With Russia’s suspension of the New START Treaty, the last remaining constraint on the world’s two largest nuclear powers is set to expire in 2026. The Department of Defense estimates that China could have over 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030, creating a three-competitor future. At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence, including for military applications, have injected new and evolving risks. President Trump has said he would welcome “denuclearization” talks with China and Russia, following in the footsteps of President Ronald Reagan, who stated with Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Call on Congress to support renewed nuclear diplomacy with Russia and China and reject actions such as the resumption of nuclear testing that would undermine strategic stability.
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In July, President Trump acknowledged the need to maintain the expiring New START limitations, calling their expiration “a big problem for the world.” More recently, President Putin publicly offered to voluntarily adhere to the treaty’s quantitative limits for an additional year. The Trump administration has not yet responded to this proposal.
U.S. voluntary adherence to limits on deployed nuclear weapons is complicated by emerging views in Trump’s administration, including its pursuit of a continental missile defense system called “Golden Dome” projected to cost anywhere from $150 billion to $500 billion dollars. This comes as costs to modernize the U.S. nuclear weapons program spiral out of control, with costs of nearly $1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
