00:00Dorfman is the founder and chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group, and he joins me now.
00:05Hello to you, Dr. Dorfman.
00:07Now, with this treaty having expired, how much more dangerous is the world today, do you think?
00:14The UN Secretary General says the dissolution of the treaty couldn't come at a worse time,
00:20and the risk of nuclear weapons being used is the highest in decades.
00:23However, it has to be said that some observers wonder whether the expiration of this New START treaty owes less to ideology
00:32than the workings of the Trump administration, where Korea depriments have been sidelined
00:37and replaced by those lacking the bandwidth to negotiate complex agreements.
00:43This is because new arms control agreements take years to negotiate.
00:48Now, China clearly regrets the expiration of the New START treaty and urges the U.S. to talk with Russia.
00:57However, it has to be said that Putin has placed then his nuclear weapons on heightened alert and will deploy to Belarus.
01:06Now, Donald Trump has said, if it expires, it expires. We'll just have to do a better agreement.
01:13How easy do you think that is? How quickly can a better agreement be put in place?
01:18And what might that better agreement look like, do you think?
01:22These kind of agreements take a very long time to negotiate.
01:28It has to be said that further long-standing arms control treaties have also fallen by the wayside.
01:34So that's the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Agreement, the Open Skies Treaty, which allows unarmed recon flights,
01:42and the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, which limits tanks, troops, artillery by Russia and NATO,
01:50that Russia and NATO can deploy in Europe.
01:53So what we unfortunately are seeing, we're facing a world without binding limits on strategic nuclear arsenals
02:00in countries that possess the overwhelming majority of nuclear weapons.
02:05And this, of course, follows a number of other long-standing arms control treaties, doesn't it,
02:10that have also not been renewed.
02:13What can you say about those?
02:18What we're seeing is a direction towards a new unconstrained nuclear arms race.
02:24More weapons, no verification, no data transfer or dialogue.
02:30And the increasing risk of miscalculation.
02:35And, of course, the irony is that the stronger nuclear missile defences
02:39creates high-tech counter weapons feeding the arms race.
02:44And it has to be said that long-range defences don't really tend to work.
02:50We also live, don't we, in an increasingly unpredictable world.
02:55How important is it, do you think, for such international frameworks to keep us all away from the risk of catastrophic warfare?
03:02The treaty involved a system of short notice on-site inspections to ensure compliance.
03:10If there's no to-and-fro between states that are not happy with each other,
03:19then we seem to be looking at a slightly bleaker future.
03:24The reality is we seem to be moving into unknown territory.
03:32Dr. Paul Dorfman, thank you very much for that.
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