00:00The last nuclear arms control pact between the United States and Russia has expired, raising fears of a renewed arms race.
00:08The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START, was signed in 2010 and designed to help prevent a nuclear war.
00:17Fyodor Lukyanov, the Research Director of Valdai Discussions Club, Russia, explains why this could mark a new era for nuclear superpowers
00:26and why the old treaty no longer fits today's reality.
00:30Fyodor Lukyanov, Why this is a milestone?
00:35Because the whole era of bilateral treaties, bilateral agreements between Russia and the United States is over.
00:44And that was really a cornerstone, not just START, but all treaties of that line.
00:51That was a cornerstone of the so-called strategic stability.
00:54The situation when two nuclear superpowers were relatively transparent to each other in order to secure each other, to assure each other that there is no preparation for anything bad.
01:10Some people say that this is the final end of the arms control, completely.
01:19Other people are a little bit more optimistic, saying that this model is over, but another model will replace it.
01:26Maybe it will be the case in the future, but at this point, it's very difficult to imagine any efficient work on the new document, because the situation changed completely.
01:42The United States insists that China should be part of this process, which means that it will not be bilateral anymore, at least trilateral.
01:54Russia says that it's up to China.
01:57China doesn't want.
01:59But if we insist that China should join, then, of course, other nuclear powers, in particular, UK and France, should join, too.
02:11And then we also have a lot of new technical means, like hypersonic weapons, like AI, like different kinds of drones.
02:26And everything should be included in this framework, which was not, of course, the case before, when we did not have all these technical, all these technologies.
02:39Will the end of the nuclear deterrence treaty increase the risk of a new arms race or even nuclear war?
02:47Fyodor Lukinov shares his view on the new nuclear reality.
02:51So, there are a lot of discussions, in particular, here in this country, in Russia, whether nuclear deterrence is still as efficient as before.
03:03And we can discuss in the context of the Ukrainian war.
03:07But at the end of the day, we don't see any direct collision between Russia and the US.
03:13And this is, that demonstrates that the deterrence works.
03:21So, and I think that in other cases, like Pakistan, India, for example, it will continue to work as well.
03:27We saw last year, a conflict between Pakistan and India, which was very severe, but very short, because everybody understands that any conflict between nuclear powers should be addressed immediately and de-escalated.
03:44Otherwise, it might be uncontrollable.
03:46So, I think that it's not a good thing that this treaty expired and all those treaties now out of function, but we should not expect the collapse of everything and the nuclear war coming, looming in the near future.
04:10It's rather another demonstration that the system, the previous international system, as it was formed in the second half of the 20th century, is over.
04:20Amid rising tensions between nuclear powers, Fyodor says rebuilding trust is essential to establish a new arms control framework.
04:28You cannot achieve the new institutional framework and normative framework for this relationship without strengthening trust and taking confidence-building measures.
04:43First, you should do this, and this is, that can be done in case the existing conflicts might be addressed in a proper way, be it Russia, Russian-Ukrainian conflict and others.
04:55And then we can start to think about this, this new framework.
05:00Otherwise, just to say, let's have a, let's have a new document and this document will strengthen trust.
05:08Unfortunately, it will not work in this way.
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