By Emmanuel Bobby
The final major nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia expires Thursday, ushering in the first era in more than half a century without binding limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.
With the lapse of the New START treaty, which capped deployed nuclear warheads at 1,550 for each country, there will be no formal restrictions on American or Russian stockpiles. There are also no active talks between Washington and Moscow about a replacement, leaving officials on both sides uncertain about the other’s capabilities and intentions — a dynamic experts warn could fuel misunderstandings and a renewed nuclear arms race reminiscent of the Cold War.
“For the first time in more than half a century, we face a world without any binding limits on the strategic nuclear arsenals” of the U.S. and Russia, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement, calling it a “grave moment” for international peace and security.
President Donald Trump, writing on Truth Social on Thursday, described New START as a “badly negotiated deal” and said that instead of extending it, the U.S. should pursue “a new, improved, and modernized Treaty.”
The U.S. and Russia together control nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons — more than 10,500 warheads combined — according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s 2025 assessment. China, whose arsenal is estimated at about 600 warheads, is expanding faster than any other nuclear power, adding roughly 100 warheads per year since 2023. Together, the arsenals of the three countries could destroy life on Earth multiple times over.
“The Cold War is full of examples where each side had faulty assumptions about what the other was doing, which led to expensive and dangerous competitions,” said Mike Albertson, who helped negotiate, ratify and implement New START. The treaty’s expiration, he said, ends a decadeslong process of bilateral arms control dating back to the 1960s, when Washington and Moscow first moved to limit — and later reduce — their nuclear stockpiles.
Russia suspended its participation in New START in early 2023, citing U.S. support for Ukraine, though it initially said it would continue to observe the treaty’s limits. Since invading Ukraine, Moscow has repeatedly invoked nuclear threats as part of its military posture.
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed voluntarily adhering to the treaty’s limits for another year. Trump later called the idea “good,” but Washington has not formally responded.
“If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement,” Trump said in a Jan. 8 interview, arguing that any future deal should include China — an idea Beijing has firmly rejected.
‘A personal loss’
For Nikolai Sokov, a former Soviet and Russian negotiator who spent nearly 45 years working on nuclear arms control, the treaty’s end is deeply personal.
“Everything I did in my life is now gone,” said Sokov, now a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation. He warned the world is drifting back toward an early Cold War mindset marked by uncertainty and a higher tolerance for risk.
“It took the Cuban missile crisis for everyone to get scared,” Sokov said, referring to the 1962 confrontation that brought the U.S. and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war and ultimately spurred decades of arms control efforts.
Beyond warhead limits, New START provided transparency through data exchanges, on-site inspections and formal channels to resolve disputes. Before Russia’s suspension in 2023, the two sides conducted 328 inspections and exchanged more than 25,000 notifications about nuclear activities, according to the U.S. State Department.
Without the treaty, both countries must rely on satellite imagery, intelligence gathering and other indirect means to assess each other’s arsenals. While those tools remain useful, experts say the lack of transparency is dangerous in today’s low-trust environment.
“Lack of transparency matters,” said Fabian Rene Hoffmann, a research fellow at the University of Oslo’s Oslo Nuclear Project. “Especially now.”
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the treaty’s expiration eliminates a key mechanism for verifying intentions. Moscow said Wednesday it has yet to receive an official response from Washington to Putin’s offer to extend the limits, calling the U.S. approach “erroneous and regrettable,” though it said it remains open to dialogue. China said Thursday that it “regrets” the treaty’s expiration.
Former President Barack Obama, under whom New START was signed in 2010, also criticized its demise.
“It would pointlessly wipe out decades of diplomacy and could spark another arms race that makes the world less safe,” he wrote on X.
The Trump administration says it remains open to talks with both Russia and China. Trump has said he wants to pursue “denuclearization,” but Beijing has countered that it is “neither fair nor reasonable” to expect China to join disarmament talks while its arsenal remains far smaller than those of the U.S. and Russia.
A recent Pentagon report projects China could have more than 1,000 warheads by 2030 as part of what it described as a “massive nuclear expansion.”
Albertson said a future U.S.-Russia agreement could move forward without China but would need flexibility to account for Beijing’s buildup — potentially through verification measures without strict limits, or with ceilings higher than those in New START.
Without a replacement, Sokov fears an unconstrained arms race could emerge within five to seven years, focused not just on numbers but on more advanced, precise and harder-to-intercept weapons. He also warned of backlash from nonnuclear states frustrated by what they see as bad-faith disarmament efforts by nuclear powers.
Still, Sokov urged caution rather than panic.
“The sooner we start talking,” he said, “the better the chance we can once again regulate the nuclear arms race before it becomes irreversible.”
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