Trump Signals Willingness to Let New START Treaty Expire

President Donald Trump said in an interview released Jan. 8-9 that he would allow the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to lapse if necessary, declaring, "If it expires, it expires," and adding, "We'll just do a better agreement." His remarks come with the treaty set to end on Feb. 5 unless the two parties take extraordinary steps to preserve its limits and verification regime.

New START, signed in Prague on April 8, 2010 and entered into force on Feb. 5, 2011, caps each side at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on no more than 700 delivery vehicles and establishes monitoring, verification and data-exchange mechanisms. The treaty’s text allowed one extension, which Russian President Vladimir Putin and then-U.S. President Joe Biden invoked in 2021; as written, it cannot be extended again. That legal detail, combined with the short calendar before the Feb. 5 deadline, has intensified debate in Washington, Moscow and allied capitals over next steps.

In the interview the president suggested any follow-on agreement should broaden participation to include China, a long-standing U.S. objective. Beijing has pushed back on that formula, saying it would not be "reasonable nor realistic" to expect China to join New START. Russian officials proposed in September that the United States and Russia voluntarily maintain New START's central limits even after formal expiration, framing the offer as a way to prevent a renewed arms race and preserve predictability. The White House has not accepted that proposal and has pointed reporters to the president's remarks for the administration's current posture.

Arms-control experts warn that abandoning New START without an interim arrangement would remove both the numerical caps and the verification mechanisms that have reduced the risk of miscalculation between Washington and Moscow. Analysts say both sides could quickly "upload" additional warheads onto existing delivery systems, potentially reversing three decades of incremental bilateral restraints. Thomas Countryman, a former senior State Department arms control official who now chairs the board of the Arms Control Association, warned there are "plenty of advocates in the Trump administration ... for doing exactly that."

Policy communities are discussing a narrow set of options that could be feasible in the weeks ahead. One path is to accept Moscow's voluntary proposal to maintain limits and data exchanges while negotiating a new treaty; another is to pursue a legally binding replacement that would seek broader participation and restore verification, although most analysts say there is too little time to complete such a complex accord before Feb. 5. A third, riskier outcome is to let New START lapse and pause bilateral arms-control efforts as policymakers reassess strategy toward Russia and China.

The stakes extend beyond U.S.-Russia relations. Allies in Europe and Asia view the treaty as a pillar of strategic stability that underpins deterrence and crisis management. Without its transparency tools, NATO members and Asian partners would face a more opaque nuclear environment, complicating crisis communications and raising the likelihood of misreading military moves.

As the deadline approaches, the choices Washington and Moscow make will test whether political will can preserve the modest but critical restraints that have prevented an unconstrained nuclear competition between the world's two largest arsenals.