Putin just gave Trump the opportunity to maintain nuclear restraint. Will he seize it?

President Donald Trump has an opportunity to avoid the dangers of an unrestrained nuclear arms competition—something he has repeatedly warned about. New START, the last treaty limiting US and Russian nuclear arms, expires this coming February. This happens as China is engaged in a rapid nuclear buildup, Russia is building exotic new nuclear delivery systems and rattling its nuclear saber over the war in Ukraine, and North Korea continues its smaller but still frightening nuclear expansion with weapons now able to reach the continental United States.

To deter all these threats at once, many people in Washington are arguing that the United States should leap past the New START limits when the treaty expires, adding hundreds or even thousands of additional nuclear warheads. That, however, would mean a world with no limits at all on strategic nuclear forces for the first time in half a century. A US nuclear buildup, coupled with growing US missile defenses, would likely provoke still further buildups in Russia and China, leading to all the unpredictability and risk of a nuclear competition with no agreed limits.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin has just opened an opportunity to avoid that, at least for now.

Speaking at a meeting of his advisory Security Council on Monday—only hours ahead of the UN General Assembly in New York—Putin announced that “Russia is prepared to continue adhering to the central quantitative limitations of the New START treaty for one year.” He added that the offer stands as long as the United States does the same and does not take other steps “that undermine or disrupt the existing balance of deterrence potentials.” This is an important reversal. Putin has repeatedly rejected arms control talks throughout the war in Ukraine.

President Trump should quickly take Putin’s offer, while pushing Russia to also accept a return to on-site inspections and data exchanges. The president should then use that “pause” with limits still in place to explore what new accords might look like, in discussions with Russia, China, and potentially other nuclear powers.

Finding a path to new limits and risk-reduction measures for nuclear forces is likely to be challenging, with more players involved and a variety of non-nuclear technologies that are affecting nuclear balances—from missile defenses to precision conventional weapons to artificial intelligence and weapons autonomy.

So far, China has not been interested in engaging. But there is a strong case that offering enough restraint to avoid a nuclear arms race would also be in China’s national interest—particularly if the United States made serious offers in return. New accords might also limit non-strategic weapons—those generally shorter-range weapons that would most likely be used first in a conflict—if Russia could be convinced and appropriate verification measures devised. Something will likely have to be done about intermediate-range nuclear missiles, no longer limited since the demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, but seen as a strategic threat in both Moscow and European capitals. New accords may take a variety of forms other than detailed ratified treaties, from political commitments to executive agreements. With all that on the table, it might be wise to see if Putin’s proposal could be extended to two years, or even three, to give time for discussions.

A post-New START pause to explore future options—even if it went on for two or three years—would not undermine US security. The United States already has a large and robust nuclear deterrent force—enough to retaliate after absorbing a first nuclear strike and still deter others from attacking. Should future accords truly turn out to be hopeless, and more nuclear forces are then judged to be necessary, today’s US options will still be available, including putting stored warheads back onto existing missiles, putting stored missiles back onto submarines, assigning more bombers to nuclear missions, and producing more of the weapons planned in the US modernization effort. New weapons like the US nuclear sea-launched cruise missile now in development would not be ready during the pause—and in any case, are not covered by New START. Passing up the opportunity to keep the lid on the nuclear arms competition—while Washington, Moscow, and Beijing explore what could be done to reduce nuclear risks over the longer term—would be foolish.

The dangers of a potential three-way nuclear arms competition are very real. Maintaining stable deterrence and planning strategic forces is far more difficult if there are both new players and no limits at all on the forces adversaries might have in the future. Without any restraints, worst-case threat assessments on all sides are likely to lead to major nuclear arms buildups, particularly with three great powers competing. This unpredictability would lead to even greater dangers to US security, along with burgeoning costs. And with the largest nuclear powers increasing their nuclear forces, it would be very hard to argue they were meeting their Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligation to negotiate in good faith toward disarmament, putting the already straining global effort to stem the spread of nuclear weapons under still greater pressure.

Moreover, the United States is ill-prepared for a nuclear race. While it would not be unduly difficult for the United States to take existing warheads or missiles out of storage, Washington’s ability to undertake any more substantial nuclear arms buildup is very limited. (Even “uploading” those stored weapons would involve costs and delays that are not widely understood.) The existing strategic modernization program is far behind schedule and costing far more than planned. Given current US ship-building capabilities, if the United States decided to build more Columbia-class submarines, they would go to sea, at best, in the late 2040s. The United States is hoping to establish the ability to manufacture 80 plutonium “pits” (the primary fission components of nuclear weapons) per year, judged to be needed to maintain the current US nuclear weapon stockpile, but so far has produced only one certified as suitable for use in the nuclear force.

Getting into a nuclear arms competition with Russia, which has moved to put its economy on a war footing, or China, with its powerhouse manufacturing capabilities (including more than 200 times the US ship-building capacity), is a losing proposition. My advice: Never get into an arms race with a country that can build a functioning hospital in two weeks—as China did during the pandemic.

Fortunately for the United States and strategic stability, President Trump appears interested in keeping the New START limits and negotiating something more. Four days into his current term, speaking to the World Economic Forum in Davos, he brought up the need for new accords with Russia and China, “cutting way back on nuclear [weapons].” He noted that “tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear [weapons], and the destructive capability is something we don’t even want to talk about… It’s too depressing.”

At a White House press conference in February, Trump argued “there’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many, you could destroy the world 50 times over—100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons, and China’s building nuclear weapons.” He has continued to return to the topic since then—as he had for decades before entering office. Asked about New START specifically before the Alaska summit with Putin, President Trump said: “That’s not an agreement you want expiring. We’re starting to work on that.”

With the Trump administration, of course, one can never be sure that the policy the president announces today will be the same as the policy tomorrow. But Putin has opened a door. President Trump should now step through it, and then he and his advisors should create and sustain the focused effort needed to find a path to future arms control accords.