Calls on Trump administration to reclaim US leadership of global nuclear disarmament efforts by stating intent to pursue 5-Year extension of New START Treaty central limits

Washington (February 5, 2018) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Congressional leader on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation issues, released the following statement today on the entry into force of the central limits of the Treaty on Measures for Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) Treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation. The central limits of the New START Treaty cap each country’s deployed strategic warheads at 1550 and deployed strategic launchers at 700. The New START Treaty’s central limits reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads deployed by 74 percent from the 6,000 deployed warheads limit in the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

“The New START Treaty is making the world a safer place by capping the two largest, most dangerous nuclear arsenals in the world,” said Senator Markey. “New START is the direct result of America’s leadership on efforts to reduce and eventually eliminate the threat nuclear weapons pose to the world.  Instead of expanding our nuclear arsenal, as it has proposed in its Nuclear Posture Review, President Trump should declare America’s intent to pursue a five-year extension of the central limits of the New START Treaty and begin immediately efforts to encourage the Russian Federation to do the same. The Cold War is over, and President Trump calling for new nuclear capabilities and more ways to use them is nothing short of total abdication of decades of leadership toward nuclear disarmament and sets the stage for an unnecessary and dangerous 21st century nuclear arms race.”  

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