Global & US Headlines
New START Treaty Expires, Lifting US-Russia Warhead Caps
At 00:00 GMT on 5 Feb 2026 the New START accord lapsed, removing the last legally binding limits on how many strategic nuclear warheads the United States and Russia may deploy.
Focusing Facts
- New START had capped each side at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed launchers since entering into force in 2011.
- President Putin’s 22 Sep 2025 offer to keep observing those caps for one extra year received no formal reply from Washington, according to the Kremlin.
- The treaty’s inspection regime has been frozen since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and never resumed.
Context
Arms-control treaties have often withered when geopolitical mistrust outran diplomatic bandwidth: the 1979 SALT II accord was signed but never ratified after the Soviet move into Afghanistan, and the 2002 U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty prompted Russia and then China to diversify delivery systems. The New START expiry fits that pattern of stepwise demolition of the Cold-War scaffolding—INF in 2019, Open Skies in 2020, now the final keystone. It also signals a structural shift from a bipolar to a triangular (U.S.–Russia–China) nuclear order in which verification is harder and brinkmanship offers domestic political payoffs. Over a 100-year horizon this moment may be remembered less for immediate warhead increases—which are costly and slow—than for normalising an unregulated strategic environment just as AI-driven targeting, hypersonic glide vehicles and space assets proliferate, shrinking decision times and raising the odds that a future crisis will mimic 1962’s knife-edge without the back-channel guardrails that once emerged from treaty negotiations.
Perspectives
Russian state-owned media
e.g., TASS — Frames the treaty’s expiry as the result of U.S. indifference while stressing that Moscow will still act “responsibly” and is open to talks if Washington engages. Mirrors Kremlin messaging that shifts blame away from Russia’s own treaty suspensions and nuclear brinkmanship, downplaying its responsibility for the collapse of arms-control architecture.
European & international liberal outlets
e.g., Le Monde, France 24, Al Jazeera — Describe the lapse of New START as a grave blow to global security and chiefly fault the Trump administration for failing to extend the pact, urging immediate negotiations to avert a new arms race. Tends to foreground U.S. political dysfunction and minimise Russia’s repeated nuclear threats, reflecting a trans-Atlantic diplomatic outlook that can understate Moscow’s agency.
Anglo-American sensationalist tabloids
e.g., Daily Mail, The US Sun — Paint an apocalyptic picture of an imminent nuclear arms race, casting Putin as an unchecked tyrant and highlighting worst-case scenarios to alarm readers. Uses emotive, fear-driven rhetoric and personalised villainy to maximise readership, oversimplifying the strategic complexities and giving limited attention to U.S. policy choices.