In a world without New START, old verification regimes could be key to strategic stability

Editor’s note: This is part of an “experts comment” series on the expiration of New START.

After the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expires this week, there will be no numerical limits on the nuclear arsenals of the two world’s largest nuclear-weapons states for the first time since the Cold War. Discussions over the end of New START have generally focused on the treaty’s numerical limits and their possible extension. But preserving the treaty’s information and monitoring regime (often referred to as verification) could have important benefits—and may be a more realistic goal.

New START’s verification arrangements included data exchanges, site visits, and up-close inspections of missiles to confirm they do not carry multiple warheads. Although verification mechanisms cannot entirely prevent cheating, they can help to detect anomalies and provide a consultative forum. When it worked—on-site inspections have been suspended since the COVID-19 pandemic— the New START information and monitoring regime was a key component of the treaty’s success in building trust and maintaining strategic stability. The United States and Russia could check national data via inspections, open sources, or classified national technical means. The Bilateral Consultative Commission (New START’s implementing body) provided a forum to review any issues or discrepancies in a cooperative bilateral environment.

With New START gone, this source of information and predictability now risks being lost.

It may be disadvantageous to lose treaty limits. But in the short term, this will likely make little to no difference: The modernization of the US arsenal is already well underway, Russia’s is near completion, and the Russian economy cannot support an arms race. Reviving the treaty’s information exchange and inspections could provide confidence that neither party seeks a buildup, at least, no more than in political declarations. An information exchange outside the treaty could also eventually include China. Although Beijing has shunned traditional arms control, it may see the benefit of accessing information on the nuclear weapons of others and being put on an equal basis with the United States.

If implementing New START’s verification aspects could improve international security and stability, the same could be said of restoring other defunct arms control agreements.

With the current geopolitical climate unfriendly to treaty negotiation, it may be time to consider picking out beneficial parts of treaties and implementing them as confidence-building ad hoc arrangements perceived as improving the security of participating governments. The advantage of using previously agreed measures is that they have been negotiated already, and related data has been shared in the past. And where it has not, as in the case with China, it can be argued that the conditions for such data sharing represent an international standard. Moreover, such measures could also be implemented by executive agreement, not requiring congressional ratification.

Exchanging annual data on strategic nuclear forces as was required under New START could provide a useful hedge against a renewed nuclear arms race. It would be particularly important if the data exchange could be expanded to include other nuclear-armed states, starting with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council. Reactivating New START’s inspection regime would also ensure that the other party—or parties—is not surreptitiously increasing its nuclear forces, especially by adding multiple warheads to missiles. Of course, since New START was a bilateral treaty, recasting its verification arrangements so they become multilateral would be challenging. But other governments may see benefits in gaining information on strategic forces, too.

Elements of other old arms control regimes may prove useful, too.

The 1992 Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) served to ease Europe out of the Cold War era by mandating the removal of military equipment from Central Europe. Having served that purpose, CFE had little further utility as an arms control arrangement, and Russia never even actually complied with treaty limitations. Still, CFE continued to improve stability in Europe, and that mainly comes from its intrusive on-site inspection regime. Once the Ukraine war ends, this could be useful again, as both sides and their neighboring countries will seek confidence that neither is rearming. By disclosing numbers and locations of offensive military systems and being subject to inspections of military facilities, European and Russian governments can improve confidence that they harbor no further aggressive plans.

Likewise, the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty helped manage the end of the Cold War by eliminating an entire class of nuclear weapons and providing confidence that more were not being produced. Key to this confidence was a monitoring system that included perimeter sensors at missile manufacturing facilities. Should the sensors have detected something the size of an INF-class missile leaving the facility, an alert would have been issued. Although likely difficult to negotiate today, INF-like monitoring arrangements at missile facilities could at least provide actual data about possible growth of missile forces, in the absence of which imaginations run wild with worst-case estimates.

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, was certainly controversial, but its verification arrangements were among the most stringent to date: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was able to monitor and inspect Iranian facilities associated with the production of fissile material. This kind of international oversight should become a common feature of agreements to transfer nuclear technology, even when there is little proliferation concern. The JCPOA was more intrusive than the IAEA’s full-scope safeguards, and it would raise the standard against proliferation if it were applied more broadly. Using JCPOA monitoring elsewhere could also encourage Iran, albeit with careful diplomacy, to resume its own compliance.

The end of the New START limits should not mean forgetting about other useful aspects of past arms control agreements. By resuming implementation of various information and monitoring arrangements, governments can provide confidence, build relationships, and increase knowledge—all essential elements of strategic stability. There are many benefits to participating in such measures, independent of the existence of their original treaties.

The wheel will eventually turn, and limitations and even reductions in nuclear weapons will again seem a good idea. When that happens, having confidence-building and transparency already in place among multiple countries will be advantageous.