Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin is ready to meet with Trump to discuss ending the Ukrainian Conflict and resuming arms control talks after the American leader told the Davos elite last week that he’d like to do both with his Russian counterpart as soon as possible. Their reference to resuming arms control talks is significant since the New START will expire in February 2026 but the negotiation process has been frozen since 2023. Here are some background briefings on this subject:
* 21 February 2023: “Russia Did The Right Thing At The Right Time By Suspending Participation In The New START”
* 20 January 2024: “Russia Won’t Resume Arms Control Talks With The US Till The Ukrainian Conflict Ends”
* 18 October 2024: “Biden’s Interest In Nuclear Talks With Russia Is A Response To Trump’s Recent Rhetoric”
To summarize for the reader’s convenience, global strategic stability is to a large degree dependent on the balance of nuclear and associated forces (like delivery systems) between Russia and the US, the countries with the largest such arsenals by far. They realized near the end of the Old Cold War how dangerous it was to produce so many thousands of nuclear weapons and how financially onerous such programs were for each of them, ergo why they agreed to partial cuts and monitoring mechanisms.
This helped alleviate their security dilemma, which refers to one side’s defensively intended moves (such as building nukes for deterrence purposes) being perceived by their rival as offensively intended (such as preparing for an overwhelming first strike) and thus catalyzing an escalation cycle. Their security dilemma returned though due to NATO’s eastward expansion. It then reached a new dangerous phase with their proxy war in Ukraine and can further worsen if the New START expires without a replacement.
For that reason, Trump decided to make good on his campaign pledge to revive the denuclearization talks with Russia and China that he claimed were on the brink of success before the 2020 election, which explains why he brought this up during his video appearance at Davos. To be sure, he might have exaggerated the chances of reaching a deal had he won back then, especially since China wasn’t receptive to it and Russia demanded (as Peskov reminded Trump) British and French nuke cuts too.
Nevertheless, the importance in explaining this is to show that mutual US-Russian interest in resuming arms control talks could speed up the Ukrainian peace process since the former were suspended by Moscow pending a conclusion of the latter, which can incentivize mutual compromises to this end. It can only be speculated what form that could take, but the some of the proposals at the end of this analysis here and the one that was elaborated on here could be in the cards if both sides have the political will.
The need to resume arms control talks is more urgent than ever not just because the US-Russian security dilemma entered a new dangerous phase three years ago and the New START will soon expire, but also due to the development and deployment of new weapons systems like Russia’s hypersonic Oreshniks. It’s only a matter of time before the US and others catch up, and seeing as how these munitions can be comparable in force to nukes but without the radiation, a new global arms race might soon begin.
The hyper-proliferation of technology since the end of the Old Cold War means that this possibly impending competition wouldn’t just be between the US and Russia like before, but would almost inevitably include all other nuclear powers as well some non-nuclear states like Iran and others too. It’s only through a multilateral pact, with a US-Russian deal at its core, that other key nuclear and/or missile powers can be brought on board to agree to limit these arms and prevent others from obtaining them.
In practice, this could take the form of them also agreeing to authorize UNSC sanctions against any non-signatory state that’s credibly accused of developing or clandestinely deploying these weapons as well as against any signatory that’s credibly accused of stockpiling more of these munitions than agreed upon. What’s basically being proposed in a new international security architecture centered on the non-proliferation of cutting-edge non-nuclear weapons that requires the participation of all major players.
There’s still a long way to go before anything of the sort is agreed to at the proposed level that’s required for this to work, which includes the sensitive nitty-gritty details of monitoring mechanisms, but it’s in every responsible nuclear and missile power’s interests to have this happen. The means to that end is swiftly ending the Ukrainian Conflict through a serious of pragmatic mutual compromises in order for the US-Russian core of the global strategic security system to then begin work on this pronto.
