Summary and Key Points: The expiration of the New START Treaty in February 2026 completes the dismantling of the global strategic arms control system.
-Following the U.S. withdrawal from the INF and Open Skies agreements, President Trump has shifted toward a trilateral strategy, insisting that any future pact must include Beijing’s rapidly expanding arsenal.
Diagram depicting the different stages of a Minuteman III missile path from launch to detonation, as well as the different basic stages of the missile themselves. Based on information in TRW Systems. (2001) Minuteman Weapon System History and Description.
-With land-based ICBM limits now defunct, hawks like Sen. Tom Cotton are advocating for “reloading” Minuteman III and Sentinel missiles with multiple warheads (MIRVs).
-As the U.S. prepares to resume nuclear testing for the first time since 1992, the landscape moves toward a high-stakes, three-way arms race.
The End of Restraint: Why the Expiration of New START Triggers a 3-Way Arms Race
The mesh of nuclear arms control agreements woven during the latter stages of the Cold War and the initial years of the post-Cold War period has almost totally unraveled. The latest cut came earlier this month when the New Start Treaty between the United States and Russia expired.
Among other features, that agreement limited Washington and Moscow’s deployment of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to 1,500 for each party.
The expiration of New Start essentially completes the dismantling of the strategic arms control system. The United States withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in August 2019. Washington also ended its adherence to the Open Skies agreement with Moscow in November 2020. Open Skies had assured greater transparency regarding the movement and deployment of bombers and missiles.
Throughout the Biden and Trump administrations, U.S. leaders weakened the nuclear arms control system in another respect. Washington continued its longstanding refusal to officially approve the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Although the United States signed the treaty in 1996, it has never ratified the document. In November 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin retaliated by signing a law revoking Russia’s 2000 ratification of the CTBT. Putin said he wanted to “mirror” the U.S. position.
U.S. President Donald Trump has intensified nuclear tensions. On October 29, 2025, he announced the United States would resume testing nuclear weapons. Trump explicitly accused Moscow and Beijing of secretly conducting new tests already. Some of his influential political allies, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), have made similar accusations.
Evidence supporting such allegations, however, remains weak and murky.
Oreshnik ICBM from Russia. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Sentinel ICBM U.S. Air Force
Sentinel ICBM. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
If the president carries out his threat to resume testing the nuclear weapons in Washington’s arsenal, it would mark the end of a long period in which all countries with nuclear weapons have refrained from conducting such tests. The last confirmed episode was the detonation of an underground warhead by North Korea in early September 2017.
Despite his confrontational stance on nuclear testing and other arms control issues, Trump seemed at least cautiously receptive to Putin’s proposal to extend New Start by one year. But once the treaty expired in early February, Trump adopted a decidedly negative attitude toward that idea. He later stated that he wants to negotiate an entirely new agreement that would no longer be a bilateral pact between Moscow and Washington but would also require Beijing to join.
Enter Tom Cotton
Instead of mourning the demise of New Start, the last meaningful strategic arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, President Trump and his domestic political allies are celebrating it. According to Sen. Cotton, the expiration of New Start “is a watershed moment in American nuclear strategy.” He asserts that far from being a failure of U.S. diplomacy, “this expiration is an overdue correction of a strategic mistake that left America vulnerable to two nuclear rivals: Russia and China.”
The lack of treaty limits on the size of Beijing’s strategic arsenal is a legitimate concern, and the critics of New Start are correct to point out that deficiency. Any worthwhile replacement for the treaty needs to include China. However, it likely would have been easier to induce Beijing to join an expanded New Start, rather than starting from scratch after the United States killed the bilateral version. That lack of cooperation conveyed a discouraging message.
Both Washington and Moscow seem to be moving in the wrong direction with respect to nuclear arms control, and Chinese leaders are not oblivious to that unpleasant trend.
Cotton and other hawks are now advocating a major enlargement and modernization of Washington’s nuclear arsenal. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, the Arkansas senator emphasizes putting “multiple warheads back on U.S. land-based ICBMs.”
Cotton continues: “To stay below New Start limits, America reduced the load on our ICBMs to one warhead per missile. We should load existing Minuteman III ICBMs to their full capacity and ensure that Sentinel ICBMs are also deployed at full capacity.”
He also wants to restore U.S. theater nuclear capabilities: “This means completing the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile program, forward-deploying additional U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to Europe and the Pacific and developing hypersonic nuclear-capable delivery systems.”
A New Arms Race Coming Soon?
Enlarging and modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal—especially its strategic weaponry—could trigger an extremely dangerous nuclear-arms race. Yet both Trump and Cotton seem especially willing to have their country begin just such a race. Indeed, Cotton asserts that “the race has already begun. Russia and China have been running it for more than a decade while we sat on the sidelines.” Trump and Cotton are hardly alone in adopting such an attitude.
Throughout history, most arms races have not turned out well. The United States should not casually take such a risk with the most destructive weapons the human race has ever created. Yet that is where the Trump administration and congressional hawks appear to be headed.
Sensible Americans need to pressure them to change course.
About the Author: Ted Galen Carpenter
Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and a contributing editor at 19FortyFive and The American Conservative. He is the author of 13 books and more than 1,500 articles on national security, international affairs, and civil liberties. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).
