The last remaining nuclear arms pact between Russia and the United States has expired, setting the stage for what many fear could be a new, unconstrained nuclear arms race.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last year said he was ready to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington did the same, but US President Donald Trump has been noncommittal.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday night said in a statement that it was ‘no longer bound by obligations within the treaty’ and was ‘free to choose its next steps’.
Florian Eblenkamp, advocacy officer with The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) told BADVIBES he believes the world is already in the middle of an arms race.
‘What people often get wrong is that the Cold War stayed “cold” because leaders realised the risk of nuclear war was too high,’ he explained.
This realisation led to a series of arms control and disarmament agreements, almost all of which are now gone or dysfunctional – making the risk ‘even higher’ now than it was in the Cold War, he warned.
‘This arms race may not stay cold forever. Nuclear weapons are becoming “thinkable” to use again. That is why we must continue promoting a universal ban,’ he added.
The New Start Treaty, signed in 2010 by then-US president Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, restricted each side to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on no more than 700 missiles and bombers – deployed and ready for use.
Yet, the agreement, while important on capping nuclear limits, was a sort of ‘band-aid’ for the nuclear issue, Eblenkamp said.
He also said the idea that each country should have its own nuclear weapons in the name of ‘safety’ is a foolish idea.
‘Quite the opposite would happen,’ he said. ‘This is especially true for countries in Europe. A potential nuclear war between the US and Russia would be fought without European governments having any control over that risk.’
Eblenkamp argued that removing American nuclear weapons stationed in European countries and removing Russian nuclear weapons stationed in Belarus would be a significant step toward sanity.
When all is said and done, the expiration of the New Start treaty is a symptom of a larger issue.
‘With trust eroding between the US and Russia, there will be more reliance on other countries to facilitate this arms race. The UK and other European countries are right in the middle of it, and that’s a problem.
‘I don’t think anyone feels safer because Donald Trump has control over nuclear weapons on British soil,’ he said.
