After Putin canceled the last agreement with the United States, the nuclear risk increases – #Putin #canceled #agreement #United #States #nuclear #risk #increases
LONDON, February 21 (Reuters) – Russia and USAthe last treaty limiting nuclear weapons, the president It was already under serious threat before Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday that Moscow was ending its involvement.
It may now be beyond repair, raising the risk of a new arms race – parallel to the war in Ukraine – where neither side has access to the stable, predictable framework that successive nuclear deals have provided for more than 50 years. trust can’t.
That could greatly complicate the delicate calculations that underpin mutual deterrence between the two countries, security analysts said, while encouraging other powers such as China, India and Pakistan to build up their own nuclear arsenals.
In an important speech he made almost a year after the invasion of Ukraine Putin said that Russia From the New START treaty – 2010in the year Russia and USAdoes not abandon the agreement limiting the number of strategic nuclear warheads deployed by
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But nuclear experts have pointed out that there is no provision in the deal for either side to “suspend” participation, which Moscow says it is doing – they only have the option of withdrawing.
Putin said that only Russia France and Britain’s nuclear weapons would also resume talks – a condition analysts say won’t work because Washington opposes it and wants a complete rewrite of the deal.
William Alberk, director of strategy, technology and arms control at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Russia has decided it can live without New START, but is trying to shift the blame to Washington.
“They have already calculated that the contract will die. The actual loss of efforts USA“, he said in a telephone interview.
The treaty effectively limits the number of warheads per missile that either side can deploy, so its destruction could immediately multiply the number of warheads, Alberque added.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia has a total of 5,977 nuclear warheads, and the United States has 5,428.
“Both sides could go from 1,550 deployed strategic warheads to 4,000 immediately — it could happen overnight,” Alberque said.
This is potentially destabilizing, he said, because it creates a “use it or lose it” dilemma, where dense concentrations of an adversary’s warheads provide more attractive targets.
“THE GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT”
Putin This step of Russia was justified by the fact that NATO It is “absurd” for the US to demand inspection rights over Russia’s nuclear facilities while helping Ukraine attack them.
He apparently flew to Engels Airfield near Saratov, 730 km (450 miles) southeast of Moscow, where Russia says its strategic bombers are based, in December of Ukraine he meant the blows he delivered. Putin said without providing evidence that NATO experts have “supplied and modernized” drones to carry out attacks.
Ukraine Russia pursues a policy of not openly accepting responsibility for attacks on its territory.
James Cameron, a postdoctoral researcher at the Oslo Nuclear Project, said that abandoning New START would mean a return to Cold War-style assumptions about an adversary’s capabilities and intentions.
“Therefore, there is a great deal of instability in the relationship, with both sides acting on the worst-case scenario, adding ever more sophisticated systems and plans to exploit them, resulting in a more volatile situation between the two sides. some kind of nuclear risk,” he said in a telephone interview.
Both analysts said it was due to Putin’s mention of the possibility that Russia could resume nuclear weapons tests, despite Putin saying Moscow would not take the step unless Washington made the first move.
They said it could open the door for Putin to accuse Washington of conducting or preparing the test to justify its own.
If he did, it would be Moscow’s first since 1990, a year before the collapse of the USSR. Alberque noted that the United States and the Soviet Union used nuclear tests during the Cold War “to signal to each other when they were crazy.”
Cameron said that any test by Russia would be considered as a step on the ladder of escalation in Ukraine and “an attempt to be more ready to use nuclear weapons” in the context of war. In the 12 months since the invasion, Putin has repeatedly reminded the West that Russia has weapons of mass destruction and that the nuclear umbrella Moscow has seized and now claims as its territory. Ukraine extended to its territories.
If New START collapses, or if both sides fail to renew it before it expires in February 2026, it would mark the end of more than half a century of arms control pact between the two sides and send a signal to other existing ones. and will have nuclear powers.
“What will this say to the Indians and the Pakistanis, what will China do?” Alberque said. “It could be more dangerous than the Cold War because you could have more players and it would be terrible for global security.”
Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Edited by Alison Williams
Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Mark Trevelyan
2023-02-21 21:46:33
Source – reuters
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