Bilateral nuclear arms control is a two-player game by definition—until it isn’t. On April 17, 2020, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov that extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) hinges on Chinese participation (Landay 2020). The treaty will expire on February 5, 2021, unless both parties, Russia and the United States, agree to extend it. If it does expire, it won’t be the first US–Russian nuclear treaty to end as a result of Washington playing the China card. The administration of President Donald J. Trump cited China as a primary rationale for withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in August 2019 (Reif 2018; Countryman and Reif 2019). These moves come alongside unsubstantiated US State Department (2020a) reporting that China may be conducting low-yield nuclear explosive testing at its Lop Nor test site.

A disturbing pattern has emerged as the Trump administration leverages fear of China to roll back generations of bipartisanship on US–Russian nuclear arms control. For nearly 50 years, Republicans and Democrats in the US Senate have backed bilateral treaties aimed at reducing nuclear tensions between the United States and Russia. Now, Sinophobia triggered by China’s economic and military growth—as well as allegations surrounding Beijing’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic—threatens to upend decades of consensus on bilateral nuclear arms control. This could continue beyond the Trump presidency and spur arms races that ultimately undermine US national security and global stability. If this scenario occurs, it will be imperative for future leaders to consider new approaches to nuclear risk reduction.

A time-honored consensus

The abrogation of the INF Treaty and the dubious future of New START point to challenges for the formal bilateral nuclear arms control regime. The first agreements emerged from the 1969–1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, while New START’s entry-into-force in 2011 represents the most recent major arms control outcome.^[1] Washington’s and Moscow’s motivations for negotiating these agreements weren’t always the same (Maurer 2018). But the historical record is clear: Nuclear treaties with Russia have drawn bipartisan support since the Cold War. In short, there is a near-universal recognition that it’s hardly in US interests to have a peer nuclear competitor aiming thousands of missiles at American cities. Yet, the Trump administration’s focus on China threatens the time-honored consensus on bilateral nuclear arms control.

Senate voting records on US–Russian arms control illustrate strong bipartisanship (Kimball and Reif 2020). SALT I’s Interim Agreement and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty passed 88–2 in 1972. While SALT II fell victim to backlash over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and never received a ratification vote, this setback didn’t mark the end of an era. The INF Treaty that the White House recently abandoned received broad support from American allies and the Senate, passing 93–5 in 1988. Approval of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty followed with votes of 98–0. In 1992, START I began reducing post-Cold War stockpiles after winning 93–6 backing. The Senate then ratified the START II follow-on 87–4, though it never entered into force due to tensions over the George W. Bush administration’s missile defense plans. Instead, the Senate unanimously approved the Moscow Treaty 95–0 in 2003. New START’s 71–26 vote in 2010 is the closest thing to a departure from this trend. But even so, numerous Republican senators joined their Democratic colleagues to ratify the agreement.

Bipartisan support for arms control with Russia sharply contrasts with gridlock on Capitol Hill over multilateral efforts. The Senate declined to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1999 by a 51–48 vote largely along party lines (Herzog and Baron 2018). Similarly, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, not a formal treaty but an executive agreement negotiated by the Obama administration, immediately became a partisan issue. In 2018, the Trump administration withdrew from the deal, which remains polarizing among the US public (Baron and Herzog 2020). Outside the nuclear realm, the majority-Republican Senate only ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997 because President Bill Clinton agreed to abolish the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Parachini 1997; Krepon 2018).

“What about China?”

Beijing has played an outsized role in the recent history of US–Russian nuclear arms control. President Trump has pushed for trilateral arms control since early 2019, noting: “Between Russia and China and us, we’re all making hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is ridiculous” (Sonne and Hudson 2019). This rhetoric suggests an equivalence between the Chinese, Russian, and US arsenals. In reality, Russia and the United States each maintain approximately 4,000 operational nuclear weapons, while China has around 300 (Kristensen and Korda 2019a, 2020a, 2020c). US withdrawal from the INF Treaty established a precedent: The White House will jettison the only legally-binding measures constraining and monitoring the activities of Washington’s closest nuclear competitor unless a much weaker nuclear power takes part. Claims of Chinese nuclear testing—without evidence—in violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban’s “zero-yield” standard (US State Department 2020a) reinforce just how serious the administration is about this line of thinking.

China’s leaders have been quick to dismiss such criticism and the trilateral approach. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang has been unequivocal in representing the Chinese position: “The premise and basis for trilateral arms control negotiations do not exist at all, and China will never participate in them” (O’Connor 2019). Beijing argues that its smaller arsenal, no-first-use policy, and need for regional delivery systems all make the trilateral format inappropriate for the INF Treaty and New START (Arbatov et al. 2020; Zhao 2020). For example, New START sets a limit of 1,550 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads for each side. This limit represents around five times the total number of Chinese nuclear weapons (Kristensen and Korda 2019a). The possibility that revealing weapon locations through an on-site inspection regime would make China’s arsenal more susceptible to counterforce strikes further reduces prospects for trilateralism.^[2]

That a third-party can play spoiler to so many bilateral agreements appears to frustrate Russian officials. Their optimism about extending New START is clearly waning. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian media in April 2020 that “all the signs that the [United States] is on the threshold of making a decision not to extend this document are there” (Sputnik 2020). While President Vladimir Putin has indicated a strong desire to renew New START for another five years (Reif and Bugos 2020), the Kremlin is well aware of the Trump administration’s China obsession. Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov (2020) has expressed Russia’s position that a single-minded drive for trilateralism is “a serious obstacle to the development of the Russian–US strategic dialogue.”

Why the fixation with China? Beijing’s economic rise has been undeniable for a long time, but the Trump administration has pivoted the US security focus from counterterrorism to great power competition (Blankenship and Dennison 2019). China is the first threat highlighted in its National Defense Strategy (US Department of Defense 2018), taking priority over Russia, North Korea, Iran, and the Islamic State.

The American public has also soured on China. An April 2020 Pew poll found that two-thirds of Americans have a negative opinion of China, and 84 percent consider its military growth a “serious” or “very serious” problem (Devlin, Silver, and Huang 2020). A Gallup poll from a month earlier reported similar results, with public favorability toward China falling below levels in the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Incident (Jones 2020). Both polls noted that Democrats see Russia as the nation’s greatest threat, while Republicans are more concerned about China. This partisan split is unsurprising considering the politicization of the Trump–Russia inquiry and the administration’s efforts to blame China for the coronavirus.

President Trump has capitalized on these trends. His reelection strategy deflects culpability for US woes away from his presidency by pointing the finger at China. This antipathy has spread to the Senate, where Republican leadership backs a bill to punish China for abuses against the Muslim minority Uyghurs (Zengerle 2020), and senators have proposed barring Chinese students from obtaining US visas (Sternlicht 2020). In a break from past support for US–Russian arms control, Senate Republicans now argue the administration’s case: China’s rise necessitates a multilateral approach to nuclear arms control (Fischer 2019). And if this objective proves unattainable, they appear more willing to accept the demise of arms control with Russia than an agreement that doesn’t include China.

Lots to lose, little to gain

If New START expires, Washington and Moscow will enter long-uncharted waters. For the first time in nearly 50 years, when the SALT I Interim Agreement froze the numbers of US and Russian ballistic missiles, there will be no limitations on the arsenals of the world’s largest nuclear powers. Likewise, the use of intrusive on-site inspections to “trust, but verify” will grind to a halt for the first time since the early days of the INF Treaty. Some arms control skeptics may celebrate the freedom to deploy unlimited warheads and an end to Russian inspectors on US soil, or even argue that a better deal is possible (Geller 2020). However, the United States has very little to gain from unrestrained nuclear competition.

The verification activities that would cease with New START are the core of nuclear arms control.[3] New START’s preamble and treaty text account for just 17 pages of diplomatic language. But its verification protocol contains 165 pages of rigorously negotiated definitions, provisions for national technical means and data exchange, and procedures for on-site inspections and notifications. Since 2011, US and Russian inspectors have visited the other country’s nuclear sites 328 times, and over 20,000 notifications have occurred regarding the production, deployment, dismantlement, and destruction of strategic nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles (US State Department 2020b, 2020c). The treaty helps keep a line of communication about nuclear weapons open between Washington and Moscow during difficult times. It also provides the two sides with the best source of information about the size and composition of each other’s arsenals. Perhaps most important for arms control’s American critics, the treaty offers these benefits without threatening US conventional posture or second-strike capabilities.

A world without New START would be considerably more dangerous. In December 2019, former NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller testified that absent New START, “without deploying a single additional missile, [Russia] could go from 1,550 deployed warheads possibly to as many as 2,550 deployed warheads” (Kristensen and Korda 2019b). It is in US national security and budgetary interests to avoid an arms race. Likewise, unrestrained nuclear competition between the United States and Russia may actually trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy regarding China (Glaser and Fetter 2016). If China has reason to question the survivability of its second-strike capabilities,^[4] Beijing may chart a course toward becoming the peer nuclear power the White House fears. Worse, an even more harrowing scenario may emerge, wherein Chinese leaders believe themselves to be in use-it-or-lose-it nuclear crises, increasing the pressure to launch their own nuclear weapons early in a conflict (Talmadge 2017). China’s objections to the trilateral format make it decidedly unlikely that trilateral nuclear arms control will materialize before the expiration of New START (Zhao 2020). And it is simply not worth calling it quits on generations of US–Russian confidence building and nuclear risk reduction.

Can arms control survive the rise of China?

Washington’s concerns about its rivalry with China are not without basis. China has militarized the South China Sea (Beech 2018) and developed plans to control vital shipping routes through its Belt and Road Initiative (Chatzky and McBride 2020). US analysts assess that Chinese naval modernization and deployment of anti-ship missiles aim to further counter the United States in the Western Pacific (Roblin 2019; O’Rourke 2020). This objective would align with Chinese defense policy, which identifies the United States as the primary strategic adversary (People’s Republic of China State Council Information Office 2019). These developments are among the growing signs that China seeks regional hegemony in East Asia and are perhaps indicators that Washington and Beijing are already involved in a new Cold War. It’s possible that without de-escalation, open conflict may be likely, if not inevitable (Allison 2018).

Yet, the strategic task of managing a rising China shouldn’t preclude the United States from conducting bilateral arms control with Russia. Trying to find a one-size-fits-all trilateral deal ignores the reality of the situation—China and Russia present markedly different challenges for the United States. On-site inspections, valuable as they may be, are unnecessary to conclude that China is within New START limits on warheads and delivery systems. China’s defensive nuclear strategy is compatible with its smaller arsenal (Lewis 2007), which is why Beijing possesses a fraction of the weapons allowed by New START (Kristensen and Korda 2019a). US military intelligence assessments that China plans to double its nuclear arsenal over the next decade (Ashley 2019) don’t necessarily reflect an offensive doctrinal shift. In fact, these conclusions should be an incentive to design arms control that is compatible with Chinese security concerns, rather than a reason to foment an arms race in the South China Sea.

Washington can more effectively manage the rise of China if it continues to embrace arms control with Russia and recognizes that it loses little from compliance and gains much by signaling that it is a reliable partner. The Trump administration’s withdrawals from the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal have already damaged America’s international reputation (Nye 2020). An exit from bilateral US–Russia treaties in favor of arms racing would accelerate the decline of this credibility, especially among NATO allies who might find themselves in the crosshairs of new Russian weapons. A similar situation could also develop in Asia if strategic tensions lead China to revise its doctrine of minimum nuclear deterrence. Abandoning arms control would also intensify pressure from countries—particularly proponents of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—that believe nuclear-armed states have made insufficient progress toward the disarmament obligations in Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (Gibbons 2018).

Can arms control with Russia survive the erosion of the longstanding bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill? It might, although an arms control–minded US president and his or her foreign policy advisors will need to get creative. Non-treaty approaches like the Iran nuclear deal offer a procedural template for arms reductions in an age of political polarization. This also wouldn’t be new to the US–Russia relationship. Between 1991 and 1992, the former Cold War rivals eliminated nearly 17,000 tactical nuclear weapons through the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives, a series of reciprocal unilateral commitments (Handler 2003; Corin 2004). These types of executive actions are, however, easily reversible by subsequent heads of state who may be less inclined to support arms control. For this reason, quick deliverables may become increasingly important. Verification may be challenging under these circumstances, as it is time-consuming to negotiate. Non-treaty efforts following the hypothetical expiration of New START should accordingly borrow heavily from the INF Treaty and New START verification regimes.

If the focus on the trilateral US–Russia–China format continues, the future of New START and bilateral arms control treaties between Washington and Moscow appears bleak. This would be highly unfortunate since these accords have dramatically shrunk the American and Russian nuclear stockpiles—from a combined peak of over 70,000 to approximately 8,000 today (Kristensen and Korda 2020a, 2020b, 2020c). Hopefully, New START and the legacy of the bipartisan consensus on nuclear arms control will live to ride another day. But even if “What about China?” remains a prevalent theme in Washington, this won’t necessarily spell the demise of arms control. It will, however, pose a significant setback that requires fresh thinking for a new era of managing nuclear risks and the US–Russia relationship.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

Stephen Herzog completed this work with generous support from the Stanton Foundation Nuclear Security Fellowship Program.

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Notes

^[1] For a concise history of US–Russian arms control, see Council on Foreign Relations (2020). It should be noted that the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 preceded SALT I. This treaty was multilateral between the United States, Britain, and Russia, and later became a global agreement.

^[2] For a discussion of China’s increasing vulnerability to counterforce strikes, see Lieber and Press (2006–2007, 2018).

[3] For a detailed discussion of the New START verification regime, see Gottemoeller (2020).

^[4] For a recent assessment of the survivability of Chinese nuclear forces, see Riqiang (2020).