New START

• 1. Introduction

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  New START, signed on the 8th of April 2010 in Prague, was the most significant nuclear arms reduction agreement between the United States and Russia in a generation. At the moment the treaty entered into force on the 5th of February 2011, both countries held more than two thousand deployed strategic warheads between them. The treaty set out to cut that number to no more than 1,550 each. It also brought with it something that had lapsed when the prior START treaty expired in December 2009: the right of each nation to send inspectors into the other's most sensitive military facilities.

  How did negotiators arrive at these precise limits? Why did the treaty face such fierce resistance in the U.S. Senate, even from within the Republican Party? What happened when Russia suspended its participation in 2023, and what does the treaty's expiration in February 2026 mean for global nuclear stability? Those are the questions this documentary will work through.

• 2. What the Treaty Promised

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  The limit of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads per side was nearly two-thirds lower than what the original START treaty had required. It was also ten percent below the ceiling that the 2002 Moscow Treaty had set. The counting rules contained one notable wrinkle: each heavy bomber counted as carrying only one warhead, regardless of how many it actually held, so the true number of deployed warheads could run a few hundred above the stated limit.

  Beyond warheads, the treaty capped deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear use at 700. A broader category, covering deployed and non-deployed launchers together, was fixed at 800. Both countries had seven years from the treaty's entry into force to reach those ceilings.

  Documents provided to the U.S. Senate specified exactly what the American side would retire: at least 30 missile silos, 34 bombers, and 56 submarine launch tubes. Four launchers would be removed from each of the fourteen ballistic missile nuclear submarines. Bombers that were taken off the nuclear roll could be converted to conventional use, and missiles removed from service would remain physically intact rather than being destroyed.

  The treaty said nothing about tactical nuclear weapons, and that silence became one of the central grievances for critics. Edwin Feulner, then president of The Heritage Foundation, argued that the language would reduce American nuclear capacity while leaving Russia with a ten-to-one advantage in tactical weapons that the treaty never touched.

• 3. Drafting in Geneva

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  Talks began in April 2009, in the weeks immediately after Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev met in London. Preliminary discussions had already taken place in Rome on the 27th of April, ahead of a schedule that had originally placed the first round in mid-May.

  From there, the two delegations settled into Geneva for most of the year. The American side was led by Rose Gottemoeller, assistant secretary at the U.S. State Department. Her Russian counterpart was Anatoly Antonov, director of security and disarmament at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Eight rounds of talks ran from May through November 2009, with the sixth round alone lasting a full week.

  On the morning of the 6th of July 2009, the two presidents announced agreement on a joint understanding that sketched out the eventual treaty's architecture. That document set target ranges of 1,500-1,675 warheads and 500-1,100 delivery vehicles per side. Obama was in Moscow that day for a presidential visit, and both leaders signed the joint statement there.

  From that framework, negotiators moved toward a final text. On the 26th of March 2010, Obama and Medvedev announced they had reached full agreement, and weeks later they met in Prague to sign the completed treaty.

• 4. The Senate Fight

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  On the 13th of May 2010, Obama submitted the treaty to the Senate for ratification, where 67 votes were required for approval. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 14-4 in favor on the 16th of September 2010, with three Republicans joining the majority: Richard Lugar of Indiana, Bob Corker of Tennessee, and Johnny Isakson of Georgia.

  The broader Republican caucus largely deferred to Jon Kyl of Arizona, a leading conservative voice on defense, who demanded stronger commitments to modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal and questioned whether the lame-duck session left enough time for a proper vote. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska joined Kyl in expressing skepticism about the timing. Senator Kit Bond of Missouri opposed ratification outright.

  Heritage Action, linked to The Heritage Foundation, led the campaign against ratification, running petitions and political advertisements before the November midterms. Tom Daschle, the former Senate Majority Leader, credited the group with shifting some Republican votes. Likely presidential candidate Mitt Romney also came out in opposition.

  Support came from unexpected quarters on the right. Former President George H. W. Bush and all six living former Republican Secretaries of State wrote op-eds backing the treaty, published in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. Conservative columnist Robert Kagan called the treaty's goals modest compared to its predecessors and argued it should not fail over partisan disagreements.

  On the 22nd of December 2010, the Senate voted 71-26 to approve ratification. All 56 Democratic senators, both Independents, and 13 Republicans voted yes. Obama completed the American ratification process on the 2nd of February 2011.

• 5. Verification on the Ground

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  Verification was the spine of New START. Each party received 18 on-site inspections per year, split into two categories. Type One inspections focused on deployed systems at military bases housing ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, and bombers. Type Two inspections covered facilities with non-deployed systems and could confirm whether weapons had actually been converted or eliminated.

  Inspection teams could arrive with as little as 32 hours' notice. Within 60 days of the treaty entering into force, the right to conduct inspections began. Within 45 days, both countries had to exchange databases giving the numbers, locations, and technical characteristics of all covered weapons and facilities.

  The treaty also required specific exhibitions. The United States had to conduct a one-time display of environmentally-sealed heavy bombers stored at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona within 120 days. Within one year, it had to exhibit a B-1B heavy bomber equipped only with non-nuclear armaments to confirm the aircraft could no longer employ nuclear weapons. Within three years, the U.S. had to show its four SSGNs, submarines converted from nuclear ballistic to cruise missile roles, and five converted ICBM silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

  By February 2018, both countries had met their reduction targets ahead of the treaty's seven-year deadline. As of the 1st of September 2022, Russia held 540 deployed missiles and bombers with 1,549 warheads attributed to them. The United States held 659 deployed missiles and bombers with 1,420 warheads counted against the treaty ceiling.

• 6. Extension and Suspension

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  On the 9th of February 2017, in his first telephone call with Putin as U.S. president, Donald Trump dismissed the possibility of extending New START, calling it one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration.

  By 2019, with the United States having withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, questions about New START's future became more urgent. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and U.S. undersecretary Andrea Thompson met in June of that year for the first time since 2017. In December 2019, Putin offered an immediate extension without modifications and invited American inspectors to examine the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, which would fall under New START's limits. In mid-2020, Trump rejected a proposal to extend the treaty by one year; Russian officials then agreed to a U.S. proposal to freeze warhead production for a year.

  The extension that did happen came on the 26th of January 2021, when Biden and Putin agreed by phone to extend the treaty by five years. The Russian State Duma ratified the extension on the 27th of January. Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally announced American acceptance on the 3rd of February, pushing the expiration date to 2026.

  That extension ran into trouble quickly. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 strained the relationship to breaking point. In November 2022, Russia postponed a planned meeting to discuss resuming inspections, which had been suspended since the COVID-19 pandemic.

  On the 21st of February 2023, during an address to the Federal Assembly, Putin announced that Russia was suspending its participation. He refused to allow U.S. and NATO inspections of Russian nuclear facilities, complained that French and British arsenals fell outside the treaty, and warned that any American nuclear test would be matched by Russia. Secretary of State Blinken called the decision "both really unfortunate and very irresponsible." NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged Russia to reconsider.

  On the 29th of March 2023, Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov announced Russia would discontinue all notifications under the treaty. The same day, Russia's Ministry of Defence reported the beginning of exercises involving the Yars intercontinental ballistic missile system and several thousand troops.

• 7. Expiration and the Road Ahead

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  New START could not be extended beyond the 5th of February 2026, the hard limit written into its provisions. In September 2025, Putin offered to observe the treaty's limits for up to one additional year, until the 5th of February 2027, if the United States made a matching commitment and refrained from actions Russia viewed as threatening the strategic balance.

  The United States issued no formal response accepting or rejecting that offer. Trump commented positively in late 2025 on the general idea of nuclear restraint but stopped short of committing to continued compliance. In January 2026, he indicated the treaty's lapse was not a priority and that a new agreement could be negotiated separately.

  On the 4th of February 2026, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that, given the absence of any American response, Russia no longer considered the treaty's obligations binding, though it signaled continued openness to future diplomacy.

  After the treaty expired, the Trump administration said any successor agreement should include China. The Pentagon had been holding regular internal meetings for months to define what a new treaty might look like. Russia, for its part, has insisted in recent years that France and the United Kingdom would also need to be part of any new framework. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on Washington and Moscow to conclude a new agreement immediately. Pope Leo XIV added his voice to those urging the treaty parties to prevent a new arms race.

  For the first time since the early 1970s, the United States and Russia now have no legally binding agreement limiting or providing transparency over their strategic nuclear arsenals, a condition that Russian officials warned, before the expiration, would increase strategic risks for both countries.