By Li Zhe

On February 3, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that Moscow and Washington had agreed to extend the New START treaty by five years until February 5, 2026, with the contents unchanged. “Especially during times of tension, verifiable limits on Russia’s intercontinental-range nuclear weapons are vitally important,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, adding that the US will make use of the five-year extension to reach an arms control treaty with the Kremlin covering Russia’s nuclear weapons.

The New START arms control treaty is the last remaining nuclear arms control pact between the US and Russia. In the short term, renewing the pact is a wise move of pressing the “pause” button on nuclear arms race taken by both sides and a great boost to global strategic stability. However, the extension doesn’t mean the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is secure, and the pair can rest without worries. The two countries will have to carry out multiple rounds of dialogues and negotiations on further nuclear arms control. There remain many obstacles on the way to reaching a consensus on a new treaty.

Factors unrelated to nuclear weapons may become the new bargaining chips between Moscow and Washington. In recent years, the two countries have both developed non-nuclear strategic weapons at a fast pace, and aggressive strategic options such as hypersonic weapons, advanced anti-missile systems, space forces, and cyberspace forces, which are equally capable of affecting the bilateral strategic stability, have become so striking that there is no way to circumvent them.

The US wants to include hypersonic weapons in the new arms control treaty because Russia has obtained an edge in that field over recent years, while Russia hopes to limit anti-missile systems with the new treaty as it’s always been concerned about those systems that the US has deployed in East Europe.

Tactical nuclear weapons are the focus of common concern. The US has made headway with the W76-2 "low yield" nuclear warhead and the B61-12 nuclear bomb since the Trump administration restarted the development of tactical nuclear weapons. Although Washington claimed that it only aimed to have more flexible and diverse means of deterrence, the deployment and use of tactical nuclear weapons have practically lowered the threshold of using nuclear weapons, and this aggressive strategic option has posed a severe challenge to global strategic stability. Therefore, tactical nuclear weapons may be included in the Russia-US negotiationson the new arms control treaty.

Ever since it announced to quit the INF Treaty in early 2018, the US has been trying to bring China into the multilateral arms control negotiation, and it is very likely to bring this up again during the negotiations with Russia. By expanding the bilateral treaty into a trilateral one, Washington is aimed to limit other countries to guarantee its absolute nuclear superiority.

In sum, the extension of the New START treaty is to a large extent a temporary "make-peace handshake" between the two nuclear powers to save the immense cost of an arms race and transform nuclear force structures. America’s agreement to the extension is considered by some experts as a “shrewd move” rather than a genuine concern for nuclear arms control and disarmament. From now on, the road of nuclear arms control remains thorny, and more sincerity and efforts are required to truly realize effective nuclear arms control, maintain the global nuclearnon-proliferation mechanism, and safeguard strategic stability in the world.

(The author is with the Foreign Military Studies Department under the PLA's Academy of Military Sciences.)