National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently suggested a diplomatic offensive to secure your country via arms control.
He suggested rekindling arms control talks with our main adversaries - Russia and China. Nearly every arms control treaty our country entered with Russia has been broken since the beginning of Cold War II, and there are legitimate worries about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Of course, Russia hasn't helped matters any with its illegal invasion of Ukraine. Sullivan's move means the U.S. is willing to engage one-on-one or multilaterally, stressing the importance of conversation as anxieties rise.
"We're entering a new era, one that demands new strategies and solutions to achieve the goals we've always had: prevent an arms race, reduce the risk of misperception and escalation, and most importantly, ensure the safety and security of our people and people around the world from nuclear threats," Sullivan said in a report by the Arms Control Association.
We live in stark times in terms of arms control. Deteriorating relations between the US and Russia led to the abandoning of key nuclear treaties that helped maintain strategic stability for decades - the anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. During the first Cold War, the two superpowers worked together to simmer the conflict at times. For 50 years, weapons treaties have led to a drop in the number of warheads across the globe.
The last remaining arms control pact, known as the New START Treaty, is scheduled to expire in Feb. 2026. President Vladimir Putin suspended Russia's participation. There are no talks between the two countries currently. If New START lapses without another deal, it would be the first time since 1972 that the two leading nuclear nations, which control 90% of the world's nuclear warheads, were without an agreement governing their strategic stockpiles.
China, a recent edition to the club of great powers, has never been part of a nuclear-arms agreement and has shown no signs of attempting to control its weapons programs. China's unwillingness to engage with the U.S. has raised questions about the two superpowers' ability to collaborate on nuclear arms reductions. Right now, we live in a sad and unstable world.
Arms control agreements don't happen overnight, as they take years to craft. Sullivan said the war in Ukraine posed a hurdle to such negotiations. Russian President Vladimir Putin has rattled his nuclear saber at the U.S., and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance as they try to pressure him to abandon his illegal invasion of Ukraine.
The national security advisor acknowledged that a new agreement would include China with its growing nuclear ambitions. The U.S. nuclear arsenal will not need to match the combined nuclear forces of both China and Russia, Sullivan correctly stated, despite signs that China and Russia have increased military collaboration in recent years. The White House believes such a strategy risks a volatile three-way arms race, Sullivan said in reports.
We're in the early phases of Cold War II, a tragedy, but hopefully the planned arms control strategy can lead to more arms control deals down the road. Fewer weapons in the world mean more security!
