For the first time in several years, there is some positive movement between Russia and the United States on strategic arms control. In late September 2025, Vladimir Putin proposed that Moscow and Washington agree to extend the New Start Treaty – which is set to expire automatically in February 2026 – for one year. That crucial treaty caps the number of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) at 1,550 for each side.
President Donald Trump responded that Putin’s suggestion “sounds like a good idea to me.” The Kremlin stated that Trump’s reaction “gives grounds for optimism that the United States will support President Putin’s initiative.” Granted, extending such a crucial agreement merely for a year is a very modest gesture of cooperation, but it reverses an increasingly ominous trend in bilateral relations on arms control.
For example, just a few weeks earlier, the Russian government announced that it would no longer be bound by a self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of medium-range missiles, even those that might be armed with nuclear warheads. Moscow had put the moratorium into effect as a stop-gap replacement when President Trump decided to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in August 2019. Trashing the INF Treaty was one of several U.S. actions taken throughout the Trump and Biden administrations that have badly weakened the system of formal and informal restraints on strategic weapons. Trump also ended Washington’s adherence to the Open Skies agreement with Moscow in November 2020. The Open Skies measure had assured greater transparency regarding the movement and deployment of bombers and missiles. The Kremlin saw that agreement as a crucial reassurance against any buildup or threatening conduct featuring U.S. or NATO strategic weapons on Russia’s doorstep in Central or Eastern Europe. Not surprisingly, the agreement’s demise in the midst of already deteriorating East-West relations intensified suspicions.
There are other multiple indications that New York Times analyst Neil MacFarquhar was correct when he observed that the “architecture of disarmament and nonproliferation is now gradually being dismantled.” In November, 2023, Putin signed a law revoking Russia’s 2000 ratification of the 1996 global Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). In pushing through the de-ratification measure, Putin said that he merely sought to “mirror” the U.S. position. Although the United States signed the treaty in 1996, it had never ratified the document. Russia’s repudiation of its previous position, though, underscored the growing estrangement of Moscow and Washington on arms control as well as on a host of other issues.
Fortunately, the 1963 Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty, formally known as the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), remains intact, and neither Moscow nor Washington has indicated an intent to abandon or dilute its adherence to the prohibition against atmospheric tests. Other than the universally popular and sacrosanct PTBT, though, New START is the only bilateral nuclear weapons deal between Moscow and Washington still in effect.
That is why the preservation and extension of the agreement is extremely important. A breakthrough on negotiations regarding that issue also has at least some potential to shift the overall diplomatic momentum away from confrontation and hostility back toward conciliation and cooperation.
Unfortunately, this one modest indicator of restraint threatens to be overwhelmed by a tsunami of factors moving in the opposite direction. Even a relatively brief extension of the New START treaty is improbable under current conditions. Russian jet fighters and swarms of drones are conducting incursions into the airspace of Poland, Romania, and the Baltic republics, apparently in an effort to probe and test the air defense systems of those countries. The United States and its NATO allies continue to assist Ukraine in conducting drone and missile attacks on targets deep inside Russia. Washington even appears to be contemplating increasing the scope of its military assistance of Kyiv for such missions. Such behavior does not create a conducive environment for meaningful negotiations on strategic arms control or any other issue.
Washington and Moscow need to end such provocations and re-focus on measures to make the world less perilous on the nuclear front. The first step should be to negotiate a much longer extension of New START. A 3-year extension would be both feasible and beneficial. The Trump administration also needs to press the U.S. Senate to take the action it should have taken many years ago and ratify the CTBT. For its part, Russia ought to explicitly rescind its recent de-ratification of the document.
Ideally, both sides should then commence negotiations to revive both the INF and the Open Skies agreement, even though, given the current state of East-West relations, a breakthrough of that magnitude is almost certainly too much to expect in the foreseeable future. It is hard to remember the level of cooperation on strategic arms control issues that the United States and Russia enjoyed just a decade ago. The loss of such relative comity may well go down as one of the great tragedies of international relations. Rebuilding a more cooperative relationship, even if both governments wish to do so, will require a major effort by both sides over an extended period of time. Putin and Trump have now hinted that they at least see the beginning of the path toward bilateral reconciliation by extending New Start. Let’s hope that they are wise enough to take that path.
