ACA Executive Director Daryl Kimball provides an expert commentary on the now unconstrained strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) this week means that the United States and Russia are now unconstrained and could soon begin increasing their strategic deployed arsenal by uploading additional warheads on existing missiles and bombers—for the first time in more than 35 years. The end of New START could also open a new phase of dangerous nuclear competition—one that involves all the major nuclear-armed states.
Deploying more nuclear weapons will not make anyone safer. The United States already has a massive, devastating, and largely invulnerable nuclear force that is more than sufficient to deter nuclear attack. In 2013, the Pentagon’s Report of Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy determined that the United States could reduce its deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third below New START levels and still deter possible attacks from any adversary. That basic conclusion still holds today, despite the expansion of China’s arsenal ever since.
Deploying additional US nuclear weapons would not fundamentally change the deterrence calculus of Chinese President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin. On the contrary, increases in Russian and US strategic forces would further destabilize the mutual balance of terror, pushing China to accelerate its program to expand its strategic nuclear retaliatory force.
How we got here. The deterioration of the arms control regime is the result of years of high-level inattention and the current US administration’s wrecking-ball approach to long-standing international norms and agreements that the United States helped.
Since New START entered into force in 2011, Moscow and Washington have misfired on their on-again, off-again discussions on further nuclear reductions as their relations have soured. Since the beginning of his second term, President Donald Trump has talked bigly about starting denuclearization talks with Russia and China, but he has failed to follow through on his promise. Worse yet, Trump has threatened to resume nuclear testing in response to allegations that Russia and China have conducted clandestine nuclear tests.
Read the full OpEd, published Feb. 5, 2026 at The Bulletin.