“If the president decides, when New START expires in February 2026, that we need to increase the size of the deployed force, we want to be in a position to execute relatively quickly,” says a senior US defense official.
The extent and speed of any buildup may depend in part on whether the next president is Kamala Harris, who may try to maintain Democratic efforts to limit nuclear arms, or Donald Trump, who was a nuclear hardliner in his first term, the newspaper said.
Biden administration sources are keen to say that the current arsenal meets current threats, that they still hope to reach agreements to limit nuclear weapons, and that no decision has been made to deploy more nuclear weapons.
But in June, U.S. officials warned explicitly of the growing nuclear risks. “We now find ourselves in a new nuclear age,” senior Pentagon official Vipin Narang said in a speech on Aug. 1.
He pointed to “the unprecedented combination of multiple nuclear challengers who are not interested in arms control or risk reduction efforts, each rapidly modernizing and expanding their nuclear arsenals,” adding that their actions “have forced us to shift to a more competitive approach.”
Under successive arms control treaties, the world’s nuclear stockpile has shrunk from a peak of more than 70,000 warheads in 1986 to about 12,000 today.
On February 21, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in a message to the Russian Federal Assembly that Moscow would suspend its participation in the Russian-American START Treaty, stressing that the country would not withdraw from the treaty.
He pointed out that before returning to the discussion, it is necessary to understand what countries such as France and Britain claim, and how their strategic arsenals, that is, the total offensive capability of NATO, are taken into account. An official note on the suspension of Russia’s participation in the treaty was sent to the American side on February 28 last year.
In early June 2023, as a countermeasure under the New START Treaty, Washington announced the cessation of the transfer of information to Russia on the status and location of its strategic weapons covered by the treaty, revoked visas issued to Russian specialists to conduct inspections under the New START Treaty, and announced the cessation of providing Russia with telemetry information that affects the launch of US ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov previously stated that Russia’s return to implementing the New START treaty would only be possible if the United States abandoned its hostile course towards Moscow, and “this is clearly still far from being achieved.”
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov noted that dialogue on strategic arms reduction with the United States is impossible until the Americans change their anti-Russian policy.
Source: RT
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2024-08-13 21:43:44
