In this article, Dr Manuel Herrera Almela, Senior Policy Fellow at BASIC and Manager of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme, reflects on the expiry of the New START Treaty between Russia and the United States. The views expressed belong solely to the author of the article and do not necessarily reflect their government’s position, any affiliated institutions, or that of BASIC.
On 9 July 1955, confronted by the accelerating nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States, a group of scientists and philosophers published a joint statement warning the world of the dangers of nuclear war. “We have to learn to think in a new way,” wrote the group, which included the physicist Albert Einstein and philosopher Bertrand Russell. “We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity and forget the rest.”
Seventy years later, the world faces another nuclear arms race and must learn to think – and communicate – in ways that draw on methods from a very different era. Last week marked the expiry of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), one of the latest in a line of treaties drawn up since 1972 to limit the size of nuclear arsenals held by Russia and the US. The treaty places caps on their deployed (i.e., operational/war-ready) intercontinental missiles, nuclear warheads, and missile launchers and enables short-notice, on-site inspections to check compliance. There have been bumps along the way, but, for 55 years, these treaties have helped keep a dangerous nuclear arms race at bay. Now, for the first time since 1972, there is no agreement in place and little likelihood of key actors returning to the negotiation table anytime soon. US President Donald Trump recently stated: “if [New START] expires, it expires”.
The treaty’s expiry without a successor is no surprise: it has long been on the cards – mainly due to US reluctance to be beholden to legal obligations that would prevent it from modernising its arsenal to counterbalance China, which has embarked on unprecedented nuclear expansion and modernisation. However, the implications remain serious: jettisoning the “guardrails” capping nuclear arms of the world’s two most heavily armed nuclear powers could spur a dangerous arms race – amid an era already marked by geopolitical volatility and unpredictability, aggression, rising nationalism, and the erosion of international law and frameworks.
Two weeks ago, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board set the “Doomsday Clock” – an evidence-led barometer of global risk, founded in 1947 – to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been in its history. “Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers,” the scientists wrote. Topping their list of recommended actions “to pull humanity back from the brink”, is the resumption of dialogue between Russia and the US on nuclear limits.
Finding Hope Amid Chaos
There is still time to avert a no-holds-barred arms race. As the door closes on New START, we face four key questions. Firstly, what lessons can we draw from the Cold War arms race and nuclear deterrence era, before the arrival of non-proliferation agreements in the 1970s? Secondly, how can we deal with emerging technologies now being incorporated into nuclear arsenals by the world’s major nuclear powers? Thirdly, how does China’s emerging power and nuclear expansion change the contours of nuclear geopolitics? And finally, in a geopolitical terrain being radically reshaped, what role must dialogue play in averting catastrophe?
Lessons From The Cold War – Time to Engage With An “Old Future”
First and foremost, the global community needs to wake up to the idea that in a post-New START era, nuclear geopolitics are set to slide backwards by more than 50 years, to what I call an “old future”. Current generations, those born in the 1960s onwards, will be unfamiliar with this nuclear terrain because they have never lived through it. In many ways, however, we have been here before. The old world – the world of post-1970 non-proliferation – is not just dying but is about to be replaced by something far older.
This “old future” is a version of the pre-1970s nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union – but made far more dangerous by 21st-century technology and the erosion of international legal frameworks. Gone are the creaking communications infrastructure and second-generation thermonuclear bombs of the Cold War era. In their place we have instant global communications networks and Artificial Intelligence (AI), emerging technologies like hypersonic weapons, transformations in satellite technology, and the sidelining of post-1945 protocols and international laws (drawn up in the wake of the Second World War).
With the guardrails coming off and a nuclear arms race looking likely, the minds of policymakers, researchers, and scientists need to shift swiftly to examining the past – how deterrents used to work – to understand the future. Understanding deterrence is not just about learning an old language but learning how to listen to that language, and applying that learning to a very different technological terrain.
New Tech Calls For New Frameworks
The second question that policymakers and others need to face urgently is how emerging technologies are reshaping nuclear dynamics. New tech enables far faster escalation – both in terms of communications and warhead deployment. For example, hypersonic weapons travel at more than five times the speed of sound – far faster than conventional intercontinental missiles – and can reach targets in a few minutes. Extreme speed leaves opponents very little time to decide how to respond. Tensions can swiftly escalate from sabre-rattling to strikes, with catastrophic impacts for life on Earth.
History offers clear warnings. The Cuban Missile Crisis showed how quickly nuclear tensions can spiral under pressure. Today, faster communications and new weapons technologies shorten the time available for assessment and restraint.
How Does China’s Growth Change The Conversation?
The third dynamic transforming nuclear geopolitics – and one of the key reasons why New START has collapsed – is the emerging power of China. There are no longer just two major global nuclear powers: China is modernising its nuclear arsenal and increasing its numbers of warheads and platforms, unfettered by bi/multilateral agreements. US President Donald Trump has alluded to the importance of bringing China into negotiations on nuclear arms control. Other nuclear-armed countries powers (there are nine so far) and those considering developing nuclear weapons will also be watching what New START’s expiry means for global nuclear dynamics – and whether the treaty’s demise will make these dynamics more multi-polar. Recently, Jon B Wolfsthal of the Federation of American Scientists said: “Hundreds of billions are being spent to modernise and expand nuclear arsenals all over the world, and more and more non-nuclear states are considering whether they should acquire their own nuclear weapons or are hedging their nuclear bets.”
Averting An Arms Race Requires Active Listening
So, what can be done? Language and the power of active listening are crucial elements that are so far largely absent from 21st-century debates on nuclear weapons, disarmament, and peacebuilding. As Einstein and Russell understood back in 1955, nuclear proliferation springs from a crisis of communication: states expand their arsenals based on worst-case scenarios – fears – about other nations’ nuclear activities. Importantly, fear can drive proliferation but also restraint: shared fear of nuclear catastrophe can lead to empathy and trust.
Far better, though, to reach nuclear disarmament through trust derived from dialogue and listening, not fear. And so, it is in communication and listening attentively that we must find solutions. After the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the US and Russia decided they needed to communicate and understand what the language of deterrence meant for each of them. To this day, the Russian and US presidents maintain a hotline so they can discuss nuclear risks.
Cultural Sensitivity And Constellational Thinking
This is where experts on communication must play a central role. At BASIC, we have almost 40 years’ experience working on nuclear issues and peace-building – focusing on active listening, culturally sensitive dialogue, and systems thinking. We know how to bring often antagonistic actors together to talk.
War is not inevitable. Human beings have the capacity for immense destruction but also for co-habitation based on cultural understanding, creativity, and care. Nuclear arms racing is a zero-sum game that leaves everyone less secure. The only credible way to reduce risk is through binding limits on nuclear arsenals. Given the immense changes facing the world, there is an urgent need for policymakers, researchers, civil servants, and civil society to work together to create spaces for careful, measured discourses around nuclear arms and non-proliferation.
What is required is renewed attention on the interdependencies that shape security today — across societies, states, and regions. In an increasingly fragmented international system, reducing nuclear risk depends on better communication across political and cultural divides and on recognising shared vulnerabilities as well as competing interests.
This is not idealism. It reflects the practical reality of managing risks that no state can contain alone.