Beyond New START: Addendum
LeAnn
Fri, 03/03/2023 – 14:24
It has taken only a month for a prediction in my recent Hoover article “Beyond New START” to be proven at least half-wrong. I said that dealing now with a situation in which we no longer had the New START, or a suitable replacement, would be “premature and defeatist.” President Putin’s February 21, 2023, announcement that Russia is “suspending” the New START moves dealing with such a situation from premature to urgent.
Current Situation
Fortunately, the current situation still maintains legal constraints on strategic nuclear weapons, but it does away with a key aspect of the verification regime established to monitor those constraints. On-site inspections (OSI) under New START have been suspended since March 2020, first by mutual agreement because of the COVID pandemic, and more recently because Russia has refused to resume them. Russia’s stated reason for this is that Western sanctions have made it impossible for Russian inspectors to carry out their activities. The United States assured Russia that its inspectors would be allowed to carry out these activities fully. Putin’s new announcement of a more drastic blow to New START cites the situation created by the war in Ukraine. …read more
Source:: Hoover Institution