Speaker 1: I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM. The
Speaker 1: US and Russia account for ninety percent of the world's
Speaker 1: nuclear firepower. But today the New Start Treaty, which limits
Speaker 1: the number of missiles and warheads in their arsenals, expires.
Speaker 1: President Putin first suspended it two years ago. Now without
Speaker 1: a last minute deal, it looks set to collapse for
Speaker 1: good today. Paul Dean, who helped implement the treaty and
Speaker 1: is now a vice president for the US Based Nuclear
Speaker 1: Threat Initiative, on the possibility of a new nuclear arms race.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday, February five. Paul, if you could take us
Speaker 1: back a bit, what is the New Start Treaty and
Speaker 1: how did it reduce the risk of a nuclear crisis?
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate that question, Nicole. You know, the treaty
Speaker 2: is now in its fifteenth year. This is a treaty
Speaker 2: that reduces and limits the number of both US and
Speaker 2: Russian strategic nuclear forces, so warheads, strategic launchers, delivery vehicles,
Speaker 2: you know, the nuclear arsenal that the US and the
Speaker 2: Russians have on intercontinental range weapons. But what I would
Speaker 2: really emphasize is that the treaty is a lot more
Speaker 2: than those limits. The limits themselves are on maybe two
Speaker 2: pages of a three hundred page treaty, and the rest
Speaker 2: of the treaty is really made up of intricately designed
Speaker 2: verification measures that include short notice inspections and channels of
Speaker 2: communication that give both sides a predictable and transparent picture
Speaker 2: of what the nuclear forces are doing and how they're composed.
Speaker 2: And that kind of confidence is highly stabilizing and preventing miscommunications, miscalculations,
Speaker 2: and invertent escalations. So not only do treaties like the
Speaker 2: New Star Treaty constrain nuclear arms races, but they also
Speaker 2: act as a really important hedge against the threat of
Speaker 2: a miscalculation.
Speaker 1: So how did this nuclear deal come about in the
Speaker 1: first place and was it difficult to broke up?
Speaker 2: The New Start Treaty is the most recent in a
Speaker 2: fairly long line of bilateral US Soviets and then US
Speaker 2: Russia and nuclear arms con treaties dating back to nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two.
Speaker 3: The governments of the United States and the Soviet Union,
Speaker 3: after reviewing the courts of their talks and the limitation
Speaker 3: of strategic armaments, have agreed to concentrate this year on
Speaker 3: working out an Agreement for the Limitation of the Deployment
Speaker 3: of Antiballistic Missile Systems ABM.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting, you know, New Start was in
Speaker 2: some ways remarkable for how fast it was negotiated, which
Speaker 2: was about two years, and that's fast in the realm
Speaker 2: of nuclear arms control. And it really does illustrate what
Speaker 2: the stakes of this moment are. Where this week the
Speaker 2: treaty will expire under its terms, and there have not
Speaker 2: been serious, sustained efforts to negotiate a success or agreement,
Speaker 2: and I think that introduces the risks of initiating those
Speaker 2: dangerous action, reaction and miscalculation dynamics that these treaties have
Speaker 2: been designed and have successfully prevented for the last almost
Speaker 2: fifty years. But it's a really important point to note
Speaker 2: that all of these treaties and going back to you know,
Speaker 2: President Nixon on our side, and then very famously Ronald
Speaker 2: Reagan and Mikhil Gorbachev, and then you know, most recently
Speaker 2: with Obama and Medvedev.
Speaker 4: And I'm pleased to announce that, after a year of
Speaker 4: intense negotiations, the United States and Russia have agreed to
Speaker 4: the most comprehensive arms control agreement in nearly two decades.
Speaker 2: It illustrates that these kinds of national security undertakings usually
Speaker 2: necessitate involvement at the very highest levels of government. These
Speaker 2: have been top level presidential priorities. And I think it's
Speaker 2: important to emphasize that President Trump has been quite vocal
Speaker 2: for a lot of years on his desire to limit
Speaker 2: nuclear dangers.
Speaker 5: When they explain what it represents and the kind of
Speaker 5: destruction that you're talking about, it is a very sobering moment, yes.
Speaker 2: Very and so he does have an opportunity here to
Speaker 2: assume a place in that tradition in brokering an agreement
Speaker 2: that reduces the dangers of nuclear weapons.
Speaker 5: When we need nuclear weapons, like the kind of weapons
Speaker 5: that we're building and that Russia has and that China
Speaker 5: has to a lesser extent but will have. That's going
Speaker 5: to be very said, that's going to be probably oblivion.
Speaker 1: All this nuclear arms deal. It's actually been on ice
Speaker 1: for a while. Putin suspended it a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: Could you talk us through what happened up until that
Speaker 1: point and are we now looking at its total collapse?
Speaker 1: Really game over?
Speaker 2: You're quite right that the Russian side illegitimately suspended its
Speaker 2: participation in the New Star Treaty very transparently trying to
Speaker 2: link this to the Ukraine War in an attempt to
Speaker 2: extract concessions out of the US side.
Speaker 6: They want to deliver us a strategic defeat well sneaking
Speaker 6: into our strategic nuclear objectives. Regarding this, but I'd have
Speaker 6: to say that Russia suspends its participation in the New
Speaker 6: Start Treaty quoted.
Speaker 2: And so I think the treaty was very much on
Speaker 2: life support for the last couple of years, and as
Speaker 2: you say, that ends this week because the treaty cannot
Speaker 2: be extended any further. And so the issue is what
Speaker 2: comes next. What can the US and the Russian Federation
Speaker 2: do to preserve guardrails on the nuclear deterrence equation. I mean,
Speaker 2: one thing we have learned over the course of these
Speaker 2: decades of nuclear arms control is that they do not
Speaker 2: materialize overnight. But that has to happen soon, and that
Speaker 2: has to happen, you know, in the near term, and
Speaker 2: it has to happen frankly, in an era that's even
Speaker 2: more complicated than it was in two thousand and ten
Speaker 2: when the New Star Treaty was first negotiated, because now
Speaker 2: we don't have a bipolar US Russia nuclear relationship. We
Speaker 2: have a tripolar nuclear competition that also involves China coming up.
Speaker 1: We on the brink of another nuclear arms race, Paul,
Speaker 1: what is the greatest danger when this deal collapses? And
Speaker 1: could we see another Cold War style nuclear arms race again?
Speaker 2: So I try not to overstate this because you know,
Speaker 2: obviously when you're talking about nuclear weapons, there is a
Speaker 2: worst case scenario. But without those guardrails in place, the
Speaker 2: pressures and action reaction dynamics that we know for a
Speaker 2: fact can and do drive arms races are no longer
Speaker 2: going to have a circuit breaker, and those arms race
Speaker 2: dynamics do not regulate them selves. If in this new
Speaker 2: tripolar nuclear situation that we find ourselves in, the US
Speaker 2: side starts to build up the Russian side and the
Speaker 2: Chinese side will see that and will take steps accordingly,
Speaker 2: and so you'll start to see the risk of a
Speaker 2: renewed nuclear arms race, which I might add is extremely
Speaker 2: expensive for all players. I mean this is you know,
Speaker 2: in the US alone, currently we're talking about one hundred
Speaker 2: billion dollars a year on our nuclear modernization budget, and
Speaker 2: if that is accompanied by a build up that number
Speaker 2: goes up. Equally importantly, you lose the channel of communication
Speaker 2: and you lose the predictability and transparency into the other
Speaker 2: sides nuclear posture. That will push you to start planning
Speaker 2: for worst case scenarios and could potentially drive a catastrophic
Speaker 2: miscalculation if you're making decisions based on speculation and not
Speaker 2: based on fact.
Speaker 1: You mentioned China's nuclear build up. How extensive is it,
Speaker 1: you know, I.
Speaker 2: Think the precise numbers are going to be something that
Speaker 2: only the governments and their militaries know. The two largest
Speaker 2: nuclear arsenals right now are unambiguously the US and the
Speaker 2: Russian Federation.
Speaker 5: There's no reason for US to be building brand new
Speaker 5: nuclear weapons. We already have so many you could destroy
Speaker 5: the world fifty times over one hundred times over.
Speaker 2: China has embarked on a rapid and frankly opaque nuclear
Speaker 2: build up over the last you know, several years.
Speaker 6: There are no official figures regarding China's nuclear arsenal.
Speaker 2: That's because it's one of the biggest state secrets of all.
Speaker 2: The end state of that is not clear, but it
Speaker 2: does inject some major questions into what the next era
Speaker 2: of nuclear stability can look like.
Speaker 1: China's President shet Iping with a grand show of force
Speaker 1: marking eighty years since the end of World War Two
Speaker 1: with its biggest ever military.
Speaker 7: Parade, fifty thousand spectators right there and tee enimin square
Speaker 7: through cheered when nuclear capable missiles and launchers went past
Speaker 7: in batches on trucks, the first ever show of its
Speaker 7: nuclear tria.
Speaker 2: It's not simply the case that the United States has
Speaker 2: to deter one nuclear armed potential competitor, but more than one,
Speaker 2: and that is relatively new, and that's going to require
Speaker 2: a significant rethink to ensure that the next nuclear stability
Speaker 2: framework that we so desperately need is fit for purpose
Speaker 2: to bring stability to a world that has become multipolar
Speaker 2: and multidimensional in the nuclear.
Speaker 1: Sel Does the end of this new treaty actually increase
Speaker 1: the risk of a nuclear war in your opinion?
Speaker 2: Without a successful approach to stabilizing the US Russia nuclear relationship,
Speaker 2: that's going to put more and more pressure on all
Speaker 2: of our extended military alliances. I think there are tangible
Speaker 2: global security implications if we're entering a world in which
Speaker 2: those nuclear guardrails have fallen away. We will see what
Speaker 2: the next few days old. But I think any way
Speaker 2: you slice it, the treaty does expire, and I think
Speaker 2: for the first time, and you know, fifty years, we'll
Speaker 2: be looking at a world in which there are not
Speaker 2: guardrails on the US Russia and nuclear competition, and I
Speaker 2: think that makes the world a more dangerous place.
Speaker 1: Paul, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Great thank you.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, organizers are continuing to plan a
Speaker 1: protest against the upcoming visit of Israeli President Isaac Hertzog,
Speaker 1: despite New South Wales police extending protest restrictions in parts
Speaker 1: of Sydney. President Herzog is due to visit Sydney on
Speaker 1: February nine, and police have extended limits on approvals for
Speaker 1: public assemblies for the next two weeks. Under the restrictions,
Speaker 1: gatherings are still permitted, but police may issue move on directions.
Speaker 1: And Colombian President Gustavo Petro has described his nearly two
Speaker 1: hour White House meeting with US President Donald Trump as
Speaker 1: optimistic and constructive. It follows Trump's earlier comments accusing Petrow
Speaker 1: of being tied to cocaine trafficking. Petro says Trump had
Speaker 1: been confused about the realities in Colombia. Both leaders talked
Speaker 1: up closer cooperation on counter narcotics, but no specific agreements
Speaker 1: have come out of the meeting. I'm Nicole Johnston. This
Speaker 1: is seven am. Thanks for listening.