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Since the collapse of the old Soviet Union, Russia has cut a substantially diminished figure on the international stage.
The breakup, back in 1991, of what US President Ronald Reagan once dubbed an “evil empire” left the Kremlin with less territory, less financial muscle and less influence around the globe.
But Russia retained its clout in one crucial area.
Its continued status as a nuclear superpower, on a roughly equal footing with the United States, guaranteed even a weakened Moscow a place at the top table of international diplomacy.
At nuclear summits, the Kremlin’s leader could grandly sit across from the incumbent in the White House – just like in the glory days of the Cold War – to decide on matters of international security.
In 2010, then-US President Barack Obama and his briefly empowered Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, did just that, agreeing the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which was hailed at the time by the White House as “historic.” The New START treaty limits both countries to a maximum of 1,550 deployed long-range nuclear warheads on delivery systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bombers.
But those days, like the New START treaty itself that expires on Thursday, now appear to be over.
The demise of the last arms control deal between the US and Russia – which Washington repeatedly accused Moscow of violating by denying inspections of Russian nuclear facilities – has been brushed off by the Trump administration, with the US president himself shrugging off the terrifying prospect of a world without nuclear limits.
“If it expires, it expires,” Trump quipped in January, while suggesting a “better” deal may eventually be done.
That distinct lack of urgency from Washington stands in stark contrast to the anxiety in Moscow, where there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the arms reduction issue.
Speaking to journalists in Moscow as the expiry of the New START treaty loomed, Medvedev – no longer president but an outspoken security official on the margins of power – warned of the danger of allowing the deal to lapse. He suggested it would speed up the “Doomsday Clock,” the symbolic representation of how close humanity is to destroying the world.
“I don’t want to say that this immediately means a catastrophe and a nuclear war will begin, but it should still alarm everyone,” Medvedev added.
The Kremlin certainly seems alarmed.
It’s proposal to extend the terms of New START has, according to the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, so far been met with silence from the US side, threatening to unleash a new era of insecurity.
“For the first time, the United States and Russia, the two countries that possess the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, will be left without a fundamental document that would limit and establish controls over these arsenals,” Peskov told journalists on a recent conference call focused on the nuclear issue.
“We believe this is very bad for global and strategic security,” he added, pressing on fears likely to be shared around much of the world.
But the Kremlin’s expressions of concern may be more self-interested and strategic than they are prepared to admit.
Apart from being deprived of an arms-reduction platform that grandstands one of their last remaining vestiges of Soviet-era power, Moscow is now facing a future of potentially unconstrained US nuclear expansion.
The Trump administration has, for example, already re-floated the idea of nuclear-armed “Trump-class” battleships, a Cold War era policy that was abandoned decades ago.
The old Soviet Union could have matched it. But with an economy and a defense budget that are a fraction of Washington’s, Moscow has virtually no hope of keeping up – exacerbating the already vast gap in power and leverage between the old rivals.
Of course, the US has its own reasons for allowing nuclear arms control with Russia to lapse, not least its desire to include China, an emerging nuclear power, in future agreements.
But the expiry of New START marks the end of an era, not just of “superpower” arms control treaties that focused exclusively on Moscow and Washington, but also of one in which the US was willing to accept nuclear limits.
