DE PROFUNDIS: A WORLD WITHOUT DISARMAMENT

No flowers. No wreaths. No grand speeches either: last Wednesday at midnight, the very last agreement limiting nuclear arms between Russians and Americans — the so-called “New START” treaty — simply expired, having reached the end of its term. This time, neither Putin nor Trump sought to extend it, as was done fifteen years ago, in 2021, for this agreement originally signed in 2010. True, the war in Ukraine has since intervened… Putin suspended Russia’s participation in 2023, even threatening — as Trump does today — to resume nuclear testing.

New START was never intended to disarm the two nuclear superpowers, but merely to cap their arsenals and, above all, to place them under a highly sophisticated system of reciprocal inspections and notifications, the objective being to ensure over time the preservation of the famous “strategic stability” — that is, to prevent any breach of the “parity” achieved in the treaty through a new spiral of the arms race. With ceilings that were, in the end, more than sufficient to obliterate the planet several times over: 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads on each side, mounted on 700 intercontinental missiles (with ranges exceeding 5,500 kilometers), whether land-based, sea-launched, or air-delivered (by strategic bombers). Added to these were 800 other delivery systems, deployed or not deployed. In total: 1,420 warheads deployed and declared as such by the Americans, compared with 1,549 on the Russian side — not counting stored but undeployed nuclear warheads: 1,830 for the Americans and 1,114 for the Russians.

Those limits are now void, and many experts fear that the death of New START will signal the resumption of an arms race on all fronts.

For the crucial point lies less in the treaty’s numerical ceilings than in its political meaning — at the summit, so to speak, of the disarmament process begun sixty-four years ago, that is, with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It was because they suddenly realized how close they had come to a direct nuclear confrontation during the missile crisis that the two superpowers engaged, the following year, in the process known as “arms control” (in French: la limitation des armements). With, as an immediate priority, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to other states — at the time, first and foremost France and China. Hence, in 1963, the Partial Test Ban Treaty, followed five years later by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). A first phase, followed in 1971 by the first SALT agreement limiting offensive strategic weapons and, the following year, by the ABM Treaty banning defensive anti-missile systems. Nuclear doctrine then rested on MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction — which, to function, depended on the total vulnerability of each side and, therefore, the prohibition of any missile defense…

Since the beginning of the Cold War and until 2017, no fewer than thirty agreements were signed by the two great powers to curb the nuclear, chemical, or biological arms race, across various environments (outer space, Antarctica…), while twelve additional agreements — notably regional denuclearization accords (as in the case of Ukraine in 1994) — were signed by many other states.

It is this entire structure that now threatens to collapse, at the very moment of a major global shift. Putin is developing futuristic weapons such as the nuclear-powered cruise missile Burevestnik, the hypersonic missile Oreshnik, and the nuclear-armed submarine Poseidon, while Trump dreams of his “Golden Dome,” the ultimate shield meant to protect America against any missile attack. At the same time, China under Xi has embarked on a real race to catch up with the two great powers, also aiming for 1,500 strategic missiles by 2035… For the Americans, the risk is having to deter — or fight — both rivals at once. Trump has floated the idea of another treaty, after New START, but this time trilateral, including China. Beijing, however, wants none of it…

In such a context, the main danger is an acceleration of proliferation on all fronts: in Asia (Japan, Korea), in the Middle East (Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Turkey), and even in Europe itself (Ukraine, Poland, and… Germany).

Welcome to the new Nuclear Age…

Pierre Lellouche
February 4, 2026