By Jon Wolfsthal,
American President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Geneva at a time of great bilateral tension. There are many issues that have dominated the news, including Russian ransomware attacks, the continued Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory, and other efforts from Moscow to undermine U.S. and allied security.
In an echo of Cold War summits, however, the two leaders found quick agreement on the need to restart long-moribund talks on strategic stability and nuclear arms control. The risk of a conflict rapidly developing, even to the level of nuclear weapons, remains an all too real feature of the Moscow-Washington status quo, and the two leaders are right to direct their teams to get back to work on reducing these dangers.
While the prospects for new arms control agreements are uncertain, this uncertainty should not prevent the two countries from trying to find common ground. While the United States would like to create a more stable relationship, Moscow has embraced uncertainty and unpredictability -- even when it comes to nuclear threats -- as a way to counter its own conventional inferiority to the United States.
This means that where the United States will seek to create more predictability and transparency over nuclear and related weapons, Moscow may be reluctant to agree. American experts are also rightly skeptical that Russia will abide by any new agreements, as Moscow under President Putin has violated a host of important ones -- many negotiated at the end of the Cold War. These are only a few of the many obstacles to negotiating new agreements between the two nuclear superpowers.
But the risk of a nuclear crisis emerging at any moment, in ways that neither leader can be confident of controlling, may be a unifying concern that will bring the two sides together. And there are areas of agreement that are both possible and even logical for the two sides to pursue. At long last, the time may be ripe for the two countries to put all of their nuclear weapons -- regardless of range or whether they are in storage or deployed in the field -- under legal constraints.
America has long wanted to limit Russian nonstrategic or tactical nuclear weapons, and Moscow has long been concerned about America's large stocks of non-deployed strategic nuclear weapons. Thus, both sides may have a reason to talk about putting all such weapons under verified caps.
However, it may prove easier to find agreement not by negotiating over only one or two issues, but by making a much wider area of negotiations. It is hard to see how a new treaty will be acceptable in the United States if it does not limit in some way Moscow's new and growing stocks of intermediate range (between 500-5,500 kilometers) land-based, nuclear-armed missiles.
These systems were previously banned by the now-dead INF Treaty Moscow violated starting back in 2013. Ideas here include agreeing to again ban all nuclear armed INF systems, or if that proves impossible limiting them in number and geographic location.
Of course, while this is largely seen as a European security issue, America must make absolutely sure that systems removed from Europe are not simply moved east, increasing the danger to America's allies in Tokyo and Seoul.
Are such deals realistic? It is hard to predict. But we have seen for the last decade what a lack of engagement and talks produces -- an unconstrained arms race, increasing mistrust and an increased danger of nuclear use. This has not brought security and stability, and it is time to remember the main lesson from the end of the Cold War -- neither side can out arms race the other and only mutual agreement can reduce the risk of conflict and nuclear war. It is time to again heed this hard-learned lesson.
(Jon Wolfsthal is the senior Advisor to Global Zero and was a former special advisor to then Vice President Joe Biden.)
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