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nuclear nonproliferation treaty
New START’s Expiration: A Threat to Humanitarian Disarmament
When major powers abandon restraint in the nuclear field, they send a dangerous message: that international commitments are optional, norms are negotiable, and humanitarian principles can be sidelined.
Feb 05, 2026
In January 2026, I published an article warning that the world was approaching the final hours of the New START Treaty. On February 5, 2026, that warning has become reality. For the first time since the early 1970s, no legally binding limits exist on US-Russian strategic nuclear forces. This moment is not only a failure of arms control; it is a profound threat to human security, humanitarian disarmament, and the credibility of multilateral commitments across all fields.
New START was the last surviving pillar of bilateral nuclear restraint. Its expiration removes the ceilings on deployed strategic warheads and delivery systems, eliminates inspections and data exchanges, and forces both sides to operate in an environment of opacity and worst‑case assumptions. In my earlier article, I argued that this collapse would deepen the crisis of credibility facing the Nuclear Non‑Proliferation Treaty (NPT), especially the long‑neglected obligations under Article VI. That analysis stands even more firmly today. A world without New START is a world where the NPT’s disarmament pillar is no longer eroding slowly—it is cracking openly.
But the consequences extend far beyond the nuclear domain. The end of New START is a blow to humanitarian disarmament as a whole. Treaties such as the Mine Ban Treaty (MBT) and the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CMC) were built on the belief that international law can restrain the most harmful weapons and protect civilians. When major powers abandon restraint in the nuclear field, they send a dangerous message: that international commitments are optional, norms are negotiable, and humanitarian principles can be sidelined when politically inconvenient.
This erosion of respect for international commitments is not isolated. It is part of a wider pattern visible in multiple conflicts, where the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, attacks on medical facilities, and disregard for civilian protection have become disturbingly normalized. The collapse of New START reinforces this trend by weakening the broader culture of compliance that humanitarian disarmament depends on.
Strengthening humanitarian disarmament—from nuclear weapons to landmines, cluster munitions, and all weapons that devastate civilian life—is now an urgent moral responsibility.
The humanitarian and medical consequences of this moment cannot be overstated. Nuclear weapons are not abstract strategic tools; they are instruments of mass suffering. Their use—even once—would overwhelm health systems, destroy infrastructure, contaminate environments, and inflict irreversible harm on generations. The expiration of New START increases the likelihood of miscalculation, escalation, and arms racing at a time when global humanitarian systems are already stretched beyond capacity.
This is why the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has gained renewed relevance. Its humanitarian logic—grounded in the lived experiences of survivors and the realities of medical response—offers a principled alternative to the paralysis of traditional arms control. As nuclear‑armed states retreat from their obligations, the TPNW stands as a reminder that disarmament is not only a legal duty but a moral imperative.
Today’s moment demands more than observation. It requires action.
Governments must restore restraint and rebuild trust in multilateral commitments.
Civil society must raise its voice with renewed urgency.
Humanitarian and medical organizations must continue to highlight the human cost of nuclear policies.
And the media must stop treating nuclear risks as distant or technical; they are immediate threats to human life and dignity.
The expiration of New START is not the end of arms control—but it is a warning. A warning that the international system is drifting toward a world where the most destructive weapons are unconstrained, humanitarian norms are weakened, and global commitments lose their meaning.
Strengthening humanitarian disarmament—from nuclear weapons to landmines, cluster munitions, and all weapons that devastate civilian life—is now an urgent moral responsibility, more than ever.
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US Warship Downs Iranian Drone, Heightening Risk of 'Illegal and Catastrophic War'
"Demanding talks while surrounding the other side with a massive armada of warships and F-35s is not diplomacy, it is piracy," Phyllis Bennis of Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams.
Feb 03, 2026
Amid recent reports that war is "imminent," the US military shot down an Iranian drone on Tuesday as it approached the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, according to a US official who spoke with Reuters.
Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins told the Associated Press that the drone “aggressively approached” the Lincoln with “unclear intent," and kept flying toward the aircraft carrier “despite de-escalatory measures taken by US forces operating in international waters."
It came after another tense encounter earlier in the day, during which the US military said Iranian forces "harassed" a US merchant vessel sailing in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Lincoln is part of an "armada" that President Donald Trump on Friday said he'd deployed to the region in advance of a possible strike against Iran, which he said would be "far worse" than the one the US conducted in June, when it bombed three Iranian nuclear sites.
After initially stating his goal of protecting protesters from a government crackdown, Trump has pivoted to express his intentions of using the threat of military force to coerce Iran into negotiating a new nuclear agreement that would severely limit its ability to pursue nuclear enrichment, which it has the right to do for peaceful means.
"Shifting justifications for a war are never a good sign, and they strongly suggest that the war in question was not warranted," Paul R. Pillar, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University, said in a piece published by Responsible Statecraft on Tuesday.
Other international relations scholars have said the US has no grounds, either strategically or legally, to pursue a war, even to stop Iran's nuclear development.
For one thing, said Dylan Williams, vice president of the Center for International Policy, Trump himself is responsible for ripping up the old agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which required Iran to limit its enrichment of uranium well below the levels required to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for relief from crippling US sanctions.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was tasked with regularly inspecting Iran's nuclear facilities, the country was cooperating with all aspects of the deal until Trump withdrew from it, after which Iran began to once again accelerate its nuclear enrichment.
"There was 24/7 monitoring and no [highly enriched uranium] in Iran before Trump broke the JCPOA," Williams said. "Iran’s missile program and human rights abuses surged after he broke the deal."
Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, marveled that "there is an amazing amount of folks who still think bombing Iran's nuclear program every eight months or so is a better result for the United States than the JCPOA, which capped Tehran's nuclear progress by 15-20 years."
With the Lincoln ominously looming off his nation's shores, Iran's embattled supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned on Sunday that "the Americans must be aware that if they wage a war this time, it will be a regional war."
Trump responded to the ayatollah by saying that if “we don’t make a deal, then we’ll find out whether or not he was right.”
Despite stating their unwillingness to give up their nuclear energy program, which they say is legal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Iranian envoys have expressed an openness to a meeting with US diplomats mediated by other Middle Eastern nations in Turkey this week.
On Monday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on social media that he had instructed diplomats "to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency."
Trump is also pushing other demands—including that Iran must also limit its long-range ballistic missile program and stop arming its allies in the region, such as the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, and the Yemeni group Ansar Allah, often referred to as the "Houthis."
Pillar pointed out that Iran's missile program and its arming of so-called "proxies" have primarily been used as deterrents against other nations in the region—namely, US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. With these demands, he said, "Iran is being told it cannot have a full regional policy while others do. It is unrealistic to expect any Iranian leader to agree to that."
That said, Pillar wrote that "President Trump is correct when he says that Iran wants a deal, given that Iran’s bad economic situation is an incentive to negotiate agreements that would provide at least partial relief from sanctions," which played a notable role in heightening the economic instability that fueled Iran's protests in the first place.
But any optimism that appeared to have arisen may have been dashed by Tuesday's exchange of fire. According to Axios, Iran is now asking to move the talks from Turkey to Oman and has called for a meeting with the US alone rather than with other nations present.
Eric Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, said: "This is exactly the kind of miscalculation—or intentional escalation, by hawkish bureaucrats aiming to scuttle talks—that can drag us into an illegal and catastrophic war in Iran."
Under the United Nations charter, countries are required to believe they are under imminent attack in order to carry out a strike against another sovereign nation.
In a comment to Common Dreams, Phyllis Bennis, the director of the New International Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, emphasized the massive difference between the US and Iran's military capabilities and actions.
"There is no question of Iran having equal military capacity to that of the US," she said. "Its military has never been anywhere close to the size, financing, or power; its own military capacity, and that of most of its allies in the region, were severely damaged in the Israeli-US attack last June. However the Iranian drone was 'acting,' the real escalation has been that of the United States."
"Sending what Trump called his 'massive armada' to threaten Iran stands in complete violation of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the threat or use of force," she continued. "That is the real 'escalatory' action. The US needs to pull back its warships, warplanes, and troops, and engage in serious diplomacy. Demanding talks while surrounding the other side with a massive armada of warships and F-35s is not diplomacy, it is piracy."
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Trump Is Dragging World Toward a New Nuclear Arms Race
We only have one planet on which to live and time is of the essence.
Feb 03, 2026
Among the critical issues facing our country today, nuclear arms control is seldom top of mind for most people, understandably, given our myriad political, social and economic crises. Recent books and films such as Annie Jacobsen’s 2004 non-fiction tome Nuclear War: A Scenario and last fall’s A House of Dynamite, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, garnered needed attention for the still-existential threat of nuclear weapons, yet the problem remains mostly absent from our political discourse.
Part of the fault for that lies with President Donald Trump, who while constantly touting his ability to “make deals,” is missing in action on a simple agreement that would make the US and the world safer. New START, the arms control treaty negotiated by President Barack Obama and extended by President Joe Biden, will expire on February 5. However, Russia offered last September a one year, or longer, extension of the treaty’s key limits of 1550 deployed, strategic nuclear warheads and 700 launch systems each.
Trump simply needs to say “Da” (yes) to the Russian proposal, which would cost very little politically at this time. While both countries, along with the seven other nuclear weapons states, are in the midst of dangerous and exorbitant nuclear weapons “modernization” programs, neither are in a position to rapidly exceed the current New START limits, nor should they, for global security and financial reasons. While both countries tout their in-development bombs and missiles that could end most if not all life on Earth, at the cost of more life-affirming investments in human needs and protecting our planet, the reality is these systems, such as the new Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), are boondoggles that mostly benefit the financial interests of the large weapons contractors rather than the Common Good.
Should Trump blow this chance, his global approval, already dismal, will doubtless decline further.
Then there is Trump’s fantasy of building a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield. Such a chimera is more properly seen as part of a potential offensive nuclear war fighting scheme rather than mere defense; that is if it works, which it is extremely unlikely to do. So it could be a lose-lose-lose scenario, whereby it spurs other countries to deploy more missiles and counter-measures to overcome such a missile “defense;” and it likely would not work to shoot down all incoming missiles (and would be useless against other forms of attack); and it could be used to argue arms control and disarmament treaties are unnecessary, because the shield will protect us, providing a dangerously false sense of security.
One does not need to engage in all the arguments against Golden Dome, or for investing in other, more economically productive pursuits, or think a nuclear weapons-free world is achievable any time soon, to agree that ditching the benefits of New START is a stunningly bad idea at this time.
The US and Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) have had a series of treaties limiting and reducing nuclear weapons since 1972. If New START limits go away, we will enter a very dangerous brave new world.
Trump’s famously insatiable ego could be slaked by not only agreeing to the Russian proposal, but by challenging Moscow to initiate new talks to go lower. At the end of the Obama Administration and in its aftermath, there were conflicting claims by the US and Russia on which side whiffed at a chance to go lower, to 1,000 deployed strategic warheads each. So Trump could propose something his nemesis Obama failed to do. Such an agreement might take a sustained period of negotiation, or Trump could do as President George H. W. Bush did in 1991 in announcing a unilateral nuclear weapons cut, which was coordinated with and matched by Russia, with mutually agreed verification procedures.
Trust between Moscow and Washington is low for various reasons, but neither country can afford, politically or economically, to engage in a futile, costly new arms race, and global public reprobation would be deservedly harsh for both countries. And it would further erode any credibility for the US to insist China engage in arms reduction talks regarding its arsenal, which is still much smaller than those of Russia and the US. Even at the height of the Cold War, with the Soviet Union and United States competing for global dominance and engaging in deadly “proxy wars” and armed interventions around the globe, the two sides saw the wisdom of not blowing up the planet, and collaborated on a series of treaties that dramatically reduced their nuclear arsenals, which made the world safer.
Should Trump blow this chance, his global approval, already dismal, will doubtless decline further. Upcoming international review conferences of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) this spring and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) this fall, both at the United Nations in New York, will likely lay the blame for a renewed arms race at his feet.
It is not (yet) too late. A coalition of US peace and disarmament organizations is mobilizing public action to press Congress and the White House to accept the Kremlin’s offer, if not by Thursday’s deadline, then as soon as possible. For more information on how to raise your voice on this critical issue, concerned individuals can consult Peace Action’s FaceBook page.
Time is of the essence. We only have one planet.
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