Arms Control China Russia United States and Canada

Issue Brief February 20, 2026

Four options for arms control after New START

Bottom lines up front

The Cold War-era framework of nuclear arms control has broken down, but the need to manage nuclear competition remains urgent.
The confidence and connections that regular talks built is critical to reducing the dangers.
The Trump administration could engage Moscow and Beijing in high-level talks toward nuclear stability, while still pursuing updates to the US nuclear arsenal.

When the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expired February 5, 2026, the United States and Russia entered a new period without any legally binding restrictions on their nuclear forces. Both countries lost not only the limits on deployed nuclear warheads that New START stipulated, but also the insights and predictability provided by the treaty-mandated monitoring and transparency measures. For decades, these mechanisms helped the two nations manage their nuclear competition while avoiding misunderstandings and worst-case assessments.

The international security environment has changed significantly since New START entered into force in 2011. Russia’s noncompliance with past treaties, its invasion of Ukraine, and its malign activities across Europe have generated concerns about whether Moscow can be a credible partner in arms control agreements. China’s growing nuclear force posture, its broader military expansion, and its challenges to US allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific have also raised questions about whether the United States should engage with China in an arms control process, or expand the US nuclear force posture in response. Taken together, these challenges have reopened debate about the role arms control can play in managing great-power nuclear competition.

For the past thirty years, each new US administration has sought to align its arms control policy with US national security interests by reviewing the threat environment, identifying risks to US security, and assessing changing requirements for its nuclear deterrent. The results of these reviews have then influenced plans for the US nuclear force posture and US negotiating positions in arms control talks.

While the current administration has so far not undertaken a formal Nuclear Posture Review, President Donald Trump has said that he would like to pursue “denuclearization” with Russia and China to reduce the “tremendous amounts of money” spent on nuclear forces.¹ He did not say what he wanted to include in this process, but an agreement would need to balance US interests in restraining Russian and Chinese forces with possible US plans to expand the numbers and types of weapons in its own arsenal. Given this complexity, the question is not simply whether the United States and Russia can preserve or extend existing arms control agreements. Rather, it is whether the United States, Russia, and potentially China can maintain some of the essential stabilizing functions of arms control in today’s competitive security environment.

This essay will assess the strengths, weaknesses, and feasibility of several alternative pathways for the future of nuclear arms control.² It will ultimately conclude that the United States can support its security and arms control interests by engaging Russia and China in a more flexible framework that combines high-level engagement among political leaders with expert working groups that can develop practical measures to foster restraint and mitigate the risks of nuclear use. This approach will both satisfy the president’s interest in engaging in arms control issues and preserve US leadership in shaping global norms.

Option one: Resume negotiations with Russia

The United States and Russia could retain the transparency, predictability, and restraint codified in New START if they negotiated a comprehensive treaty that continued to limit their nuclear-capable delivery systems and nuclear warheads. The two nations began talks toward this goal in 2021 but Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine interrupted the process before they could agree on an agenda or specific provisions.³

Moscow and Washington could agree to maintain their forces within the New START limits even though the treaty has expired. Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested this approach in September 2025, when he said that observing the treaty’s “central quantitative restrictions for one year” would “prevent the emergence of a new strategic arms race and . . . preserve an acceptable degree of predictability and restraint.”⁴ He did not, however, offer to resume the data exchanges and notifications that help the United States remain confident that Russia is complying with its obligations.

Trump initially said that a one-year extension was a “good idea,” but there is no indication that the nations held further discussions on this option. Moreover, a reciprocal commitment to remain within New START limits might not serve US national security interests if it excludes any monitoring arrangements or slows US plans to respond to the emerging challenge from China.

Option two: Include China in arms control negotiations

While China has long participated in multilateral arms control negotiations, it has rejected proposals for negotiations—or even an informal dialogue—on its current and planned nuclear force posture. It has often insisted that it would only participate in formal arms control negotiations after the United States and Russia reduced their deployed nuclear forces to numbers closer to those in the much smaller Chinese arsenal. Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, emphasized this position after Trump called for denuclearization talks, noting that it was “neither reasonable nor realistic” to expect China to participate in trilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations because “China and the United States are not at the same level at all in terms of nuclear capabilities.”⁵ China reiterated this position in its recent white paper on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation, noting, “Countries possessing the largest nuclear arsenals should fulfill their special and primary responsibilities for nuclear disarmament and continue to make drastic and substantive reductions in their nuclear arsenals in a verifiable, irreversible and legally-binding manner.”⁶

This, along with its long-standing objections to discussions on transparency or limits on its nuclear forces, makes it unlikely that Beijing would join the United States and Russia in formal treaty negotiations. Even if China were to participate in discussions on measures to mitigate the risks of nuclear escalation, its priorities would likely differ from those of the United States. Nevertheless, such talks could provide an opening for more substantive conversations on transparency measures and restraints on China’s nuclear buildup.

Option three: Pause arms control; prioritize nuclear modernization

Because Russia and China have rebuffed US efforts to hold talks on arms control and risk reduction measures, the Biden administration suggested that the United States could pause its attempts to establish such dialogues while it worked to modernize its own nuclear posture.⁷ With this approach, the United States would “continue to abide by New START limits for the duration of the Treaty,” but would also prepare “for a world where constraints on nuclear weapons arsenals disappear entirely.”⁸

Several policy experts have supported a similar approach, suggesting that the United States should not restrain its nuclear forces while Russia and China add to theirs and that it should return to arms control dialogues only after it has bolstered its own nuclear deterrent.⁹ Others have disputed the notion that a buildup in US nuclear forces would give the United States leverage in future negotiations, arguing that it could instead lead to greater competition, more weapons deployments, and a higher risk of instability among the nuclear powers.¹⁰

Option four: Engage with Russia and China, but not on a treaty

Because Trump seems interested in engaging with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on arms control (or denuclearization), an option in which the United States pauses arms control negotiations while it builds up its nuclear forces might not be consistent with Trump’s agenda. The administration might, therefore, consider a fourth option that envisions two tracks—one in which the president and his counterparts in Russia and China address broad principles of nuclear stability, and a second in which expert working groups craft concrete measures to foster cooperation and mitigate the risk of nuclear war.

This approach accommodates the president’s instincts for engagement while aligning with US national security objectives. It recognizes that formal treaty negotiations and reductions in the numbers of deployed nuclear weapons are not realistic options at this time and might not be consistent with US plans for its nuclear force posture. But it could preserve the core benefits of arms control through ongoing communication and cooperation. Moreover, it would demonstrate that the United States remains committed to reducing nuclear dangers in an environment where it faces challenges from both Russia and China.

The high-level engagement addressing broad principles of nuclear stability would provide the United States, Russia, and China with the opportunity to replicate some of the discussions on the dangers of nuclear war that the United States and Soviet Union held during the Cold War. For example, in the 1971 Accident Measures Agreement, the United States and Soviet Union recognized “the devastating consequences that nuclear war would have for all mankind” and affirmed their role in exerting “every effort to avert the risk of outbreak of such a war.”¹¹ They expressed similar sentiments in the 1973 Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War.¹² Then, in 1985, Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev issued their famous statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”¹³

These types of statements would do little to restrain the nuclear competition but could offer a low-cost, high-impact avenue for restoring cooperation in an era of renewed great-power rivalry. Where the absence of dialogue among nuclear powers can heighten the risk of miscommunication, agreement on even the most basic statements regarding nuclear dangers can set a baseline for more comprehensive negotiations in the future.

The expert working groups on the second track would likely revisit risk reduction concepts pursued by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War such as enhanced communication networks, missile launch notification agreements, and rules of the road to avoid military accidents and escalation. The United States and China lack a similar history with these types of measures, but China has taken some steps in recent years to engage on these topics. Bringing these discussions into a three-party venue will give each nation the opportunity to air its concerns about the sources of risk and to work together to identify concrete measures to address those specific risks.

These two tracks will do little in the near term to address the growth in Russian and Chinese nuclear forces or to reduce the risks created by Russian and Chinese malign activities that have targeted US allies and partners. On the other hand, they likely will not impede the US nuclear modernization program or US efforts to support its allies and partners. They can, however, build a foundation for future talks on nuclear dangers, provide an opportunity for the three nations to find common ground on issues on which they can cooperate to manage their nuclear competition, and offer a venue for their leaders to demonstrate their commitment to reducing the risk of nuclear war.

Connections help, even without formal treaties

With the expiration of New START in 2026, the United States faces a future in which the familiar framework of nuclear arms control has broken down, but the need to manage nuclear competition remains as urgent as ever. Therefore, even if the nuclear powers cannot rely on formal treaties to set the framework for their nuclear cooperation, a decision to abandon arms control altogether would leave the United States without tools to influence the emerging complex security environment or to prevent crises from escalating into catastrophe.

Progress in reducing nuclear dangers requires ongoing dialogue, mutual understanding, and clear leadership, even if the endgame does not include formal treaties and high-profile signing ceremonies. Efforts to manage nuclear competition have always included less formal and more flexible tools that focus on political engagement, practical risk reduction, and shared responsibility among nuclear powers.

Thus, the two-track strategy described here provides tangible benefits for US national security. It aligns with the president’s expressed interest in engaging with both Moscow and Beijing and supports the US goal of maintaining flexibility to advance its own nuclear modernization programs. It shows leadership on critical nuclear security issues at a time when both allies and adversaries question the US commitment to stability and restraint. Most importantly, it strengthens the connections—political, diplomatic, and psychological—that prevent competition from turning into confrontation, reaffirming that both deterrence and arms control can help prevent the use of nuclear weapons in war.

About the author

Fellow

Amy Woolf

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Policy Missile Defense

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Forward Defense leads the Atlantic Council’s US and global defense programming, developing actionable recommendations for the United States and its allies and partners to compete, innovate, and navigate the rapidly evolving character of warfare. Through its work on US defense policy and force design, the military applications of advanced technology, space security, strategic deterrence, and defense industrial revitalization, it informs the strategies, policies, and capabilities that the United States will need to deter, and, if necessary, prevail in major-power conflict.

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Image: The National Museum of the US Air Force added an LV-3B / SM-65D Atlas Rocket for permanent display in the Missile Gallery collection. US Air Force photo by Ty Greenlees.

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