They own 90% of the global arsenal.. Will the Ukraine war undermine the arms control agreement between Russia and America?

Moscow-Washington -

Day after day, the repercussions of the Russian war in Ukraine are expanding, as it recently reached what everyone feared of its impact on the nuclear arms race between Russia and the United States.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the US State Department has informed Congress that Russia has halted mutual inspections of nuclear sites, which is a violation of the START 3 Strategic Offensive Nuclear Weapons Treaty.

At the same time, the readings of Russian experts confirm that Washington's continued supply of weapons to Kyiv has become an obstacle preventing Moscow from resuming talks with Washington on the future of that treaty.

Russia had warned a few days ago that the only remaining nuclear arms control agreement with the United States might not be renewed in 2026, due to what it sees as American attempts to bring about a "strategic defeat" of Russia in Ukraine.

START Agreements

Russia and the United States possess about 90% of the world's nuclear warheads, and these weapons were partially restricted by previous treaties, including the "New START" treaty that entered into force in 2011 and was extended in 2021 until February 2026.

The New START Treaty restored cooperation and joint leadership between Moscow and Washington in the field of controlling nuclear weapons and reducing their number, and indeed much progress has been made in this field.

The treaty deals with long-range and intercontinental nuclear missiles, and the treaty specified the two countries' nuclear arsenal of intercontinental missiles to no more than 700 nuclear warheads in ground bases, and 1550 nuclear missiles in submarines and strategic air bombers, with the possession of 800 fixed and non-fixed platforms to launch nuclear missiles. .

This is the only remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the two countries after their withdrawal in 2019 from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Weapons Treaty signed between them in 1987.

More than a year ago, US President Joe Biden proposed extending the agreement for another 5 years, which Russia welcomed.

The agreement requires both parties to conduct 18 annual inspections of nuclear weapons bases, in addition to exchanging data to verify compliance with the terms of the treaty.

keep what's left

Although the Russian official position stresses the importance of the treaty, it sees the need to create appropriate conditions for negotiations regarding its future. Therefore, Moscow justifies the reasons for postponing the scheduled meeting of the bilateral advisory committee - which was scheduled in Cairo last November - for an indefinite period.

In this context, international affairs researcher Dmitry Babich rules out the occurrence of new agreements in the field of arms control between the United States and Russia in the near future, as the two countries - according to his opinion - have entered once again in the first stage of the arms race, and on this basis it will be difficult to agree On any legally binding and comprehensive restrictions in the short or medium term.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Babich goes further by saying that it would be wise to focus on preserving the existing agreements, because the START Treaty could hardly be saved from the fate of other agreements that Washington withdrew from unilaterally, as he described it.

He added that in light of Russia's presence in an indirect conflict with the United States in Ukraine, it is difficult to conduct bilateral diplomatic activities, and moreover, it would be strange to sit and talk about "START" at a time when Washington continues to supply weapons to Kyiv and greatly raises the level of escalation from Russia. By providing it with long-range, high-precision weapons and advanced air defense systems.

Separation of START and Ukraine

On the other hand, Steve Pifer, an expert on European affairs and disarmament at the Brookings Institution, hopes Moscow will understand that the two sides have an overriding interest in limiting their competition in nuclear weapons, especially when the broader relationship is troubled.

In his interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Peaver added, "This was the point of view of both sides nearly 50 years ago, but the Kremlin now - apparently because of President Putin's obsession with Ukraine - mortgages the New START application with US support for Kiev, and this will not achieve Putin's goal," as he described it. .

For his part, political analyst Sergey Persanov points out to additional obstacles to control and inspection tasks caused by Western sanctions against Russia, such as the lack of regular air traffic, ignoring Russian requests to confirm the possibility of aircraft with inspectors passing through the airspace of transit countries, visa problems during transit, and difficulties in Making payments for services during inspections, etc.

He says that the American monitoring teams have become more interested in conducting intelligence activities on Russian soil under the guise of inspections, and this is also taken into account by the Russian side when deciding to continue negotiations, according to his opinion.

Meanwhile, Persanov argues that even without on-site inspections, START could theoretically continue to operate even in current circumstances, provided the parties continue to exchange notifications and public information remotely.

And according to his expectation, with the passage of time, each party will say that it cannot reach a sufficient degree of certainty that the other party is complying with obligations, including the number of weapons, adding that whether this problem will lead to the collapse of the agreement or the two parties will be able to solve it depends. On the political will of the leaderships of the two countries.

Biden has no options

Steve Pifer concedes that President Joe Biden "has no good options for forcing Russia to allow inspections to resume or to attend a meeting of the Bilateral Advisory Committee."

Although the agreement serves the interests of both parties, Pifer points out that "the Russians should ask themselves what will happen if the New START treaty collapses, and in the absence of the treaty's restrictions, the US military can significantly increase - and at relatively little cost - the number of its warheads from missiles." ICBMs and ICBMs by loading spare warheads onto missiles currently carrying warheads below their capacity.

In turn, Matthew Whalen, CEO of the American Security Project - a think tank focused on military affairs - considered that "Russia does not necessarily violate the START agreement, but rather uses the possibility of its expiration a few years ago to create more fear of nuclear escalation, with the aim of reducing Western support for Ukraine." ".

Whalen believes that threatening to deploy more strategic nuclear weapons is a waste of money, as the 1,550 weapons deployed under New START are already more than enough to completely destroy each other.