WASHINGTON, 2 Jun: The White House is ready to have talks with Russia without preconditions about a future nuclear arms control framework even as it is enacting countermeasures in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s decision to suspend the last nuclear arms control treaty between the two countries.
\nWhite House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will make clear the Biden administration\u2019s desire for talks on building a new framework during an address to the Arms Control Association on Friday, according to two senior administration officials who previewed the address on the condition of anonymity.
\nPutin announced in February he was suspending Russia\u2019s cooperation with the New START Treaty\u2019s provisions for nuclear warhead and missile inspections amid deep tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia\u2019s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Russia, however, said it would respect the treaty\u2019s caps on nuclear weapons.
\nThe officials said that Sullivan would underscore that the U.S. remains committed to adhering to the treaty if Russia does but will also \u201csignal that we are open to dialogue\u201d about building a new framework for managing nuclear risks once the treaty expires in February 2026.
\nThe officials said that the Biden administration is willing to stick to the warhead caps until the treaty expires. Figuring out details about a post-2026 framework will be complicated by U.S.-Russia tension and the growing nuclear strength of China.
\nChina now has about 410 nuclear warheads, according to an annual survey from the Federation of American Scientists. The Pentagon in November estimated China\u2019s warhead count could grow to 1,000 by the end of the decade and to 1,500 by around 2035.
\nThe size of China\u2019s arsenal and whether Beijing is willing to engage in substantive dialogue will impact the United States\u2019 future force posture and Washington\u2019s ability to come to any agreement with the Russians, the officials said.
\nU.S.-Chinese relations have been strained by the U.S. shooting down a Chinese spy balloon earlier this year after it crossed the continental U.S.; tensions about the status of the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own; U.S. export controls aimed at limiting China\u2019s advanced semiconductor equipment; and other friction. AP<\/p>\n
The White House push on Moscow on nuclear arms control comes the day after the administration announced new countermeasures over Russia suspending participation in the treaty.
\nThe State Department announced Thursday it would no longer notify Russia of any updates on the status or location of \u201ctreaty-accountable items\u201d like missiles and launchers, would revoke U.S. visas issued to Russian treaty inspectors and aircrew members and would cease providing telemetric information on test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The United States and Russia earlier this year stopped sharing biannual nuclear weapons data required by the treaty.
\nThe treaty, which then-Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev signed in 2010, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers and provides for on-site inspections to verify compliance.
\nThe inspections have been dormant since 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussions on resuming them were supposed to have taken place in November 2022, but Russia abruptly called them off, citing U.S. support for Ukraine. AP<\/p>\n
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WASHINGTON, 2 Jun: The White House is ready to have talks with Russia without preconditions about a future nuclear arms control framework even as it is enacting countermeasures in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s decision to suspend the last nuclear arms control treaty between the two countries. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-217563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}