Although the United States and Russia have recently fought over the Ukraine issue, cooperation between the two countries in some areas has not been fully interrupted. A few days ago, Anton Klopkov, an expert of the "Valdai" club and head of the Russian Energy and Security Center, proposed that the United States and Russia should begin to discuss the extension of the New START Treaty as soon as possible.
It has been learned that this treaty is the only remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia at present, and is of extremely great significance to promoting nuclear disarmament work between the United States and Russia and ensuring global nuclear security. After Biden became president last January, he and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on the extension of the New START Treaty. The two sides agreed to extend the treaty for a period of five years until February 5, 2026.
One might argue that the New START Treaty would not expire until four years later, and that it would not be too early to begin discussing a new round of extension of the Treaty. However, in view of the current situation, it is "sooner rather than later" for the new round of negotiations on the extension of the New Start of Strategic Arms Treaty.
There are three main reasons for this. First, the strategic competition between the United States and Russia has intensified, there is a lack of trust between them, and there is great difficulty in the negotiation work. In recent years, relations between the United States and Russia have become very tense over the Syrian issue, the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine, and human rights issues. After the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War, US-Russian relations have fallen to a historical freezing point, and they are only one step away from severing diplomatic relations.
Against the backdrop of intensified confrontation between the United States and Russia, nuclear forces play an extremely important role in the game between the United States and Russia. For Russia, which does not have the upper hand in conventional military power, nuclear power is the only tool it can rely on in its quest to maintain a strategic balance of power with the United States.
During the Trump administration, the United States and Russia had a series of problems in the negotiations on the extension of the New START Treaty, resulting in the failure of the United States and Russia to reach an agreement when Trump left office, and the treaty almost failed. Referring to the difficulty of previous negotiations, the United States and Russia must consult as soon as possible.
Second, the development of new technologies has brought new challenges to the US-Russia nuclear arms control negotiations. In the past, when the two countries discussed the extension of the New START Treaty, the main controversy faced by the two countries was in terms of the number of nuclear warheads and nuclear vehicles, but now some technologies or equipment that seem to have nothing to do with nuclear weapons have deeply affected the nuclear arms control negotiations between the two countries, such as anti-missile technology and hypersonic missiles. In recent years, hypersonic missiles have become a major topic of concern for the United States and Russia.
At present, Russia's hypersonic missile development is relatively smooth, with "Pioneer", "Zircon" and "Dagger" three hypersonic missiles, covering land, sea and air three platforms. However, the development of hypersonic missiles in the United States has encountered trouble, and the AGM-183A hypersonic missile has test-fired "triple kneeling". In order to eliminate the imbalance between the United States and Russia in hypersonic missiles, the United States proposed to include hypersonic missiles in the scope of nuclear arms control and control, but Russia was not willing.
Third, the United States is bent on allowing China to join the US-Russia nuclear arms control negotiations. In recent years, China's military budget has begun to increase, and great progress has been made in national defense construction. This move is a necessary move to comply with China's development and ensure national security, but the United States has taken this opportunity to vigorously exaggerate the "China threat theory" and believe that China is expanding its nuclear arsenal, so it requires China to join the US-Russia nuclear arms control negotiations and establish a nuclear security mechanism that restricts each other by three parties.
On the issue of whether it is necessary for China to join the US-Russia nuclear arms control negotiations, the United States and Russia have their own opinions, the US side demands that it be necessary, and the Russian side is open.00 Hlopkov suggested that if Washington wants the U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control talks to go well, it should abandon its attempt to ask China to join.
It is precisely for the above three reasons that the nuclear arms control work of the United States and Russia has made slow progress and has not achieved substantive results. Last April, the United States and Russia disclosed information about their respective nuclear arsenals, the first nuclear arsenal data disclosed to each other since the extension of the New Start of Strategic Arms Treaty.
The data shows that compared with the data disclosed in September 2020, the size of Russia's nuclear arsenal has not decreased, but has increased, the number of nuclear warheads in the deployed state has increased by 109, and the number of nuclear vehicles has increased by 7. Although the size of the US nuclear arsenal has declined to a certain extent, the decline is negligible, and the number of nuclear warheads deployed in the state has decreased by 100 pieces, and the number of nuclear vehicles has decreased by 24 pieces.
Except for the small change in the size of the nuclear arsenal, both the United States and Russia are undergoing the upgrading of nuclear vehicles. For example, the U.S. Air Force's new generation of stealth strategic bomberS, the B-21, has rolled off the production line to begin ground testing.
Previously, UN Secretary-General Guterres said that the number of nuclear warheads in the world has reached 13,000, and the number of nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia accounts for 90% of the global total. It is not difficult to see from this that the United States and Russia have a special and unshirkable responsibility in nuclear disarmament and the maintenance of global nuclear security, and it will not be too early to talk about the extension of the New START Treaty at any time.