Suspension of New START nuclear treaty

MainsGS2: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora.)

Context:

• On the eve of the first anniversary of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow was unilaterally suspending the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty with the U.S. i.e.New START nuclear treaty.

Cold war treaty:

• Mr. Putin also said Moscow ought to stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the U.S. does so, a move that would end a global ban on nuclear weapons tests in place since Cold War times. 
• About half a decade before the end of the Cold War, the then leaders of the U.S. and the erstwhile Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, declared in a historic statement: “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
• While both Moscow and Washington were aggressive in their one-upmanship of expanding nuclear arsenals in the initial decades of the Cold War, they have engaged in bilateral talks since and signed multiple treaties to shrink and keep checks on each other’s nuclear arsenals. 
• The first formal dialogue, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), started between the two countries under former President Richard Nixon’s administration in 1969. 
• The Anti-Ballistic Missile defence systems Treaty, which provided the shooting down of incoming missiles, was signed in 1972 but the George W. Bush administration unilaterally pulled out of the pact in 2002.

New START nuclear treaty:

• The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), signed in 1991, expired in late 2009 and another treaty, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT or Moscow Treaty), was signed in 2002.
• The New START treaty, which replaced the 2002 pact, was the last remaining nuclear weapons control agreement between the two powers who together hold 90% of the world’s nuclear arsenal.
• The New START treaty was signed in 2010 by former U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and came into force in February 2011. 
• Under the Treaty, America and Russia cannot deploy more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and more than 700 long-range missiles and bombers. 
• It also limits each country to 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers and delivery vehicles.
• It allows each side to carry out up to 18 short-notice (32 hours) on-site inspections of strategic nuclear weapons sites annually to ensure the other has not crossed the limits of the treaty.
• Under the agreement, Russia and the U.S. exchange data twice a year on the ballistic missiles under the treaty’s purview, on bombers, test sites, nuclear bases and so on. 
• The treaty also mandates the two parties to send notifications within five days if they change or updates something in their stockpile, like moving missiles to a new base or deploying a new warhead to the system.

Triggering an arms race:

• Notably, since Mr. Putin has not withdrawn from the treaty and just ‘suspended’ it, which is a term not defined in the official pact, analysts are saying the move would not immediately trigger and arms race between the two powers, and could be a part of Russia’s political messaging amid the West’s massive assistance to Ukraine amid the year-long conflict. 
• Evidently, the Russian administration also announced that it does not plan to breach the limits on warheads prescribed in New START. 
• The Russian Foreign Ministry also said that it would continue notifying Washington of planned test launches of inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

Conclusion:

• Observers say the move not only disturbs the fragile calculus of nuclear arms controls between the two largest nuclear powers but could also give an opportunity to other nuclear-armed countries, especially China and others like Pakistan, Iran, Israel, and India among others, to increase their arsenals.