Valdai Club

On February 4, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion, titled The Arms Control System in the New Decade, dedicated to the extension of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between Russia and the United States and further prospects for the development of arms control.

Without the treaty, the arms race would have become much larger and completely uncontrollable and opaque, and the concept of strategic stability would have completely disappeared, said Evgeny Buzhinsky, Chairman of the PIR Center Council. Speaking about future prospects, he formulated the likely requirements of the parties regarding a new agreement, the negotiations on which America has offered to start. The American conditions, most likely, will include China's involvement in the negotiations, the inclusion of new types of weapons, and the extension of restrictions, including non-strategic warheads. Russia, in turn, is concerned about the American missile defence system and the militarisation of space. Perhaps these concerns should be addressed in a separate dialogue on strategic stability, he said.

Andrey Baklitskiy, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO University, believes that the main difference between the new US administration and the previous one is that the Trump administration did not need arms control. The new administration is generally aware of the importance of arms control and is approaching this issue realistically. He also said that the problems of interest to the United States and Russia should not necessarily be resolved within the framework of one big agreement. Perhaps we should talk about the "strategic equation" that takes into account a wide range of factors and includes a number of agreements and negotiation tracks.

Richard Weitz, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, outlined the current challenges facing the parties. He singled out three main problems - the accumulated tension between the powers, the development of new military technology, and the spread of the arms race to third countries (referring primarily to China, which is successfully catching up with Russia and the United States in weapons development). Weitz suggested that against this background,  more relevant would become less formal arms control methods that focus on reducing the reasons for the first use of nuclear weapons and reducing the vulnerability of countries to first strike attacks.

William Potter, Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Professor of Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, gave an overview of the current nuclear environment. In his opinion, the situation looks dangerous; the bilateral and multilateral architecture that worked well in the past is crumbling despite the renewal of the treaty. He noted that in recent years, the negotiations completely lacked attention to the position of the other side, empathy and even elementary politeness. “The main danger today is that the United States and Russia will find themselves in a situation where a mistake is made, an escalation will begin and nuclear weapons will be used,” he stressed. "We need to revive the old traditions of cooperation between the US and Russia in the nuclear sector." The risk of an accidental start of hostilities must be reduced. In addition, it is necessary to resume a dialogue on strategic stability in the format of regular contacts between representatives of the United States and Russia.