WASHINGTON, August 27. /TASS/. The US Department of Defense has admitted that the further reduction of nuclear arms is possible only if a consensus on strategic stability is reached between interested parties.
According to United States Air Force lieutenant general Andrew J. Gebara who serves as the deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration of the United States Air Force, in order to continue nuclear arms control, three components are necessary. "First of all, you have to have a shared sense of what strategic stability looks like at the end game," he said at a video seminar of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. "Second thing is, you need to have some level of transparency. So you can't really talk about limiting numbers if you don't know how much they have," he explained. "And then, I think, the third thing is, you have to have verifiability," the military official added.
According to Gebara, "you don't have to be best friends, but you have to agree on what stability looks like." "You have to basically know what they have, and then you have to verify that they actually got to the numbers you agreed to. And if you can't do those things, you're not going to get arms control," he concluded.
In response to a TASS question, US President Donald Trump earlier confirmed that Washington sought to engage with Russia for a discussion of prospects for nuclear disarmament. The US leader added that the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) without it being replaced by another document would be "a problem for the world." Trump said later that he would like China to participate in denuclearization talks.
About New START
The Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (the New START Treaty) was signed by Russia and the United States in 2010. On February 21, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his decision to suspend Russia’s participation in New START without withdrawing from it. The president stressed that, before discussing resuming any work under the treaty, Moscow must understand for itself how New START would factor in the nuclear arsenals not only of the United States, but also those of other nuclear powers in NATO, such as the UK and France. On February 28, 2023, Putin signed a law suspending Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty.
The document stipulates that seven years after its entry into effect each party should have no more than a total of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and strategic bombers, as well as no more than 1,550 warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and strategic bombers, and a total of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers and strategic bombers.
In February 2021, Moscow and Washington extended the treaty which the Russian government characterized as the gold standard in the disarmament sphere, for a five-year period, until 2026.