3297 - Điều gì sẽ xảy ra sau Hiệp ước New START?
Nếu chính quyền Trump thực sự nghiêm túc về việc kiểm soát vũ khí hạt nhân, họ đang đối mặt với một tình huống đầy thách thức. Họ có thể thấy mình phải lựa chọn giữa một thỏa thuận song phương tốt đẹp giữa Mỹ và Nga trong khi vẫn tiếp tục tìm cách hợp tác với Bắc Kinh, thay vì theo đuổi một thỏa thuận ba bên gần như không thể đạt được với Trung Quốc. Để đạt được mục tiêu kiềm chế vũ khí hạt nhân, chính quyền sẽ phải quyết định liệu họ có sẵn sàng giải quyết vấn đề phòng thủ tên lửa và vũ khí tấn công tầm xa thông thường hay không. Bất kỳ cuộc đàm phán nào cũng sẽ rất phức tạp và khó khăn. Chính quyền cần phải bắt đầu sớm, chứ không phải chờ đến năm cuối cùng nhiệm kỳ, nếu tổng thống muốn đạt được điều gì đó có ý nghĩa về kiểm soát vũ khí hạt nhân.
Tác giả
Steven Pifer, Nghiên cứu viên cao cấp không thường trú - Chính sách đối ngoại, Trung tâm về Hoa Kỳ và Châu Âu, Trung tâm Strobe Talbott về An ninh, Chiến lược và Công nghệ, Sáng kiến Kiểm soát Vũ khí và Không phổ biến vũ khí hạt nhân
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-comes-after-new-start/
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What comes after New START?
The new DF-5C global covering strategic nuclear capable missile are seen on trucks as it is debuted at a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of victory over Japan and the end of World War II, in Tiananmen Square on September 3, 2025, in Beijing, China. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty lapsed on February 5, 2026. U.S. President Donald Trump has said he will seek a better agreement, and Washington wants to bring in China and limit all Russian nuclear warheads, not just the deployed strategic warheads captured by New START.
These are laudable goals. Trump sought, but failed, to achieve both in his first term. If he wishes to do better this time, he will have to engage early and discuss issues of interest to Beijing and Moscow—issues that will not be comfortable for Washington.
The Trump administration’s goals
New START reduced U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear offensive forces to levels not seen since the 1960s. Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed last September that Russia and the United States continue to observe New START’s numerical limits for one year after February 5. He did not, however, offer to continue the treaty’s verification measures.
In any event, Washington ignored the Russian offer. Although Trump in 2025 had expressed interest in it, he posted on social media on February 5 that “we should have our Nuclear Experts [sic] work on a new, improved and modernized Treaty.”
Speaking to the Conference on Disarmament on February 6, U.S. Under Secretary of State Thomas DiNanno said the United States would seek to bring China into arms control discussions and try to limit all Russian (and presumably all U.S.) nuclear warheads. Those goals make good sense.
When it comes to nuclear weapons, China is not behaving as a responsible great power. Its nuclear weapon numbers are rising faster than any other state, going from 250 nuclear warheads in 2015 to 600 operational warheads today. The Department of Defense believes the number will rise to 1,000 in 2030. Beijing thus far has refused to engage in nuclear arms negotiations and has not indicated how far it will build up its nuclear arsenal.
New START limited “deployed” warheads, such as warheads on deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). If those warheads were removed from ICBMs, they disappeared as far as New START was concerned and were no longer counted or limited. Following New START’s entry into force in 2011, the Obama administration proposed that U.S.-Russian negotiations address all U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads—deployed or non-deployed, strategic or nonstrategic. The Russians refused.
Goals not achieved in Trump’s first term
The first Trump administration turned to arms control in a serious way only in its last year. In May 2020, U.S. negotiator Marshall Billingslea insisted on China’s inclusion in the nuclear arms control process. When U.S. and Russian officials met in Vienna in June 2020, he placed Chinese flags on a table with empty seats. The Chinese did not show up and termed the ploy “unserious, unprofessional, and unappealing.”
The Trump administration in 2020 also sought Russian agreement to limit all nuclear warheads in the future. Billingslea proposed a one-year freeze on U.S. and Russian nuclear warhead levels monitored by a verification regime to be negotiated. Moscow agreed to a one-year freeze but rejected any verification regime. (In any case, a verification regime to monitor a warhead freeze would have taken many months, if not a year, to negotiate and implement.)
Trump left office in January 2021 having secured neither Chinese agreement to join negotiations nor Russian agreement to negotiate on all nuclear warheads. If he wishes to succeed in his second term, he will have to adjust his negotiating style and prepare to address questions that Washington would prefer not be on the table.
First, a serious U.S.-Russian (or U.S.-Russian-Chinese) arms control treaty will not be done overnight. New START, which came to hundreds of pages in length, took one year to negotiate, and that was fast for a nuclear arms deal. If Trump wants an agreement, he will need a team that can engage on the minutiae of types of weapons, numbers, and verification. He may have to involve himself in some of those details from time to time.
Is a bilateral deal still possible?
Second, while bilateral arms control agreements between Washington and Moscow have generally been based on the principle of equality, how would equality apply in a three-way arrangement that included China? Would U.S. and Russian negotiators accept a Chinese demand for equality? Would the United States be happy with an agreement that allowed Russia and China each to have as many nuclear weapons as the U.S. military? (Russia, by the way, insists that British and French nuclear forces be included, making for even more complex negotiations. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Yeaw on February 17 said “all nuclear weapons states need to be involved” in the arms control process, which would appear to bring even more nuclear-armed states, adding a further level of complexity.)
Although China is expanding its nuclear arsenal, it will still lag significantly behind the United States and Russia, even if it reaches 1,000 warheads in 2030. For comparison, the United States today has 3,700 nuclear warheads, while Russia has 4,300, and those totals do not include U.S. and Russian warheads that have been retired but still must be dismantled. Britain and France between them maintain some 500 nuclear warheads.
These differences suggest the possibility for one more bilateral agreement constraining U.S. and Russian nuclear forces. At the same time, Washington might seek to use and invigorate the established U.N. Security Council Permanent Five process, which includes the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, to address confidence-building measures. For example, Washington and Moscow continue to observe a 1988 agreement on prenotifying the launch of strategic ballistic missiles, while Moscow and Beijing have a similar agreement on launch notification. Those two agreements could provide the basis for a multilateral arrangement providing for all five to notify the others of the launch of strategic and perhaps intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Getting Beijing and Moscow to engage
Third, if the administration wants to do serious arms control, it will have to find ways to persuade China and Russia to agree to negotiate. Both Beijing and Moscow have long made clear their concern about U.S. missile defense developments, even though current Chinese and Russian strategic ballistic missiles could easily overwhelm the 44 ground-based interceptors now defending the United States against strategic ballistic missile attack. The Chinese and Russians worry more about possible future U.S. missile defenses.
In 2025, Trump announced the “Golden Dome” missile defense with the goal of creating an impenetrable defense over the United States that could defeat attacks by China or Russia as well as attacks mounted by rogue states such as North Korea and Iran. The “Golden Dome” envisages space-based interceptors as a key element. Initial cost estimates exceed half a trillion dollars, and experience with strategic missile defense, e.g., the 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, shows that costs only increase with time.
Trump would likely have to agree to talk about the scale, pace and interceptor types of any “Golden Dome” deployment, offering limits or at least a significant degree of transparency, if he wanted to interest the Chinese and Russians. They seem particularly concerned about weapons in space. Would Trump do so?
During his first administration, the Defense Department’s 2019 Missile Defense Review ruled out limits on missile defense, stating that “the United States will not accept any limitation or constraint on the development or deployment of missile defense capabilities needed to protect the homeland against rogue missile threats.” Trump has now broadened his ambition to protecting America against all missile threats. If Trump maintains that refusal to negotiate, he will give up a major, perhaps necessary, topic that might draw the Chinese and Russians to the table.
As for limiting all nuclear warheads, Russia has rejected U.S. bids to negotiate on nonstrategic nuclear weapons, calling those weapons an important offset to U.S. and NATO conventional strike and other conventional capabilities. Would Washington agree to discuss long-range conventional strike systems, where the United States has a significant advantage? That would be a difficult question for the Pentagon, for whom those systems constitute a key element of U.S. force projection.
Conclusion
If the Trump administration is serious about nuclear arms control, it faces a challenging situation. It may find that it has to choose between a good bilateral U.S.-Russia agreement while continuing to seek to engage Beijing, as opposed to pursuing an all-but-unattainable three-way arrangement with China. In order to achieve its goals in constraining nuclear weapons, the administration will have to decide whether it is prepared to address missile defense and long-range conventional strike weapons. Any negotiations will prove complex and arduous. The administration will need to start soon, not again wait until its final year in office, if the president wants to achieve something significant on nuclear arms control.
Author
Steven PiferNonresident Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative
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