Kremlin Says No Cause for Optimism in Nuclear Arms Talk with US
Moscow: The Kremlin said on Wednesday that it saw no cause for optimism in Russia’s talks with the United States over extending a major nuclear arms control pact and wanted the negotiations to be more successful.
New START, the last major nuclear arms pact between Russia and the United States, is due to expire in February.
There aren’t many bright spots in U.S.-Russia relations these days. But just as arms control negotiations had a stabilizing impact on the geopolitical rivalry between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War period, strategic stability talks today could help arrest the years long degradation in this critical, bilateral relationship.
Earlier, U.S. and Russian national security officials met in Vienna for follow-up discussions on nuclear doctrine, transparency and verification. Moscow describes previous talks in July as “professional,” a word you don’t usually hear expressed by the Kremlin.
The dialogue comes at an especially tense time in the broader U.S.-Russia relationship, with the trust deficit the highest it has been since the early 1980s.
U.S. and Russian ground forces engaged in an altercation in northeast Syria. U.S. and Russian pilots continue to intercept one another from the Black Sea and Mediterranean to airspace off the Alaskan coast.
New START caps the number of U.S. and Russian deployed strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550, and limits the number of deployed nuclear-capable bombers and land-based and submarine-launched missiles to 700 apiece.
Just as important, the accord also provides the U.S. and Russia with significant access and information about one another’s strategic arsenals, a transparency that enhances each nation’s confidence about compliance.
