President Trump said Thursday that he will let America's last arms control treaty with Russia expire. The so-called New START treaty expired at midnight Thursday, and it marked the end of the policy of treating Russia as a peer competitor instead of, in the words of John McCain, "a gas station with nukes."
Using TruthSocial to announce the overdue end of an era dragged out beyond its natural demise, President Trump wrote:
The United States is the most powerful Country in the World. I completely rebuilt its Military in my First Term, including new and many refurbished nuclear weapons. I also added Space Force and now, continue to rebuild our Military at levels never seen before. We are even adding Battleships, which are 100 times more powerful than the ones that roamed the Seas during World War II — The Iowa, Missouri, Alabama, and others. I have stopped Nuclear Wars from breaking out across the World between Pakistan and India, Iran and Israel, and Russia and Ukraine. Rather than extend “NEW START” (A badly negotiated deal by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
Many establishment figures have lined up to support an extension of the New START treaty, which limits the number of nuclear weapons possessed by the U.S. and Russia, as well as delivery systems, and continues a ban on nuclear testing. For instance, Pope Leo XIV weighed in on X:
"The New START Treaty, which represented a significant step to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons, expires tomorrow. I make an urgent appeal not to allow this instrument to lapse without seeking to ensure a concrete and effective follow-up. The current situation demands that everything possible be done to avert a new arms race. We must urgently replace the logic of fear and distrust with a shared ethic that can guide choices on behalf of the common good and make peace a heritage safeguarded by all."
A Russian security commentator who is basically a proxy for the Kremlin is really torqued at the idea of renegotiating a treaty that preserved Russia's status.
The expiration of the New START Treaty is presented as a tragic fact: nuclear ☢️threat draws nearer, America’s effective withdrawal could restart nuclear testing, pushing global escalation. But let’s be clear about what they really want.
— Sergey Mikheev 🇷🇺 Quotes (@Miheev_Quotes) February 3, 2026
They want us, just like in the 1990s, to… pic.twitter.com/CGE2HJaPj9
The expiration of the New START Treaty is presented as a tragic fact: nuclear threat draws nearer, America’s effective withdrawal could restart nuclear testing, pushing global escalation. But let’s be clear about what they really want.
They want us, just like in the 1990s, to obediently keep complying: “You’re different, you’re the good guys, go ahead and fulfill everything.”
We’ve heard these approaches multiple times. My position is simple: don’t come to us with such proposals anymore. Don’t call, don’t write, don’t reach out at all.
They keep raising questions, but the subtext is always the same: “You are weaker, you lost the Cold War, therefore you must comply.” That logic is a core part of the non-sovereignty imposed on us after the Soviet Union’s collapse. We partially accepted it, struggled with it for decades, and in some places still suffer from it today.
He can weep over it, he wishes, but Russia is an economic, diplomatic, and military basketcase in a demographic death spiral that China is slowly annexing. It is beneath the dignity of America, and hurtful to our national security, to treat this clown show as a peer nation.
The bottom line is that the New START Treaty locked in Russian nuclear parity with the U.S., and the U.S. got a treaty, and the Davos crowd might say good things about us at cocktail parties.
Axios claims that a deal is being negotiated to keep the treaty in place without official agreement: "The U.S. and Russia are closing in on a deal to continue to observe the expiring New START arms control treaty beyond its expiration on Thursday, three sources familiar with those talks tell Axios." However, in light of President Trump's TruthSocial statement and the tweet by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, below, it looks like the decsion has been made to move beyond the First Cold War model to something else.
On February 5, 2026, the New START Treaty expired. Negotiated at a different time to meet a different challenge, New START no longer serves its purpose. Our desire to reduce global nuclear threats is genuine, but we will not accept terms that harm the United States or ignore…
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) February 6, 2026
On February 5, 2026, the New START Treaty expired. Negotiated at a different time to meet a different challenge, New START no longer serves its purpose. Our desire to reduce global nuclear threats is genuine, but we will not accept terms that harm the United States or ignore noncompliance in the pursuit of an agreement for agreement’s sake. We will set high standards for all potential nuclear peers. And we will always negotiate from a position of strength. Please see my full posting on Substack.(10) The Next Era of Nuclear Arms Control - by StateDept
This treaty, in today's current environment, has the sole purpose of limiting the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It controls the number of ballistic missile submarines, strategic bombers, and silo-based ICBMs we have. We can't test new nuclear weapons designs or validate the quality of our existing stockpile. Most importantly, it ignores the existence of China. It really makes no sense for us to make a treaty with what amounts to a failed state simply to boost Putin's ego, when our real threat, China, is free to build nuclear weapons and delivery systems and test them at will.
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