Mosc\u00fa\u00a0insisti\u00f3 en que todas las armas nucleares se basen en territorio nacional y que se elimine la infraestructura para su apoyo en el extranjero\u00a0como condici\u00f3n previa para cualquier negociaci\u00f3n sobre armas nucleares no estrat\u00e9gicas. Actualmente mediante acuerdos,\u00a0se\u00a0despliegan unas\u00a0100 bombas de gravedad nuclear de EE.UU.\u00a0en el territorio de los miembros de la OTAN para su uso (OTAN) en un conflicto. El\u00a0START III\u00a0(Tratado de Reducci\u00f3n de Armas Estrat\u00e9gicas) vence en febrero 2026.<\/p>\n
After 10 months of fighting, it does not appear the Russia-Ukraine war will end any time soon. That conflict has begun to impact US-Russian nuclear arms control efforts\u2014first by raising mistrust between Washington and Moscow to levels not seen since the height of the Cold War.<\/p>\n
In late 2022, Moscow postponed a planned meeting of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty\u2019s implementing body, the Bilateral Consultative Commission, and the bilateral dialogue on broader strategic stability issues hangs in limbo. Even when\u2014hopefully not if\u2014the dialogue resumes, the consequences of the war will make achievement of US goals on arms control more difficult, particularly as regards limiting Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
Nuclear arms control on hold.<\/strong>\u00a0The Kremlin launched its unjustified invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The war\u2014or the latest phase of a conflict that began in 2014 when Russian forces illegally seized Crimea\u2014is now well into its 11th month. It has not gone as Moscow hoped, however. The Ukrainian military stopped the Russian army short of Kyiv, pushed the Russians out of northern Ukraine, and conducted successful counteroffensives against Russian forces in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.<\/p>\n The bilateral strategic stability dialogue was paused shortly after Russia\u2019s assault began. But senior US and Russian officials kept stating their interest in strategic arms control, raising hope that both sides understood the merit of maintaining constraints on their nuclear competition, even at a nadir in the broader bilateral relationship. In a message in June 2022, President Joe Biden wrote<\/a>\u00a0\u201cwe must continue to engage Russia on issues of strategic stability\u201d even while holding Moscow accountable for its war. Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s spokesperson\u00a0responded<\/a>\u00a0a few days later, noting that the Kremlin was \u201cinterested in [such talks]\u201d and that the sides would need to come back to the question \u201csooner or later.\u201d<\/p>\n The war nevertheless has affected Russia\u2019s approach to nuclear arms control. Last summer, Washington expressed readiness to resume on-site inspections under the terms of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). They had been suspended by mutual agreement in 2020 due to COVID concerns. However, Moscow\u00a0delayed<\/a>\u00a0their resumption, claiming that restarting the on-site visits would not \u201ctake into account existing realities\u201d and would lead to unilateral US advantages. Russian officials had protested that its inspectors would be hampered by US visa and travel restrictions, issues that US officials could have resolved.<\/p>\n In early November, Washington and Moscow\u00a0agreed<\/a>\u00a0to a meeting of the Bilateral Consultative Commission (BCC), New START\u2019s implementing body, which would offer a venue to work out the details for resuming inspections and to address other treaty-related questions. Having this meeting mattered for the broader discussion of strategic stability issues as well as for New START, since US officials had conditioned their readiness to resume that discussion on the treaty returning to its normal functioning.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the Russian government pulled the plug on the BCC session, literally on the eve of its scheduled November 29 start day. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov,\u00a0attributed<\/a>\u00a0the decision to \u201ctechnical reasons,\u201d adding \u201cthis is not a cancellation, but a postponement.\u201d Ryabkov continued, however, that US-Russian arms control was not \u201cimmune\u201d from other world events, an implicit reference to the war in Ukraine. Moscow\u2019s decision to postpone the BCC meeting appeared far more political than technical. A few days later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov\u00a0confirmed<\/a>\u00a0Russia\u2019s motivation for postponing the BCC meeting: \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to discuss strategic stability nowadays while ignoring everything that is happening in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n So, as we enter 2023, both the BCC and the broader strategic dialogue sit on hold.<\/p>\n \u201cUnacceptable\u201d limits on non-strategic nuclear<\/strong>\u00a0weapons.<\/strong>\u00a0The BCC\u2019s delay will raise questions about how the lengthening absence of on-site inspections affects the sides\u2019 ability to effectively monitor New START\u2019s constraints, particularly the treaty\u2019s limit on deployed strategic warheads. The BCC also offered the venue for discussing new kinds of strategic nuclear delivery systems, such as the Russian nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed Poseidon underwater drone, which are not captured by New START\u2019s definitions.<\/p>\n Delayed resumption of the strategic dialogue will also have deleterious effects on the Biden administration\u2019s ability to achieve the nuclear arms control objectives it\u00a0articulated in 2021<\/a>. Those goals include addressing limits on all US and Russian nuclear arms, including non-strategic nuclear weapons, and maintaining limits on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers beyond New START\u2019s expiration in February 2026.<\/p>\n One challenge confronting the Biden administration is persuading Moscow to agree to a negotiation covering all nuclear arms, including non-strategic nuclear weapons. New START deals only with \u201cdeployed\u201d strategic warheads\u2014the actual number of warheads atop deployed intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, plus one warhead attributed per deployed heavy bomber. Reserve strategic ballistic missile warheads, bomber weapons beyond one per deployed heavy bomber, and all non-strategic nuclear weapons therefore fall outside of the New START constraints.<\/p>\n An agreement covering all US and Russian nuclear warheads seems a logical next step after New START. That would appeal to American allies for whom non-strategic nuclear weapons pose a direct threat, and the Senate\u2019s 2010 resolution of ratification for New START called for addressing non-strategic nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n Getting non-strategic nuclear weapons on the negotiating table was never going to be easy. Moscow showed no interest in the Obama administration\u2019s proposal in 2011 for a new negotiation covering all US and Russian nuclear arms. In September 2021, Ryabkov qualified the US-proposed position on non-strategic nuclear weapons as \u201cunacceptable<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The Russia-Ukraine war will make it harder to gain agreement to limit non-strategic nuclear weapons. Russian conventional armed forces in Ukraine have dramatically underperformed Moscow\u2019s expectations. A larger Russian military utterly failed to achieve its initial goals in February and March, even though it was equipped with far more modern equipment than its Ukrainian foe. (Significant amounts of heavy Western arms began flowing to Ukraine only late in the spring.) This almost certainly will lead the Kremlin and the Russian military to place greater importance on non-strategic nuclear weapons as a hedge against failure at the conventional level, particularly as they assess Russian conventional force capabilities in comparison to those of NATO and China.<\/p>\n Moreover, in the past, Moscow insisted that all nuclear weapons be based on national territory and that the infrastructure for their support overseas be eliminated as a precondition for any negotiation on non-strategic nuclear weapons. This would effectively end the nuclear-sharing arrangements under which some 100 US nuclear gravity bombs are\u00a0deployed<\/a>\u00a0on the territory of NATO members for use, if needed in a conflict, by US and NATO member air forces. Those weapons fulfill an assurance role for allies as well as contribute to NATO\u2019s deterrent posture. Given Russia\u2019s use of military force against Ukraine, NATO allies understandably attach greater importance to the presence of those weapons than before\u2014which makes the United States practically unable to accept Russia\u2019s request.<\/p>\n A decade ago already, Obama administration officials rejected the Russian demand that all US nuclear arms be withdrawn to the national territory as a precondition for negotiations on non-strategic nuclear weapons, although some officials allowed that it could be an outcome of a negotiation, depending on the other provisions of a treaty. But, in current circumstances, many NATO allies would likely oppose the withdrawal of US nuclear bombs from Europe, even if that were to unlock the path to limiting Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n Unequal conventional strike capabilities.<\/strong>\u00a0A second challenge arises regarding long-range, precision-guided conventional strike weapons, an area to which Russian officials attach priority but US officials prefer to avoid. The US military deploys thousands of conventionally-armed air- and sea-launched cruise missiles and has employed them extensively over the past three decades. These systems and their increasing accuracy have prompted growing concern in Moscow. In June 2013, Putin\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0that US conventional strike capabilities \u201ccould come close to strategic nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2017, the Russian military demonstrated its own long-range, conventionally-armed air- and sea-launched cruise missiles against targets in Syria. That raised the possibility that, as Russia fielded more of these weapons, it would become less concerned about constraining them.<\/p>\n