new start treaty

On April 8, 2010, the United States and Russia signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), a landmark achievement that capped and reduced deployed nuclear arsenals, symbolizing hope for a safer, more stable world. Now, 15 years later, as the expiration of New START approaches in February 2026, the risks of a renewed nuclear arms race loom large. Over the past four years, repeated Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine have dramatically weakened the “nuclear taboo.” The risk of a potentially civilization-ending nuclear war has risen to levels some experts say is at least has high as during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Rather than turning back from the brink of nuclear war, nuclear armed states are accelerating nuclear weapons spending. The U.S. alone is estimated to spend $756 billion on nuclear weapons in the next ten years.

Amid this urgent landscape, the just introduced McGovern-Tokuda resolution -H.Res.317 provides a transformative framework to confront these challenges, offering a comprehensive roadmap toward a world free of nuclear weapons as a national security imperative. Reps. McGovern and Tokuda understand that the story of nuclear weapons will have an ending. It will either be the end of nuclear weapons or the end of human civilization. We have been incredibly fortunate throughout the nuclear weapons era. As Robert McNamara famously declared after the Cuban Missile Crisis, “We lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.”