Arms Control Is Not Dead Yet

Nearly every week since taking office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has had something to say about controlling nuclear weapons. In comments to Fox News in March, for example, he referred to these weapons as “big monsters” and the world’s “greatest existential threat,” lamenting that the United States spends “all this money on something that, if it’s used, it’s probably the end of the world.” The president’s interest is fortuitous. Amid the turbulence of his administration, on this particular matter, Trump’s inclination toward nuclear restraint could push him to negotiate real restrictions—at a time when the world badly needs such measures to succeed.

Nuclear arms control is dying. The 2010 New START Treaty is the only remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia. New START, for which I led negotiations on the U.S. side, limits the number of nuclear warheads, missiles, and launchers each country can deploy and includes various mechanisms to verify implementation. But it is due to go out of force in less than a year, in February 2026. And its efficacy has already been weakened. Russian President Vladimir Putin declared in February 2023, a year after his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that Moscow would cease to implement the treaty as long as the United States continued to assist in Ukraine’s defense—linking the fate of nuclear arms control to an extraneous issue for the first time in the nearly 60 years of nuclear negotiations between Moscow and Washington. The Kremlin has been unwilling to engage in any kind of nuclear discussion ever since.

Meanwhile, China has been steadily modernizing its nuclear forces. Whereas Beijing once maintained only a modest force of a couple hundred warheads and delivery systems designed and deployed to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack, it now has more than 500 warheads and is increasing the production of delivery systems. China is building up all three legs of the nuclear triad—intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers—which enables a country to launch nuclear weapons from land, sea, and air. The U.S. Department of Defense has estimated that by 2035, China will have acquired as many as 1,500 nuclear warheads. All the while, Beijing has declined to discuss its rapid buildup with Washington.

Thus, in the near future, the United States could face two nuclear powers, Russia and China, deploying similar numbers of nuclear warheads. These two close partners could together threaten a first strike against which the United States would not have enough weapons to respond. Their combined superiority would undermine the United States’ ability to deter them, with potential catastrophic consequences for regional and global stability. The threat is grave, but it is not unmanageable. There is a better chance for Washington to reach some accommodation with Moscow and Beijing on nuclear matters than on any of the other various military, political, and economic conflicts between these powers. If the United States under Trump can successfully reengage with Russia to sustain nuclear parity and engage for the first time with China to control nuclear risks, the three countries can avoid a Cold War–style nuclear arms race that would be costly, dangerous, and ultimately pointless for them all.

ATOMIC FIXATION

Trump has been thinking about the problem of nuclear weapons for a long time. As far back as the mid-1980s, when Trump was a young real estate tycoon, he lobbied President Ronald Reagan (unsuccessfully) to appoint him as the United States’ lead negotiator in strategic arms talks with the Soviet Union. Although Trump is known to frequently change his mind, he has been notably consistent in his focus on nuclear threats and the need to control them. In the president’s view, these weapons are a bad investment: Why waste money on something that can never be used because using them would likely mean the end of the world?

Trump was frustrated by his inability to make headway on nuclear issues during his first term. His efforts to negotiate with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to undo Pyongyang’s deployment of nuclear weapons and to advance an arms reduction deal with China and Russia both came to naught. Now, Trump appears determined to try again, in February describing talks on the matter with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping as “one of the first meetings I want to have.”

Full denuclearization, as Trump has gestured at, is too much to expect. But there is significant opportunity for Washington to make progress—in different ways—with Russia and China. In Russia, the United States is dealing with a nuclear peer. For six decades the two countries’ nuclear relationship has been based on parity: an equivalence of numbers and freedom to mix on force structure, meaning that as long as they keep the total number of nuclear warheads below equal limits, they can deploy them on different delivery systems. The United States has preferred more sea-launched missiles, whereas Russia has opted for more intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are launched from the ground. Over this period, Washington and Moscow have been engaging in serious efforts to limit and reduce their arsenals of nuclear weapons, sometimes through treaties and sometimes through unilateral initiatives conducted in parallel. This nuclear arms limitation is now eroding. Trump’s goal should be to restore it.

The United States should have a different objective with regard to China: to convince Beijing that its interests lie in predictability and stability. Unlike Russia’s weapons, China’s nuclear forces are still far inferior to those of the United States. Although its forces are modernizing quickly, China will not become a nuclear peer for a decade or more. In the meantime, Washington should engage with Beijing to understand its objectives, create predictability about future force structure and modernization plans, and lower the risk of misunderstandings that could lead to a nuclear crisis. Rather than focusing on the size of China’s arsenal, the United States should be trying to build mutual understanding with China and exercise mutual restraint in order to avoid a nuclear arms race—in other words, arms control.

BACK TO THE TABLE

In the case of Russia, the path to nuclear negotiations is relatively straightforward. U.S. and Russian negotiators have been at this business for nearly 60 years and know each other well. Since the 1970s, when Washington and Moscow were at each other’s throats, the two parties have managed to control, limit, and reduce nuclear weapons no matter what else was happening in their relationship. Especially after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the nearest the two sides came to nuclear war, both appreciated that nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to humanity and committed to isolating the nuclear dialogue on its own track. The United States and Russia continued implementing New START amid the first Russian invasion of Ukraine, when Putin seized Crimea in 2014.

On the Russian side, this attitude changed with Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine, in 2022, after which Putin halted implementation of New START. But the Kremlin may now be willing to reverse that decision and launch negotiations on a new nuclear treaty in parallel with a process to resolve the war in Ukraine. In February 2025, Putin commented, “We and the United States have the question of prolonging New START. Probably everyone else has forgotten, but I remember it is going out of force in about a year, in February 2026.” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has remarked on the change in Washington’s tone since Trump took office, noting it may signal a new opportunity for nuclear talks. Even if Moscow and Washington cannot settle on a replacement treaty before New START goes out of force next February, rapid nuclear expansion is not inevitable. For a long period in the 1980s and 1990s, no nuclear arms treaty was in force, and the United States and the Soviet Union simply agreed to abide by arms limits negotiated in the 1970s in the SALT II agreement, which was never ratified. Russia and the United States could do something similar today. Both could agree publicly to sustain the limits of New START until new limits can be negotiated. China, France, and the United Kingdom—the other nuclear weapons states under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty—should also pledge not to undermine the provisions of New START by building up warhead numbers or deploying destabilizing weapon systems.

THREE-BODY PROBLEM

China is a more complicated case. The country is modernizing its nuclear arsenal apace, and both Washington and U.S. allies are growing concerned that China seeks to become a peer competitor of the United States in nuclear as well as conventional forces. If China, as the U.S. Department of Defense has estimated, can build around 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035 and proceeds to deploy all of them, it would more or less reach the 1,550-warhead limit the United States and Russia each agreed to under New START. In the worst-case scenario—in which China and Russia together threaten the United States with nuclear attack—Washington would face such nuclear superiority that it could be deterred from defending its interests.

The United States can and should plan for such a scenario, to protect both itself and the allies that depend on Washington’s nuclear umbrella. But it is also important to be clear-headed about the extent of the threat. Although the United States and Russia each deploy 1,550 warheads under New START, both keep many in reserve. The United States has a total of approximately 5,277 warheads and Russia approximately 5,449. If forced to confront a combined nuclear threat, the United States could deploy more warheads, drawing on the several thousand that it holds in reserve. It could place more warheads on its missiles at sea or on land and designate others to be delivered by its bomber force.

If the United States were forced to deploy more warheads on missiles, it would exceed the limits laid out in New START, Russia might do the same, and a form of arms race could begin. It is therefore important that China pledge not to undermine those limits and prompt a U.S. response. This is where negotiations come in. Washington does not have the long history of negotiating with the Chinese on nuclear matters that it has with the Russians, but it is not totally bereft of experience. The United States and China engage with each other through major multilateral regimes such as the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and China currently chairs the five-country forum made up of the nuclear weapons states designated in the NPT (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Beijing knows the issues and stakes in nuclear negotiations and what is required to maintain strategic nuclear stability.

China is modernizing its nuclear arsenal apace.

Yet China has stubbornly resisted further negotiations, arguing that because of the wide gap between Chinese and U.S. nuclear forces, the transparency required for nuclear diplomacy would make China too vulnerable. Only when Washington and Moscow both shrink their nuclear arsenals, China’s diplomats often say, will it be time to talk. That position has not changed as China modernizes its nuclear forces; builds new ballistic missiles, submarines, and bombers; and acquires additional warheads. The Chinese government has even tried to deny the extent of its buildup, insisting for years that 300 new missile silos constructed north and west of Beijing were wind farms.

Both Trump in his first term and President Joe Biden after him were frustrated by China’s refusal to talk about its nuclear modernization. The first Trump administration attempted to shoe-horn Beijing into the New START Treaty, effectively trying to subject China to the same nuclear reduction agreement as two vastly superior nuclear powers, Russia and the United States. Chinese leaders, unsurprisingly, reacted badly and shut down further discussions. They remained unreceptive during the Biden administration. During a 2023 summit in California, Biden thought he had made a breakthrough with Xi about starting nuclear talks, but Beijing again refused to come to the table.

This time may be different. With New START going out of force, negotiations can begin with a clean slate. There will be no legally binding treaty for China to be forced into—although China can and should be ready to support the limits outlined in New START if Russia and the United States agree to do so. Yet many stumbling blocks could derail progress. Plenty of China hawks in Washington and America hawks in Beijing could try to prevent the two sides from talking to each other. The escalating U.S.-Chinese trade war does not help. And although Trump is evidently keen to talk with Xi, it is unclear whether he places as high a priority on nuclear negotiations with China as he seems to place on nuclear negotiations with Russia.

THE ART OF THE DEAL

The best way for Washington to proceed is with two parallel negotiations. The first would be with Russia, to extend the limits of New START beyond February 2026 and then to seek additional limits on all nuclear warheads, deployed and nondeployed, strategic and nonstrategic. Trump took a significant step in this direction in his first term, when he got Putin to agree in principle to a freeze on all existing nuclear warhead stocks. He could build on that framework now by seeking restrictions on Russia’s newest delivery systems, such as the Poseidon nuclear-propelled and -armed torpedo.

Russia, concerned by Trump’s talk of building a new U.S. missile defense system, dubbed “the Golden Dome,” could insist on putting that system on the negotiating agenda. From Moscow’s perspective, strengthened U.S. missile defenses could undermine the Russian nuclear deterrent: the United States, expecting its defenses to hold against nuclear retaliation, might no longer consider a first nuclear strike on Russia to carry an unacceptably high risk. Putin has been particularly concerned about this possibility and was initially critical of New START because it did not limit U.S. missile defenses. If Moscow demands that missile defenses be on the agenda, then Washington should insist that limits on Russia’s own advanced missile defense systems, such as the S-500, also be discussed.

The negotiation with China, focusing on nuclear arms control, should start with a Chinese pledge not to build or deploy enough warheads to undermine the limits of New START. Beijing will need to be more open about its nuclear modernization and be ready to take steps that reduce the risk that misunderstandings about U.S. and Chinese nuclear postures lead to instability or escalation. Data exchanges, notification of activities such as missile testing, joint definitions of terms related to nuclear weapons, and better crisis communications could all be part of the package.

Although negotiations with China should be mainly about controls rather than limits, there is one nuclear system the United States should push China, as well as Russia, to ban: the fractional orbital bombardment system, or FOBS. FOBS missiles, which do not follow a predictable ballistic trajectory, could strike without warning and are capable of maneuvering to evade defenses, represent a grave concern for critical command-and-control sites. According to U.S. Air and Space Force officials, China tested a FOBS in the open ocean in 2021, sparking particular alarm in Washington and underscoring the need to include prohibition in any future talks.

Trump should not waste the opportunity he has now. Even if the hurdle of Senate ratification proves too high for the United States to enter a legally binding nuclear arms treaty—and it may not, given the strong influence Trump exercises over Congress—well-crafted political agreements with China and Russia could still be effective. Apart from holding these essential talks with Beijing and Moscow, Trump should also address the effect his lukewarm support for U.S. allies in Europe and Asia is having on proliferation debates in those regions. The president speaks adamantly against increasing numbers of nuclear weapons, but his actions are driving Germany, Poland, South Korea, and other countries to openly consider building their own arsenals. If he is truly interested in keeping nuclear weapons in check, Trump and his administration should be reinforcing the U.S. commitment to extended nuclear deterrence. By reducing the temptation for allies to build their own nuclear weapons and stopping a new arms race with China and Russia in its tracks, Trump can do the world a favor and bring the rising nuclear threat under control.