On Thursday, the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia officially expired.
As FCNL’s Allen Hester explains, the world has crossed “a dangerous threshold.”
After entering into force in 2011, the New START treaty played an indispensable role in reducing the risk of nuclear catastrophe, placing verifiable caps on the number of nuclear weapons that the U.S. and Russia could deploy.
Now, for the first time in decades, there are no guardrails on the world’s largest nuclear weapons arsenals, greatly increasing the risks of a costly and dangerous new nuclear arms race.
But the expiration of New START is a “is a warning, not a verdict,” Allen writes. “There still remains another path.”
For generations, FCNL and faith communities have consistently sounded the alarm over the immorality of nuclear weapons and the unacceptable threat they pose to humanity and our planet.
Since the height of the Cold War, the world has made important progress toward reducing the risks of annihilation through arms control treaties like New START.
As Allen puts it, this moment must serve as a “wake up call” that spurs action and a renewed commitment to “common sense restraint over escalation and cooperation over catastrophe.”
Reports that the U.S. and Russia are engaging in new talks to extend the treaty are a positive sign. Ordinary people and our members of Congress must speak up now to demand that the administration urgently negotiate a treaty that restores these vital nuclear guardrails.
There is no time to lose. The stakes are far too high for inaction.
As Emma Belcher of Ploughshares wrote, “I don’t miss the world my parents grew up in, where the specter of a World War defined our every waking moment.”
For the sake of future generations, we must not allow that past to become our future.
