After START-3 (American Experts on the Prospects for Strategic Nuclear Arms Control)

Assessing the current strategic nuclear balance, American experts come to a disappointing conclusion: the United States is currently losing the strategic nuclear arms race to Russia and, even worse, in the near future, the U.S. may face another hostile nuclear superpower – the PRC. There is currently no consensus among the American political and academic elite on how to solve this problem. Some experts insist on building up the United States’ nuclear power, other believe that there is no alternative to the Russian-American dialogue on strategic stability in the current conditions. Even in conservative American circles, there is an understanding that the U.S. is beginning to lag behind in a number of parameters of the nuclear arms race, and the resumption of the Russian-American dialogue on nuclear arms control is in the interests of Washington itself. At the same time, however, the American expert community is aware that resuming this dialogue, even under the most favorable circumstances, is not an easy task. Even with the good will of the parties, Moscow and Washington will have to make enormous efforts to solve a number of technical (the emergence of new means of delivering nuclear and non-nuclear warheads of intercontinental range) and political (the emergence of a third nuclear “superpower” – China) problems. The conflict in Ukraine and the United States’ attempts to inflict a “strategic defeat” on the Russian Federation have certainly made any serious dialogue between the U.S. and Russia on strategic stability impossible. Without a solution to this problem that suits Moscow, the resumption of this dialogue seems impossible. Considering the seriousness of the political and technical obstacles that stand in the way of strategic nuclear arms control, some American experts believe that the leaders of both countries should focus on developing a simple bilateral agreement according to which the parties will not exceed the quantitative limits stipulated by the START‐3 Treaty. Such an agreement, according to some U.S. experts, will buy time, restore mutual trust, and prevent an unlimited race of strategic nuclear weapons

Arms control · Business · Political science · Law · Nuclear Issues and Defense