Strategic stability on the brink of collapse

Independent Military Review, 1.07.2025

Photo: Alexei Arbatov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

In six months, the Treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) expires. However, the topic of nuclear disarmament is completely absent from the official discourse of the great powers against the backdrop of the Ukrainian and Iranian-Israeli conflicts. Executive Editor of “NG-Dipkurier” (“NG Diplomatic Courier”) Yury PANIEV spoke with Academician Alexei ARBATOV, the head of the Centre for International Security at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, about the risks of losing the nuclear weapons control system created over the past six decades.

Question: Alexei Georgievich, could the conflict between Israel, the US and Iran escalate into nuclear war?

Alexei Arbatov: The US entry into the war is undoubtedly a major escalation step in the conflict. Currently, the degree of damage to Iranian nuclear infrastructure is assessed differently, which could be a prerequisite for a new conflict, unless, of course, diplomatic settlement is achieved along the lines of the 2015 agreement on radical reduction and transparency of the Iranian nuclear programme. The reason for the recent war on Israel’s part, and then the US, was that Iran in its [nuclear] programme came close to creating nuclear weapons, especially in terms of uranium enrichment up to 60%, which is difficult to justify for peaceful purposes. In this regard, it is worth remembering that the current crisis would not have happened if President Donald Trump had not torn up the aforementioned agreement during his first term in 2018, an agreement reached after long and difficult negotiations. After all, essentially Iran is now being blamed for high enrichment and accumulation of uranium, which would have been impossible if that agreement had been preserved. And maintaining the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is hardly helped by the fact that two nuclear states, one of which is not a member of the Treaty, massively used force against a non-nuclear state that is an NPT member, whatever doubts may be expressed about its nuclear programme. It is possible that Iran will now withdraw from the Treaty, take a course towards rapid restoration of its atomic industry and purposeful creation of nuclear munitions. Then the victory of Israel and the US would become truly Pyrrhic.

Question: Which leads to more general questions. The other day the President of Cuba called on all countries possessing nuclear weapons to destroy them to “guarantee complete peace”. How realistic is such an appeal?

Alexei Arbatov: It is a good idea, though hardly original. The call for complete nuclear disarmament was contained in the preambles of all treaties on this subject over the past six decades, starting with the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. During this time, dozens of agreements on gradual and partial disarmament measures were signed, and in total the number of nuclear arsenals in the world decreased from approximately 60,000 to 10,000 units, and nuclear testing completely ceased.

Many thought that universal and complete nuclear disarmament was already on the horizon. However, it turned out that it, like the horizon, proved to be an imaginary line that recedes as one approaches it. Paradoxically, at the present moment nuclear disarmament is further from us than ever before. No one knows where and how to move in the near future, and disagreements between countries on this matter are deeper and sharper than in the past.

Question: In February 2026, the New START treaty signed in 2010 expires. Is not it time for Russia and the US to sit down at the negotiating table to agree on an agreement that will replace New START?

Alexei Arbatov: Not only is it time, we are already late. Let me remind you that in February 2021, New START was extended for five years, which under its Article 14 can only be done once. Now there are six months left until the second term expires. A new treaty cannot be agreed in this time, because it will be much more complex than the current one. When preliminary consultations on this topic began in 2021, deep disagreements in the positions of the US and Russia immediately emerged. This presupposed lengthy and difficult negotiations, but these did not follow because the US interrupted this dialogue due to the start of the Ukrainian armed conflict. True, after some time they proposed resuming it, but then Russia refused – in view of the anti-Russian policy of the US and the West as a whole. When the new administration came to power in the US, Donald Trump said something positive about nuclear disarmament several times, though essentially nonsensical. However, Russia did not take him at his word, despite the fact that Washington seemed to retreat from the anti-Russian line and voted together with us in the UN Security Council on the Ukrainian issue. Perhaps in Moscow they did not take Trump’s free improvisations on this topic seriously. Perhaps there is no desire to start the most complex dialogue again, or possibly some decision was made but we were not informed about it.

Question: What will happen if Russia and the US don’t reach an agreement?

Alexei Arbatov: For the first time in 55 years during which strategic arms negotiations were conducted, we will find ourselves in a treaty-legal vacuum in this area. There will be no limitations, no transparency, no predictability in the main sphere of global military balance and nuclear arms control.

The parties will implement their strategic forces modernisation programmes outside any treaty-legal framework. We will only guess what the other side is doing and rely on fragmentary data from space and other types of intelligence. In the absence of reliable predictability, potential threats will be exaggerated. Unlimited and extremely costly nuclear and newest conventional arms races will begin, with the addition of various destructive technologies. Moreover, it will henceforth be multilateral, since the prevailing nuclear bipolarity is being replaced by multipolarity.

Question: What path is China taking now? According to the latest SIPRI report, China is building up its nuclear arsenals faster than all other nuclear-weapon states…

Alexei Arbatov: China officially categorically denies this and states that it is doing nothing beyond the minimally necessary. But such a vague formulation can accommodate anything, and all other countries can say exactly the same. Numerous official and independent sources, including data from commercial satellites, testify that China is building up its strategic weapons faster than anyone. Apparently, it seeks to catch up with the US (and by default – Russia), which moved far ahead in previous decades. Moreover, in some newest weapons systems, China has already overtaken the superpowers. In five, at most ten years, China will equal them or even overtake them.

Question: Do you think the prospect of discussing nuclear weapons in a trilateral US-Russia-China format is zero in the near future?

Alexei Arbatov: It is unlikely if only because the American proposal already made on this matter was rejected by the other two parties – Russia and China. Nuclear weapons can be limited by treaties not just randomly, but based on serious interest of the parties for national security considerations. Beijing is completely unconcerned about what nuclear forces Moscow has and develops – we are strategic partners and do not threaten each other. Unlike the period of the 1960s – 1980s, at the official level Russia also considers Chinese military programmes quite justified, since they are directed against the US and its allies. This creates a striking contrast with the negotiations that the USSR/Russia and the US conducted for 40 years, concluding about a dozen most important agreements on limiting and reducing nuclear weapons, based on the most serious interest in limiting the other side’s potential. But we do not yet have a basis for such negotiations with China.

Question: Is there such a basis between the US and China?

Alexei Arbatov: In principle yes, America is extremely concerned about China’s strategic weapons build-up, and the latter is not indifferent to what weapons Washington has and will have. But the second objective basis for such negotiations is absent here – approximate parity, since China still seriously lags behind the US in strategic weapons. Inequality is objectively an obstacle to negotiations. The lagging side won’t agree to legal legitimisation of its lag in the final treaty. And the leading side won’t go for unilateral reduction of its forces for the sake of concluding a treaty. It is no coincidence that fruitful negotiations on this issue between the USSR and US only began in the late 1960s, when the Soviet Union achieved strategic parity with the US, and they realised the meaninglessness of further strategic missile build-up.

Question: Does this mean the US should wait until China catches up?

Alexei Arbatov: I don’t think they will sit idle. Already now the Trump administration is reviewing strategic and other weapons development programmes with a view to confronting China and Russia simultaneously. In any case, if they want to start dialogue with Beijing, it is enough to stop talking to them about “transparency” and “predictability” – all this can become not the beginning, but the result of future agreements. Instead, Washington should think through proposals that would not legitimise China’s lag and that would provide it with more solid security than in the absence of agreements. As for the trilateral format, the US would immediately demand limitations on China’s and Russia’s nuclear forces with a common ceiling equal to the US, which is unacceptable for either Beijing or Moscow.

Question: What can be said about negotiations within the nuclear five?

Alexei Arbatov: It is not just about format, but about the subject of future negotiations. I would like to remind you that at strategic stability consultations in 2021, Russia raised the question that the new New START should limit not only strategic nuclear weapons, but also non-nuclear strategic long-range weapons. Later Russia also raised the question of accounting for the potential of Britain and France, which together have about 500 nuclear warheads. In turn, the US raised the question of limiting not only strategic but also tactical nuclear weapons, where Russia has a big advantage. Russian reaction to this was aphoristically expressed by President Vladimir Putin: “The hell with them!” And at the same time the US demanded limiting China. That is, besides expanding the nomenclature of weapons systems under discussion, the unilateral negotiation format theoretically becomes multilateral, even if there are several parallel dialogue tracks. Specialists can solve this puzzle too, but only with enormous political will from leaders of leading powers and their firm desire to move along this path.

Question: Volodymyr Zelensky said that if Ukraine is not accepted into NATO, it will need nuclear weapons to ensure security. Is this a feasible scenario?

Alexei Arbatov: Purely theoretically it is feasible. As part of the USSR, Ukraine was the most powerful producer of strategic missiles and an active participant in nuclear programmes. But if Ukraine now goes down this path, it will have to withdraw from the NPT with three months’ notice, which it signed in 1994, renouncing nuclear weapons that remained on its territory after the USSR’s collapse. To withdraw from the NPT means to provoke an extremely negative reaction from other member countries of the Treaty, primarily the nuclear five, who already have an ambiguous attitude towards Ukraine. Such a step by Ukraine would cause a “chain reaction” of other countries withdrawing from the Treaty, concerned about their security, which would spur nuclear weapons proliferation in the world.

Now it is impossible to create nuclear weapons secretly. This requires creating capacities for uranium enrichment, plutonium separation, and nuclear munitions production. Vladimir Putin warned that Russia would use “all means” to prevent this. And the war of Israel and the US against Iran demonstrated that such warnings are not empty words.

Question: Are agreements on placing American medium-range missiles in Germany still valid with Donald Trump’s arrival?

Alexei Arbatov: The new US administration’s position on this matter has not yet been formulated. In any case, placing them near Russian territory will revive the tensions and fears that were present in the early 1980s and which were successfully removed by concluding the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987. Short flight time always worries, despite the fact that American missiles are not supposed to be equipped with nuclear weapons. However, without a special treaty it will be impossible to verify this.

Question: How are things with the INF moratorium?

Alexei Arbatov: Russia proposed discussing this moratorium in 2021, when it presented two draft treaties to NATO and the US. The West then reacted positively to this point, though the rest of Moscow’s proposals were rejected. But Russian proposals came in a package. Now the moratorium situation is unclear. Russia warned: if American medium-range missiles are deployed in Europe and Asia, it will also deploy similar weapons. If there are no signs of preparation to extend New START after 5 February 2026, then concluding a new treaty on medium-range missiles in current conditions is hardly realistic.

Question: What else should worry us regarding nuclear threats?

Alexei Arbatov: There are more than enough reasons for alarm! But regarding nuclear weapons – the entire control complex over them is on the brink of collapse. In the US and Russia there is constant talk about resuming nuclear testing. Then the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty will fall. Many countries will begin conducting nuclear explosions to acquire nuclear status. This means the NPT will also collapse. At least 30 non-nuclear treaty states are capable of creating nuclear weapons. Following this, agreements on non-deployment of nuclear weapons in space and on the seabed will disappear. Seven nuclear-weapon-free zones with 180 countries participating will crumble, control over missile and missile technology proliferation will be lost, and treaties on preventing nuclear terrorism will be ruined. The comprehensive nuclear weapons control system created over six decades can be lost in a year.

Now the topic of nuclear disarmament is completely absent from the official discourse of great powers. It is understandable that international life is shaken by many other conflicts and problems generated by the movement towards multipolarity. However, in parallel, the world is sliding towards nuclear chaos. If we turn away from this danger, solving other problems will be far from easier. International conflicts and nuclear threats will enter into resonance, which is already happening in the Middle East. Then current difficulties will seem like minor troubles to us.

Source: https://nvo.ng.ru/dipkurer/2025-06-29/9_9282_stability.html