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with China, pursue transparency and confidence-building measures, and lay the groundwork for future arms control measures,” retired Adm. Michael Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in December. “But it would be an unconscionable mistake to sacrifice [New START’s] … mutual restraints with Russia to the pursuit of an unlikely near-term arms control agreement with China.”

      The Trump administration also has indicated it wants to pull out of the 1992 Open Skies Treaty, which allows its 34 signatories to conduct short-notice, unarmed, reconnaissance flights over the territories of partner countries to collect data on military forces and activities. Arms control proponents say the treaty provides an important layer of verification regarding Russian military activities, but some administration officials and Republican lawmakers say it facilitates Russian spying, costs millions of dollars and does not serve U.S. interests.

      Nuclear weapons experts say the demise of so many foundational arms control treaties has stoked ongoing nuclear buildups by smaller nuclear powers, such as China, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel, an undeclared nuclear power. In addition, aspiring powers such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia now openly declare their intentions to join the nuclear weapons club.

      “If the U.S. and Russia are reinvesting in their strategic arsenals and re-emphasizing nuclear weapons in their national security strategies, they’re telegraphing to the rest of the world that this is where they think security lies,” says Alexandra Bell, a former senior State Department arms control adviser. “Then you have smaller powers saying they need nuclear weapons too.”

      Amid these developments, here are several key questions that experts, military leaders and security officials are asking as they ponder the future of arms control:

      Should the United States allow New START to expire?

      Not long after his 2016 election, Donald Trump raised questions about his commitment to New START, tweeting that the United States “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” Asked if that meant a new arms race with Russia, Trump reportedly responded: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”¹¹

      Since then, Trump has called New START a bad deal negotiated by Obama, noting that it failed to cover the thousands of tactical nuclear weapons Russia has amassed over the years, dwarfing the much smaller U.S. arsenal of such weapons. Nor, Trump said, does it include China, which is expanding its conventional and nuclear forces—including hypersonic delivery missiles—unbound by any arms control treaties.

      Though Putin has said he’s ready to extend the treaty without preconditions or negotiations, Trump has made no such commitment. Last March, he ordered the State Department to draft negotiating positions for a new, tripartite arms control treaty with Moscow and Beijing, according to senior U.S. officials. In February, the White House said it would soon begin bilateral nuclear arms control negotiations with Moscow.¹²

      “We have not ruled out an extension of New START, but our priority is to promote arms control that goes beyond the confines of a narrow, bilateral approach by incorporating other countries—including China—and a broader range of weapons,” Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in December.¹³

      In theory, say independent arms control experts, Trump is right to seek controls over tactical nuclear weapons. Under orders from President George H.W. Bush, the Pentagon eliminated many of its tactical nuclear weapons after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving the United States with around 1,000 tactical weapons today compared to Russia’s 2,000, according to Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks nuclear arsenals worldwide.

      These experts also agree Trump is right to be concerned about China’s unrestrained nuclear weapons program. The Pentagon’s top two experts on China’s military say the Asian giant is on track to double its roughly 300 strategic warheads in the next 10 years, fueled by a stockpile of enriched uranium and plutonium that exceeds the country’s civilian nuclear power needs.

      In addition, say these officials, China is also developing its own hypersonic missiles as well as new intermediate- and long-range missiles with higher accuracy than older versions, stealthy long-range bombers and advanced missile-firing submarines. As a result, they estimate, China could attain nuclear parity with the United States and Russia within one or two decades.

      But with China unwilling to consider a three-way treaty with Washington and Moscow, Trump administration aides are struggling to attract Beijing to a treaty that Moscow and domestic critics would approve, says Countryman, the former State Department arms control chief. So far, Trump’s aides have suggested three possible approaches, none of which is acceptable to all parties, says Countryman, who is currently board chair of the Washington-based Arms Control Association advocacy group.

      In one, China would increase its deployed nuclear arsenal fivefold to 1,550 warheads—the same as the United States and Russia—but this is a nonstarter for Washington and Moscow, Countryman says. Another approach would require the United States and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals fivefold to the size of China’s, which neither the Pentagon nor the Kremlin is prepared to do. Under a third option, the United States and Russia would agree to freeze their nuclear arsenals at the New START ceiling of 1,550 warheads while China would agree to keep its arsenal at 300 warheads, a proposal China rejects.

      Glossary of Nuclear Weapons Terminology

      Sources: “Glossary,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, https://tinyurl.com/ukzwvml; “Glossary of Terms,” Nuclear Reduction/Disarmament Initiative, https://tinyurl.com/vu6oe9s; “How does stealth technology work?” HowStuffWorks, April 1, 2000, https://tinyurl.com/ybnglspb; and “NATO/Russia Unclassified,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 2007, https://tinyurl.com/tuvoj72Nuclear

      “If there’s a more creative idea, it has escaped me,” Countryman says. “And it has escaped the administration officials who have been discussing how to realize the president’s strategy for nine months now, when in fact, no such strategy is possible.”

      Some critics suspect Trump’s tripartite treaty strategy is a ploy, designed to distract arms control advocates while New START expires, which would appease defense hawks who never liked the treaty in the first place.

      “Trump and the hawks don’t want to have limits on the United States’ ability to increase its nuclear force,” says Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation dedicated to nuclear nonproliferation, arms control and disarmament. “It’s mostly about their belief that China could rapidly expand its arsenal, so they feel we have to be in a position to match it. Their view is that they protect American national security through American military might, not by pieces of paper like the New START treaty. They see that treaty as an arms control trap and its expiration next year as an opportunity to get out of it. And if that means an arms race, fine.”

      Defense hawks say China’s rise as a military power with advanced hypersonic nuclear weapons has rendered New START obsolete. “Technology has moved,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.¹⁴

      “If you want to pursue arms control, you can’t do it an in old-fashioned, outmoded, Cold War-era style,” said then-National Security Adviser John Bolton in June 2019. “So to extend [New START] for five years and not take these new delivery system threats into account would be malpractice,” he said, referring to hypersonic missile systems. He also cited the absence of limits on tactical nuclear weapons as another flaw in New START.¹⁵

      Although Bolton left the administration

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