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Chapter 1: What is the significance of the START Treaty expiration?
For the first time in over half a century, there are no nuclear arms controls in place between the world's two largest nuclear powers, the U.S. and Russia, with a rising China growing its nuclear arsenal. While it continues to assert its power on the international stage, we ask, is this the beginning of a new Cold War era? Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor.
Today is Tuesday, February 10th, 2026. The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the U.S. and Russia, also known as START, expired last week. And with it, a long-dormant fear of the threat of nuclear annihilation.
Chapter 2: How did the START Treaty contribute to international security?
Should we be worried? Joining me now to dig into the critical geopolitical, economic and military concerns at the heart of this story is Ankit Panda, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Ankit, thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks for having me. Really happy to be here.
I want to start with some broad strokes here.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of a world without nuclear arms control?
Can you please lay out what the START Treaty was and why it was so critical to maintaining international security while it was in effect?
Sure. So the START treaty continued essentially something we started doing with first the Soviet Union and then Russia in the early 1970s. In 1972, we begin a process of decades of essentially some type of numerical limits on the sizes of the Russian and American nuclear arsenals. And that has a lot of effects.
Chapter 4: How does the current geopolitical landscape affect nuclear concerns?
It means that we have to spend less money, that we have to be less concerned about the types of unpredictability that might exist. And so in 2010, the Obama administration and the Russian Federation agreed It was a very different time. We had very different relations with Russia. We negotiated this treaty and this treaty continued that process.
Chapter 5: What role does the Nonproliferation Treaty play today?
It set a ceiling for the numbers of strategic nuclear weapons. Strategic basically just means nuclear weapons that can be used against the other country's homeland. These are the weapons that really go across the entire planet to the other side. Those would be limited at 1,550 weapons with 700 launchers for those weapons, launchers being the submarines, the
the land-based missiles and the heavy bombers that might be able to deliver those weapons.
Chapter 6: Are there diplomatic efforts to engage Russia in nuclear discussions?
So that's what the treaty did. So now with the treaty gone, the United States and Russia are actually for the first time since the early 1970s in a world where there are no quantitative limitations on their nuclear forces.
You published a book last year that I think might best set the stage for the precariousness we face today with no nuclear nonproliferation treaty in place. The book is called The New Nuclear Age, the Precipice of Armageddon.
In this complex geopolitical environment with Russia still at war with Ukraine and a rising China as a nuclear power, how worried should we be about the treaty's expiration and what would ideally take its place?
So the good news is we do still have a nonproliferation treaty, right? There is the NPT, which is the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which is really important, right? We have more than 190 countries signed up to that. controls the spread of nuclear weapons.
The argument that I make in the book that I think is really important to revisit at this moment when a new start has just expired is that we are entering a new period of complexity and danger with nuclear weapons.
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Chapter 7: What are the nuclear threats posed by Iran and North Korea?
This is a world where arms control, as we've just seen, is on the decline and the relevance of nuclear weapons and fundamentally nuclear deterrence, which is what most countries ask of their nuclear weapons to primarily deter attacks against them. In the case of the United States, attacks against ourselves and our allies. Everybody's becoming more interested in nuclear weapons.
And so for many of us, this is an unfamiliar world. Really, after the Cold War ended, the nuclear issue didn't disappear, but it very much became relegated to the sidelines, at least for what really concerned us as Americans. And so now I think we are back in a world where everybody's going to just have to pay a to the ways in which nuclear weapons are shaping our world.
And in the book, I try to make some of those suggestions. You know, you asked what should come next. You know, I try to be realistic in terms of what is politically feasible. Given the place we are right now in our relations with Russia, with our own government really losing a substantial amount of expertise in many areas, it seems rather implausible to me that we will negotiate a new treaty.
And, you know, then there's Senate politics involved with getting new treaties through. But what I would strongly suggest is that policymakers here in the United States and elsewhere do need to remember that the lesson we learned really almost the hard way during the early part of the Cold War was
was that relying on nuclear weapons for our security without supporting negotiated means of restraint is just far too dangerous. And so be that arms control, be that other types of agreements, I do think there is still potential to put some guardrails on the worst types of risks that might otherwise just spiral out of control.
Are there current diplomatic efforts to re-engage Russia in a new agreement? And if so, does China also have a seat at the table? What are we hearing on those diplomatic fronts?
Yeah. So actually, just last week, we got press reports that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, President Trump's, I suppose, envoys on the Ukraine question were in Abu Dhabi talking to the Russians, apparently about an extension of the limits in New START. The treaty itself is gone. The treaty can't be
extended it couldn't have been extended even if there had been an effort before its expiration but there are talks and my understanding is that what is happening at the moment is very much tied to the administration's broader efforts to end the ukrainian conflict and so i think there is a view that because the russians put this extension offer on the table extending the limits might be something the united states could use to sweeten the deal for russia on some type of settlement in ukraine
But it does appear that President Trump, as you suggested, is very much fixated on this idea that 21st century arms control will require three parties to be at the table. And, you know, there's an obvious way that makes things more complicated, right? A negotiation with three parties compared to two is just a more complex undertaking.
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Chapter 8: What is the best and worst case scenario for nuclear proliferation?
And, you know, don't get me wrong, China is a concern. There are substantial changes happening there. But China's nuclear forces are still a very small proportion of what the United States and Russia could bring to bear, you know, if they chose to. deploy additional nuclear weapons. And so the view that I've had is that putting the Russia-U.S.
process on ice while we wait for China to come to the table just doesn't strike me as prudent. And China's negotiating position has been rather clear for a long time. They have no interest in participating in a three-way negotiation. But they've also pointed out in the past that the only condition under which they might imagine being able to join a negotiation like that
is a world in which Russia and the United States essentially build down to Chinese levels, right? And so that is, again, not the direction we're heading into. But politically, there, I think, is a big fixation in the United States on bringing both Russia and China into a singular negotiating process, even if that has a low probability of success, in my opinion.
OK, let's widen the discussion to include some of the other global nuclear powers of concern, starting with Iran. While President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear treaty during his first term, some of our European partners effectively retained sanctions and international inspections took place in 2025. But then came Israeli and then U.S. bombings in Iran.
They claim they're ready to talk. What are our biggest worries there and how might we address them?
Iran, of course, has not yet crossed the key decision point to build a nuclear weapon. They are the world's closest non-nuclear country to procuring the bomb. And the attacks that took place last year did not have the effect of completely destroying their program. They do appear to have set things back. by a little bit.
But the Iranians still have many of the key ingredients, to which I'll just point out, you know, they are sitting still on about 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium that is not being verified by international inspectors, which, by the way, was being verified before the attacks took place. And they still have the capability and capacity to reconstitute their program.
So this is still a big problem. And as you indicated, there are new talks underway, but we're very much back in a place where I don't think the United States and Iran are closer to making a breakthrough on many of the key issues that have held up talks, particularly under the first and second Trump administration. Right.
Questions like will the Iranians have any right to enrich uranium on their own territory? They've really made this a sort of non-negotiable issue in the past because they claim it is their right and And they're right about that. There is no actual prohibition on enrichment.
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