When US president-elect Joe Biden enters the White House next week, his administration would be in a race against time to salvage a landmark nuclear arms accord with Russia.
The New START, which expires just 16 days after Biden’s inauguration, is the last major arms reduction pact between old foes whose bulging nuclear stockpiles dominated fears for global security during the Cold War.
The fast-approaching deadline to find compromise comes as tensions between Moscow and Washington are at fever pitch over hacking allegations, and after Biden vowed to take a firm stand against Russia.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The stakes of reaching an agreement are high, said Elena Chernenko, a foreign editor at Russia’s Kommersant newspaper who has closely followed negotiations.
“The treaty limits the chances of one side miscalculating the intentions or plans of the other, which we saw happen several times leading to very dangerous moments during the Cold War,” she said.
Any agreement is also likely to define spending priorities for both governments, Russian political columnist Vladimir Frolov said.
Extending New START could determine in Moscow and Washington whether “more money than necessary would have to be spent on nuclear toys as opposed to healthcare,” he said.
New START was signed in 2010 between then-US president Barack Obama and former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, curbing warheads to 1,550 each and restricting numbers of launchers and bombers.
Biden would be eager to score a big diplomatic win early in his term, but he is also under pressure to tread a fine line and make good on a campaign promise to be tough on Russia.
Lawmakers in the US demanded punishment for Russia last year after concluding that Kremlin-backed hackers were behind a sweeping cyberintrusion into government institutions.
That standoff is just the latest in a litany of disagreements over conflicts in Ukraine and Syria and allegations of Russian election meddling.
Still, rhetoric from Moscow and Washington as the New START expiration deadline approaches has raised hopes that arms control could offer a rare area of compromise.
Biden’s incoming national security adviser Jake Sullivan said this month that the president-elect had tasked officials with looking at extending New START “right out of the gates.”
In Moscow, Putin proposed a one-year extension without preconditions and tasked Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov with obtaining a “coherent” US response to the offer.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a champion of Soviet-era arms accords with the US, this week said he expects Biden to prolong the accord and urged both sides “to negotiate further reductions.”
“Russia is on record at the highest level that it wants to extend the treaty for five years without any preconditions,” Frolov said.
Moscow is in favor of an extension, he said, because it would allow Russia to modernize its own nuclear forces at an affordable and measured pace, without rushing into an arms race.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not