New START talks as a path to Ukraine peace
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to meet with Donald Trump to discuss ending the Ukrainian conflict and resuming arms control talks after the American leader told the Davos elite last week that he’d like to do both with his Russian counterpart as soon as possible.
Their reference to resuming arms control talks is significant since the New START will expire in February 2026, but the negotiation process has been frozen since 2023. Background briefings on the subject can be found here, here and here.
To summarize, global strategic stability is, to a large degree, dependent on the balance of nuclear and associated forces (like delivery systems) between Russia and the US, the countries with the largest such arsenals by far.
They realized near the end of the Old Cold War how dangerous it was to produce so many thousands of nuclear weapons and how financially onerous such programs were, and ergo agreed to partial cuts and monitoring mechanisms.
This helped alleviate their security dilemma, which refers to one side’s defensively intended moves (such as building nukes for deterrence purposes) being perceived by their rival as offensively intended (such as preparing for an overwhelming first strike) and thus catalyzing an escalation cycle.
Their security dilemma returned, though, due to NATO’s eastward expansion. It then reached a new dangerous phase with their proxy war in Ukraine and can further worsen if the New START expires without a replacement.
For that reason, Trump decided to make good on his campaign pledge to revive the denuclearization talks with Russia and China that he claimed were on the brink of success before the 2020 election, which explains why he brought this