Non-public US-Russia dialogue needed to develop treaty to replace New START — expert
The Russian-US Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms expired on February 5
WASHINGTON, June 3. /TASS/. Conducting non-public security consultations could help Russia and the United States eventually develop a new agreement to replace the expired Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START), the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Arms Control Association, Thomas Countryman, told TASS.
"I think prospects for a new treaty right now are very low," the expert, who served as Acting US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security in 2016-2017, noted while speaking about the prospects for Moscow and Washington to develop a new arms control treaty. As Countryman noted, the aforementioned association hopes that Russia and the US will "start talking to each other." "I just mean talking, I do not mean a strategic stability dialogue with big capital letters and lots of publicity, but quiet discussion about the security concerns that each has, and as they make the effort to understand each other better, that will lead, I hope, towards an agreement about the next treaty," he explained. The expert participated in the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association held in Washington.
Earlier, Countryman served as Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation. In recent years, he was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the non-governmental Arms Control Association.
The Russian-US Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) expired on February 5. The United States has actually refused to accept Russia’s proposal to abide by the treaty’s central limits for another twelve months. Washington has stated that it expects to sign trilateral agreements on this score with China’s participation. Beijing has rejected this approach, calling the US desire to include China in the Russian-US process of nuclear arms reduction already at the current stage as unfair and unreasonable. China says that its nuclear arsenal is far smaller than the US and Russian arsenals.