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The Next Era of Nuclear Arms Control

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Here is a recent Substack post from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the next era of nuclear arms control.

The Cold War

During the Cold War, few negotiations proved as complex as those between the United States and the Soviet Union to limit and reduce their vast nuclear arsenals. They required trust between adversaries who had little reason to believe each other’s words, and they relied on intricate, constant systems to verify compliance. American statesmen persevered and reached a series of agreements first with the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federation that left the United States safer.

Everything has its season though and yesterday, New START expired.

Arms control advocates and many voices in the media have tried to cast the expiration as a sign that the United States is initiating a new nuclear arms race. These concerns ignore that Russia ceased implementing the New START treaty in 2023, after flouting its terms for years. A treaty requires at least two parties, and the choice before the United States was to bind itself unilaterally or to recognize that a new era requires a new approach. Not the same old START, but something new. A treaty that reflects that the United States could soon face not one, but two, nuclear peers in Russia and China.

China Arsenal

China’s rapid and opaque expansion of its nuclear arsenal since New START entered into force has rendered past models of arms control, based upon bilateral agreements between the United States and Russia, obsolete. Since 2020, China has increased its nuclear weapons stockpile from the low 200s to more than 600 and is on pace to have more than 1,000 warheads by 2030. An arms control arrangement that does not account for China’s build-up, which Russia is supporting, will undoubtedly leave the United States and our allies less safe.

President Trump has been clear, consistent, and unequivocal that future arms control must address not one, but both nuclear peer arsenals.

Our call for multilateral nuclear arms control and strategic stability talks, presented today in Geneva, reflects the principles President Trump has laid out.

No Longer A Bilateral Issue

First, arms control can no longer be a bilateral issue between the United States and Russia. As the President has made clear, other countries have a responsibility to help ensure strategic stability, none more so than China. Second, we will not accept terms that harm the United States or ignore noncompliance in the pursuit of a future agreement. We have made our standards clear, and we will not compromise them to achieve arms control for arms control’s sake. Third, we will always negotiate from a position of strength. Russia and China should not expect the United States to stand still while they shirk their obligations and expand their nuclear forces. We will maintain a robust, credible, and modernized nuclear deterrent. But we will do so while pursuing all avenues to fulfill the President’s genuine desire for a world with fewer of these awful weapons.

We understand that this process can take time. Past agreements, including New START, took years to negotiate and were built upon decades of precedent. They were also between two powers, not three or more. However, just because something is hard does not mean we should not pursue it or settle for less. No one understands that difficult deals are often the only ones worth having more than President Trump, who has repeatedly underscored the awesome power of nuclear weapons and his desire to reduce global nuclear threats. Today in Geneva, we are taking the first steps into a future where the global nuclear threat is reduced in reality, not merely on paper. We hope others will join us.

Marco Rubio was sworn in as the 72nd Secretary of State on January 21, 2025. The Secretary is creating a Department of State that puts America First.

Politics

Report: Regulations on U.S. arms exports often skirted, rarely enforced

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SOMERVILLE, Mass.—While the United States likes to claim it has the gold standard of arms export control measures, in practice the measures offer few restrictions on U.S. presidents’ ability to ship arms wherever they like, according to a new report from the World Peace Foundation (WPF) at Tufts University’s The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The Arms Export Control Act (AECE) of 1976, as well as the United States’ international obligations, are meant to ensure decisions to export arms take into account the potential to escalate conflict or fall into the hands of U.S. enemies. The AECA sets up Congress as a check on presidential decisions.

“The potential for arms sales to exacerbate a conflict rarely stops a sale,” said report author Jennifer Erickson, associate professor of political science and international studies at Boston College. “When we do restrain exports, more often than not, political calculations are at work, rather than the legal checks and balances Congress put in place.”

Among the key findings of On the Front Lines: Conflict Zones and U.S. Arms Exports:

  • Conflict is not a consistent deterrent for U.S. arms exports. The United States usually prioritizes diplomatic and economic ties in export decision making—regardless of the conflict status of the recipient.
  • Presidents face few restrictions on using arms sales to meet policy goals. U.S. law sets an almost unreachable vote threshold for Congress to block or modify arms sales.
  • Even when the U.S. chooses not to supply weapons to conflict zones, it can and does use alternative means, such as common allies, to get arms to combatants.
  • There is no realistic way for the U.S. government to guarantee the weapons it sells are used only by the buyer, in ways that conform with U.S. interests. We cannot ensure weapons are only used defensively, for instance. And arms have staying power. Years after initial sales, they may be used instead for priorities the U.S. opposes.
  • Interpretation of regulations may become looser still as the U.S. enters a “New Cold War” with China or Russia.

In coming to these conclusions, the report examines U.S. arms sales, and restraint, connected to recent conflicts in Libya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The World Peace Foundation commissioned similar studies on arms sales by the governments of the United Kingdom and France.

These studies follow earlier research by the WPF on which nations send arms into conflict zones, available on the website, Who Arms War? 

“The United States has all the regulations and policy tools it needs to ensure we do not make already dangerous places even more deadly,” said Alex de Waal, World Peace Foundation executive director and research professor at The Fletcher School. “We have mechanisms that can minimize the risk of America arming deadly actors. What we don’t seem to have is the political will to actually use those mechanisms. On numerous occasions American arms have made the world a more dangerous place, including for Americans.”

ABOUT THE WORLD PEACE FOUNDATION

Established by the publisher Edwin Ginn in 1910, the World Peace Foundation aims to “educate the people of all nations to a full knowledge of the waste and destructiveness of war and of preparation for war, its evil effects on present social conditions and on the wellbeing of future generations, and to promote international justice and the brotherhood of man, and generally by every practical means to promote peace and goodwill among all mankind.”