchanges of vast amounts of information on types and locations of weapons, and short-notice on-ground inspections by both sides in cases of suspected violations. One result of the INF Treaty was the destruction of hundreds of missiles, witnessed by observers from both sides. Unfortunately another result, despite these measures, was accusations of cheating by both sides, including, on the U.S. side, by both President Obama and President Trump. Finally, President Trump took the U.S. out of the INF treaty in 2019.
Start Again:
The New Start treaty, negotiated under President Obama, set precise and equal numerical limits, totaling 3050, on the most lethal nuclear weapons. Like the INF Treaty, it set up a vigorous inspection regime – and as with the INF Treaty, each side accused the other of violations. Nevertheless, the Treaty continued in force under Presidents Obama, Biden, and Trump, finally expiring, in accordance with its own terms, on Feb. 5, 2026.
Why Bother?
Why did the United States and Russia both continue to honor a treaty despite suspicions of cheating? For the U.S., it was precisely because the inspection regime did provide enormous amounts of information. It was clear beyond doubt that this was not a case like that in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, where reports of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), famously endorsed by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell as the primary rationale for the US-led war against Iraq, proved to be groundless. In addition, the New Start inspection regime also made it unmistakably clear that the U.S. could not simply eliminate the nuclear threat from Russia in a quick surgical strike. There was, and remains, what some call a balance of terror, suggesting that nuclear war is unwinnable and therefore unthinkable.
What now?
Given the verifiably huge nuclear arsenal of Russia, and the growing nuclear weapon stocks of China and North Korea, the only clear and sane solution, however imperfect, is diplomacy, or, in a saying attributed to Churchill, “jaw jaw is better than war war.” Talking doesn’t prevent war, of course. Perhaps the best we can say is that there has in fact been no use of nuclear weapons since World War II, and the steady stream of U.S.-U.S.S.R./Russia talks and agreements may have contributed to this result. For sure, these talks focused the attention of top leaders on both sides on the dangers of nuclear war. And in fact the current wars in Ukraine, where Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons, and in Iran, where the U.S. seeks to stop their production, certainly remind us that the prospect of nuclear war is ever-present today, lurking in the background of on-going conflicts.
A Start for New Talks?
Following the expiration of the New Start Treaty, a top U.S. official noted on Feb. 23 that its ending “does not mean the United States is walking away from or ignoring arms control. In fact, quite the opposite is true. It has been President Trump calling for a better agreement.” The official endorsed in particular moving towards a multilateral agreement among several countries, that would reflect the reality today that the possession or threat of possessing nuclear weapons is no longer limited to just the United States and Russia, but includes other countries, most notably, and most dangerously, China.
A Legal Framework:
Certainly, in terms of treaty-making, international law is completely flexible: whether treaties are bilateral, multilateral, or a creative hybrid, what matters is not the format or the number of parties, but the content and sustainability. President Trump’s trip to China this month offers an opportunity to get the ball rolling with Beijing. Beyond that, the US should, as before, take the lead in meaningful international talks, particularly with Russia, China, and North Korea, on nuclear arms controls, to include tight inspection regimes and destruction of existing weapons to the extent compatible with U.S. national security, along the lines of the INF Treaty. Perhaps, as with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world can be lucky again, on purpose!