US says it is committed to arms control dialogue with Russia
The Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (the New START Treaty) was signed in 2010 and entered into force on February 5, 2011
The United States is committed to returning to arms control negotiations with Russia but has no understanding at the moment about when such discussions may resume, a high-ranking US diplomat said.
“What I would say is that there are two things that the president has said. One is: we will get back to talking with Russia when it acts in good faith. And the president also said that we know, there is a lot of difficult issues and we are committed [to discussing them], we want to go back into our discussions on arms control,” US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Bonnie Jenkins told a seminar at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Thursday.
“We don’t know what that situation will look like when the time comes. But we remain committed to negotiations [with Moscow] to have something following New START. We just have to figure out what that would be.
In her words, Moscow and Washington were engaged in strategic stability discussions, holding the latest round of them before the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine in February. During these talks, the sides discussed hypersonic weapons, tactical nuclear weapons, cyber security and artificial intelligence.
“So we were willing to have a negotiation that was going to be much more broad,” Jenkins said.
In her words, the US is seeking to address transparency, confidence-building measures and risk reduction in its dialogue with Russia.
“When we get back to talking with Russia, we don’t know where we will be starting from, we don’t know <…> whether where we left in December [2021] is going to be where we start again, because things have changed a lot. But we are going to approach it in a broad way,” the US diplomat said.
In her words, the US sees the New START treaty expiry due in 2026 as a milestone that it should always keep in mind.
“So we need to make sure we have something in place for that,” she said.
The Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (the New START Treaty) was signed in 2010 and entered into force on February 5, 2011.
The document stipulates that seven years after its entry into effect each party should have no more than a total of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and strategic bombers, as well as no more than 1,550 warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and strategic bombers, and a total of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers and strategic bombers.
The New START Treaty was to remain in force for 10 years, until 2021, unless it is replaced before that date by a subsequent agreement on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms. In February 2021, Moscow and Washington extended it for five years (that is, until 2026) upon the parties’ mutual consent.
