I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM. The US and Russia account for ninety percent of the world's nuclear firepower. But today the New Start Treaty, which limits the number of missiles and warheads in their arsenals, expires. President Putin first suspended it two years ago. Now without a last minute deal, it looks set to collapse for
good today. Paul Dean, who helped implement the treaty and is now a vice president for the US Based Nuclear Threat Initiative, on the possibility of a new nuclear arms race. It's Thursday, February five. Paul, if you could take us back a bit, what is the New Start Treaty and how did it reduce the risk of a nuclear crisis?
Well, I appreciate that question, Nicole. You know, the treaty is now in its fifteenth year. This is a treaty that reduces and limits the number of both US and Russian strategic nuclear forces, so warheads, strategic launchers, delivery vehicles, you know, the nuclear arsenal that the US and the Russians have on intercontinental range weapons. But what I would really emphasize is that the treaty is a lot more
than those limits. The limits themselves are on maybe two pages of a three hundred page treaty, and the rest of the treaty is really made up of intricately designed verification measures that include short notice inspections and channels of communication that give both sides a predictable and transparent picture of what the nuclear forces are doing and how they're composed. And that kind of confidence is highly stabilizing and preventing miscommunications, miscalculations,
and invertent escalations. So not only do treaties like the New Star Treaty constrain nuclear arms races, but they also act as a really important hedge against the threat of a miscalculation.
So how did this nuclear deal come about in the first place and was it difficult to broke up?
The New Start Treaty is the most recent in a fairly long line of bilateral US Soviets and then US Russia and nuclear arms con treaties dating back to nineteen seventy two.
The governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, after reviewing the courts of their talks and the limitation of strategic armaments, have agreed to concentrate this year on working out an Agreement for the Limitation of the Deployment of Antiballistic Missile Systems ABM.
I mean, it's interesting, you know, New Start was in some ways remarkable for how fast it was negotiated, which was about two years, and that's fast in the realm of nuclear arms control. And it really does illustrate what
the stakes of this moment are. Where this week the treaty will expire under its terms, and there have not been serious, sustained efforts to negotiate a success or agreement, and I think that introduces the risks of initiating those dangerous action, reaction and miscalculation dynamics that these treaties have been designed and have successfully prevented for the last almost
fifty years. But it's a really important point to note that all of these treaties and going back to you know, President Nixon on our side, and then very famously Ronald Reagan and Mikhil Gorbachev, and then you know, most recently with Obama and Medvedev.
And I'm pleased to announce that, after a year of intense negotiations, the United States and Russia have agreed to the most comprehensive arms control agreement in nearly two decades.
It illustrates that these kinds of national security undertakings usually necessitate involvement at the very highest levels of government. These have been top level presidential priorities. And I think it's important to emphasize that President Trump has been quite vocal for a lot of years on his desire to limit nuclear dangers.
When they explain what it represents and the kind of destruction that you're talking about, it is a very sobering moment, yes.
Very and so he does have an opportunity here to assume a place in that tradition in brokering an agreement that reduces the dangers of nuclear weapons.
When we need nuclear weapons, like the kind of weapons that we're building and that Russia has and that China has to a lesser extent but will have. That's going to be very said, that's going to be probably oblivion.
All this nuclear arms deal. It's actually been on ice for a while. Putin suspended it a couple of years ago. Could you talk us through what happened up until that point and are we now looking at its total collapse? Really game over?
You're quite right that the Russian side illegitimately suspended its participation in the New Star Treaty very transparently trying to link this to the Ukraine War in an attempt to extract concessions out of the US side.
They want to deliver us a strategic defeat well sneaking into our strategic nuclear objectives. Regarding this, but I'd have to say that Russia suspends its participation in the New Start Treaty quoted.
And so I think the treaty was very much on life support for the last couple of years, and as you say, that ends this week because the treaty cannot be extended any further. And so the issue is what comes next. What can the US and the Russian Federation do to preserve guardrails on the nuclear deterrence equation. I mean, one thing we have learned over the course of these decades of nuclear arms control is that they do not
materialize overnight. But that has to happen soon, and that has to happen, you know, in the near term, and it has to happen frankly, in an era that's even more complicated than it was in two thousand and ten when the New Star Treaty was first negotiated, because now we don't have a bipolar US Russia nuclear relationship. We have a tripolar nuclear competition that also involves China coming up.
We on the brink of another nuclear arms race, Paul, what is the greatest danger when this deal collapses? And could we see another Cold War style nuclear arms race again?
So I try not to overstate this because you know, obviously when you're talking about nuclear weapons, there is a worst case scenario. But without those guardrails in place, the pressures and action reaction dynamics that we know for a fact can and do drive arms races are no longer going to have a circuit breaker, and those arms race
dynamics do not regulate them selves. If in this new tripolar nuclear situation that we find ourselves in, the US side starts to build up the Russian side and the Chinese side will see that and will take steps accordingly, and so you'll start to see the risk of a renewed nuclear arms race, which I might add is extremely
expensive for all players. I mean this is you know, in the US alone, currently we're talking about one hundred billion dollars a year on our nuclear modernization budget, and if that is accompanied by a build up that number goes up. Equally importantly, you lose the channel of communication and you lose the predictability and transparency into the other
sides nuclear posture. That will push you to start planning for worst case scenarios and could potentially drive a catastrophic miscalculation if you're making decisions based on speculation and not based on fact.
You mentioned China's nuclear build up. How extensive is it, you know, I.
Think the precise numbers are going to be something that only the governments and their militaries know. The two largest nuclear arsenals right now are unambiguously the US and the Russian Federation.
There's no reason for US to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many you could destroy the world fifty times over one hundred times over.
China has embarked on a rapid and frankly opaque nuclear build up over the last you know, several years.
There are no official figures regarding China's nuclear arsenal.
That's because it's one of the biggest state secrets of all. The end state of that is not clear, but it does inject some major questions into what the next era of nuclear stability can look like.
China's President shet Iping with a grand show of force marking eighty years since the end of World War Two with its biggest ever military.
Parade, fifty thousand spectators right there and tee enimin square through cheered when nuclear capable missiles and launchers went past in batches on trucks, the first ever show of its nuclear tria.
It's not simply the case that the United States has to deter one nuclear armed potential competitor, but more than one, and that is relatively new, and that's going to require a significant rethink to ensure that the next nuclear stability framework that we so desperately need is fit for purpose to bring stability to a world that has become multipolar and multidimensional in the nuclear.
Sel Does the end of this new treaty actually increase the risk of a nuclear war in your opinion?
Without a successful approach to stabilizing the US Russia nuclear relationship, that's going to put more and more pressure on all of our extended military alliances. I think there are tangible global security implications if we're entering a world in which those nuclear guardrails have fallen away. We will see what
the next few days old. But I think any way you slice it, the treaty does expire, and I think for the first time, and you know, fifty years, we'll be looking at a world in which there are not guardrails on the US Russia and nuclear competition, and I think that makes the world a more dangerous place.
Paul, thank you so much for joining us.
Great thank you.
Also in the news, organizers are continuing to plan a protest against the upcoming visit of Israeli President Isaac Hertzog, despite New South Wales police extending protest restrictions in parts of Sydney. President Herzog is due to visit Sydney on February nine, and police have extended limits on approvals for public assemblies for the next two weeks. Under the restrictions, gatherings are still permitted, but police may issue move on directions.
And Colombian President Gustavo Petro has described his nearly two hour White House meeting with US President Donald Trump as optimistic and constructive. It follows Trump's earlier comments accusing Petrow of being tied to cocaine trafficking. Petro says Trump had been confused about the realities in Colombia. Both leaders talked up closer cooperation on counter narcotics, but no specific agreements have come out of the meeting. I'm Nicole Johnston. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.