‘There almost is no relationship’: Nuclear tensions growing between US, Russia

Last month, during the NATO summit in Washington, the US announced it would “begin episodic deployments” of long-range missiles in Germany starting in 2026.

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded in a speech he delivered at a naval parade in Saint Petersburg. He said that if the US deploys long-range missiles in Germany, Russia will station similar missiles within striking distance of the West.

Samuel Charap, distinguished chair in Russia and Eurasia policy at the RAND think tank, says arms control treaties were meant to prevent these confrontations.

“The missiles that the US announced future deployment of, together with the German government earlier in July, are precisely the weapons that were banned under the INF treaty,” Charap said.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or the INF treaty, was signed by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikhael Gorbachev in 1987. The signing was a major achievement in arms reduction between the Soviet Union and the United States. Thousands of conventional and nuclear missiles were dismantled and banned. The treaty also signaled a diplomatic breakthrough.

Standing beside Reagan, Gorbachev said the treaty offered a “chance to get on the road leading away from the threat of catastrophe” and a “chance to move together toward a nuclear-free world.”

But decades later, those displays of goodwill and cooperation are long gone. 

“There almost is no relationship between the US and Russia,” Charap said. “The climate is one of deep antagonism, so the arms control architecture has been in a period of decline and almost collapsed over the last 20-some years.”

In 2019, the US and Russia withdrew from the INF treaty — accusing each other of noncompliance. 

A range of other agreements and treaties on arms control have also expired. At this point, only one arms control treaty, “New START,” remains on the books — and it is set to expire in 2026.

Charap said that the Biden administration is open to negotiations with Russia on issues of arms control despite the war in Ukraine.

But so far, Moscow hasn’t shown interest.

“The Russians have said basically, we won’t talk to you, and this is almost quoting Putin here, about strategic stability while you are pursuing our strategic defeat in Ukraine,” he said. “So clearly, Russia has decided that arms control, generally speaking, is not as important as pursuing its war in Ukraine.”

Charap said it’s unlikely that the US and Russia will negotiate a new arms control agreement like New START, but the two sides might decide to comply with the agreement, even after it expires, to maintain the status quo.

However, there are also other less desirable scenarios.

“The worst-case scenario is that not only does Russia not implement the sort of soft parts of the treaty that is the communications mechanisms and notifications and so on, but it begins to build up above and beyond the central limits of START,” said Charap.

In other words, a new arms race where the US and Russia begin building up their strategic nuclear arsenals without any limits.

Andrey Baklitskiy, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, said this scenario is unlikely for now.

“The good news is that in the short term, probably we won’t see arms racing because the US military-industrial complex is just not up to the task,” Baklitskiy said. “And also, we know Russia hasn’t indicated that it wants to do any of this and frankly Russia has much more pressing issues.”

He also said that despite the dire state of US-Russia relations, there could still be future opportunities for arms control negotiations.

“If you want to look for good news, then you can say, ‘We’ve been through this before,’” he said. “Humans made those agreements, humans then broke them, humans can put them back together. That’s nothing impossible here.”

Baklitskiy says that breakthroughs in the past, like the INF treaty, happened despite open hostilities between Moscow and Washington.

And that can happen again, regardless of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.