How to restore some semblance of order in the nuclear jungle, where appetites have been sharpening for years? Barely installed, the Biden administration had no other choice but to take this issue head-on. On February 5, a major text was going to expire: the New Start treaty. This is the last vestige of the post-Cold War arms control architecture still in force, which limits the number of nuclear warheads and nuclear launchers deployed by Russia and the United States.
Much awaited by many countries – starting with France – the decision of the Biden administration on this sensitive subject fell on Thursday, January 21. If the principle of the extension of New Start did not raise real questions, the duration of it was the subject of significant speculation, dividing the experts within the Biden team. Some said they were in favor of a short extension, of one or two years, to make it possible to wrest other concessions from Russia. During a press briefing, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki raised doubts: the United States wish “Lead to a five-year extension”, she indicated. That is to say the maximum duration allowed by the treaty.
The consequences of this decision relate as much to the symbol as to complex strategic realities. It was former President Barack Obama who signed this treaty in 2010 with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev. At the time, he had made it one of the cornerstones of his foreign policy as well as a domestic success, by wresting – with the help of Joe Biden, his vice-president – the two-thirds majority in the Senate.
“Mutual transparency”
For his part, once elected, Donald Trump criticized New Start in 2017 during an interview with Vladimir Putin. The Republican President’s concern was to strengthen his room for maneuver in the arms race with China, not constrained by this treaty. This Thursday, even before any official announcement on New Start, Donald Trump’s ex-special envoy for disarmament, Marshall Billingslea, criticized on Twitter the “Dizzying lack of negotiating skill” of the new administration, which, according to him, would give up an important lever of pressure on Moscow.
In the opinion of many experts, however, New Start has never been a very binding treaty. It limits the number of nuclear warheads to 1,550 (compared to 2,200 previously). The number of launchers must not exceed 700. A limited effort for the United States and Russia, which had from the start “Sized their arsenals to be under the ceilings”, decrypts Corentin Brustlein, director of the center for security studies at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI). “The value of New Start lies less in the reduction of armaments than in mutual transparency”, according to the researcher.
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