UN Secretary-General António Guterres says we now face a world without any binding limits on the nuclear arsenals of Russia and US
UNITED NATIONS (TIP): The United Nations has warned that the world faces a “grave moment to international peace and security” as the US-Russia ‘New START’ treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), on restricting nuclear weapons, expired.
“For the first time in more than half a century, we face a world without any binding limits on the nuclear arsenals of Russia and US,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a statement on Thursday.
“I urge both, the US and Russia, to return to the negotiating table without delay and to agree upon a successor framework that restores verifiable limits, reduces risks, and strengthens our common security,” he added. This expiry of the treaty is dissolution of decades of achievement and could not come at a worse time – the risk of a nuclear weapon being used is the highest in decades,” Guterres said.
“The two – US and Russia — possess the overwhelming majority of the global stockpile of nuclear weapons,” the statement said.
The UN Secretary referred to the ‘New Start treaty’ saying it drastically improved the security of all people, not least the populations of the United States and Russia.
Throughout the Cold War and in its aftermath, nuclear arms control between these governments helped prevent catastrophe. “It built stability and, when combined with other measures, prevented devastating miscalculation. Most importantly, it facilitated the reduction of thousands of nuclear weapons from national arsenals,” Guterres said.
The New START was signed in 2010 by US President Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, the then Russian president. The treaty sets limits on strategic nuclear weapons — the kind that each side would use to strike the opponent’s vital political, military and industrial centers in the event of a nuclear war.
It caps the number of deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 on each side, with no more than 700 deployed ground or submarine-launched missiles and bomber planes, and 800 launchers.
The treaty included a system of short-notice, on-site inspections so each side could satisfy itself that the other was complying. But in 2023, Putin suspended Moscow’s participation because of US support for Ukraine in the war with Russia. That brought a halt to inspections — which in any case had been suspended during the COVID pandemic — and forced each side to rely on its own intelligence assessments of what the other was doing.
If Moscow and Washington cease observing mutual limits on their long-range nuclear arsenals, it will mark the end of more than half a century of constraints on these weapons. The expiry of New START leaves a void, as no talks have taken place on a successor treaty.
Without a treaty, any of the two would be free to increase its missile numbers and deploy hundreds of more strategic warheads, which only means a constant threat to world peace.
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