(Washington, D.C.) — The Arms Control Association (ACA) calls on Congress to reject and cut down the president’s request for a defense budget of $1.5 trillion dollars. Coming after several years of large increases to defense spending and in the absence of demonstrable progress in diplomatic steps to avoid arms racing and unnecessary military expenditure, the request is an unjustified and indefensible imposition on the American people.

“Both this administration and its predecessor have failed to convincingly justify several years of explosive growth in spending on nuclear weapons modernization and upgrades, an ambitious and destabilizing scheme for strategic missile interceptors, and other major weapons systems. The new budget request far exceeds any justifiable requirements, will line the pockets of military contractors, and steal taxpayer funds away from programs that address the real needs of Americans,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director.

“As the Trump administration seeks the largest military spending increase in U.S. history and massive increases in Defense and Energy Department spending on nuclear weapons, it has failed to seriously pursue lower-cost strategies to mitigate national security dangers, including effective nonproliferation diplomacy with Iran and bilateral nuclear arms reduction negotiations with Russia,” Kimball noted.

The budget calls for massive increases in military spending, including $71.4 billion for Pentagon nuclear weapons programs, $85.8 billion for missile defense and the president’s Golden Dome project, and $27.4 billion for nuclear weapons activities at the National Nuclear Security Administration.

“The United States is already set to spend more than $946 billion on its nuclear weapons systems in the decade between 2025 and 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That estimate does not include recent hikes in cost estimates for several major nuclear modernization programs,” noted ACA senior analyst Xiaodon Liang.

One example of an unjustified nuclear program is the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that is on track to cost upward of $200 billion and breached Pentagon cost-control measures.

“Because these ground-based missiles are vulnerable to attack by nuclear-armed adversaries, they pose a use-it-or-lose it dilemma for the president, creating an unnecessary escalation risk in the U.S. nuclear posture. ICBMs are an extravagance in an era when an enemy surprise attack is a lesser risk than escalation—particularly accidental escalation—in a crisis. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has ignored calls to forego Sentinel and instead life-extend the existing Minuteman III missile until all land-based ICBMs can be phased out through mutual, verifiable arms reduction agreements,” Liang added.

Despite Trump’s expressions of interest in “denuclearization talks” with Russia and China, the administration failed to pursue a new nuclear arms control framework with Russia to succeed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in the year before the agreement’s expiration on Feb. 5, 2026, while also failing to engage China on a bilateral basis.

“While it is tragic that U.S. and Russian leaders failed to engage in meaningful negotiations on a successor agreement to New START, it is also notable that following the expiration of New START, the United States proposed multilateral strategic stability talks as a means to achieving a ‘new era’ of nuclear arms control,” Kimball noted.

“A ‘multilateral’ approach to nuclear arms control may sound appealing. Indeed, all five nuclear-armed states have treaty obligations to engage in good faith negotiations to halt and reverse the nuclear arms race. But without a serious strategy for success, Trump’s approach could be a formula for further inaction, especially given the complexities of a five-sided negotiation involving states with different force sizes, force structures, nuclear postures, and strategic cultures,” Kimball warned.

“Such an initiative should not be allowed to substitute for the immediate commencement of serious bilateral talks between the United States and Russia and the United States and China on nuclear risk reduction, strategic stability, and nuclear arms reductions that could also yield concrete arms control and risk reduction outcomes, and perhaps more quickly,” he suggested.

“The Trump administration has also advocated for an expansion of the U.S. strategic missile defense system that could cost $185 billion by the end of this presidency according to the Pentagon’s own admission, would not establish an effective workable defense for the U.S. homeland, and would likely encourage Russia and China to improve their offensive capabilities so as to be able to overwhelm any new U.S. missile defense architecture,” Liang said.

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that a missile defense shield that satisfies the president’s stated goals would cost $1.2 trillion – far more than the $185 billion the Pentagon plans to request.

Other excessive nuclear programs include third and fourth warheads for the sea-based leg of the strategic triad (the W93 and the future sea-based warhead), a nuclear bunker buster (the Nuclear Delivery System Air-Delivered), the sea-launched cruise missile, and large-scale plutonium pit production in two states.

“We also oppose the president’s proposed budget hikes because it is designed, in part, to pay for his costly, reckless, and illegal war of choice against Iran. American consumers are already paying for the president’s mistake at the gas pump and their tax dollars should not be used to support an expansion of a war that should never have been launched,” Kimball said.

For these reasons, ACA joined other organizations to encourage Congress to reject the president’s budget request. ACA is one of a diverse array of organizations, led by the Coalition on Human Needs and Public Citizen, which jointly issued an open letter on April 3 to Congress calling on members to oppose the $1.5 trillion budget request.

Instead of further wasteful and excessive spending on the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise, ACA calls on Congress to question the military effectiveness and strategic wisdom of the expensive nuclear build-up underway. Legislators should press the administration for evidence of tangible progress toward reducing military and nuclear competition with Russia and China through hard-headed and sensible risk reduction and arms control diplomacy.

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Today there is a public hearing in Santa Fe for the draft Plutonium Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, made possible by Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s successful lawsuit.

Plutonium “pits” are the fissile cores of nuclear weapons. Their production has been the choke point of U.S. industrial-scale nuclear weapons production ever since a 1989 FBI raid investigating environmental crimes shut down the notorious Rocky Flats Plant near Denver.

As the archbishop of the diocese where nuclear weapons were invented, I follow in the footsteps of our late Pope Francis who declared that their mere possession is immoral. Today I am guided by Pope Leo XIV, who has declared: “The idea of the deterrent power of military might, especially nuclear deterrence, is based on the irrationality of relations between nations, built not on law, justice and trust, but on fear and domination by force.”

Here I believe that our Holy Father gets to the heart of the matter. The Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement claims that the National Nuclear Security Administration’s programs are consistent with the 1970 Nonproliferation Treaty. That deserves serious examination.

For 56 years, the Nonproliferation Treaty has acted as the cornerstone of nuclear weapons nonproliferation. However, the treaty is now badly frayed, perhaps even in danger of collapsing. Its 11th review conference, being held now at the United Nations in New York City, is widely expected to fail for the third time over 15 years to make any progress whatsoever toward nuclear disarmament. This is primarily due to the never-ending refusal of the nuclear weapons states to enter into serious negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament, which they pledged to long ago in the treaty. The one-word excuse is always “deterrence”; that is, to deter others from using nuclear weapons. But this deflects the blame from our own possession of immoral, genocidal weapons.

“Deterrence” is at best only a half-truth. In reality, our government’s policy has always been a hybrid of deterrence and maintaining nuclear warfighting capabilities that can end civilization overnight. That is why the U.S. and Russia each have thousands of nuclear weapons instead of only a few hundred for minimal deterrence. That is why the U.S. has a $2 trillion so-called modernization program to keep nuclear weapons forever, in which expanded plutonium pit production is the critical issue.

Pope Leo XIV calls for a world built on law, justice and peace, which is our God-given duty to pursue. The U.S. Constitution enshrines international treaties as the “supreme Law of the Land.” The essential bargain of the Nonproliferation Treaty was that the nuclear weapons powers promised to negotiate nuclear disarmament, in exchange for which all other nations promised to never acquire them. The nuclear weapons powers have not upheld their end of this legal bargain.

No future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, it is all for new-design nuclear weapons which can’t be tested because of the international testing moratorium, thereby perhaps eroding stockpile confidence. Or new-design nuclear weapons could prompt the U.S. to return to testing, which would shred the global nonproliferation regime.

The enormous sums for unneeded new nuclear weapons rob from the poor and needy. Military spending is reaching record heights while programs for the common man and woman are being slashed. We urgently need comprehensive cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to protect our irreplaceable groundwater. Instead, $6 billion will be put into LANL’s nuclear weapons programs next year, of which $2.4 billion is for plutonium pit production. But cleanup gets less than $300 million.

These are the clearly the wrong priorities. I urge concerned citizens to speak their minds at this evening’s public hearing. In addition, please be sure to submit written comments on the need for cleanup and nuclear disarmament by the deadline of July 16 (which happens to be the 81st anniversary of the Trinity Test that harmed New Mexicans).

The Most Rev. John C. Wester is archbishop of Santa Fe.

[The Pit Production PEIS public hearing Thursday, May 14, 2026: 5:00-5:30 pm Open House Poster Session, 5:30-8:00 pm Formal Public Hearing, at the Santa Fe Farmers Market Institute, 1607 Paseo de Peralta. It is also virtual at https://bit.ly/PitPEIS14May, Meeting ID: 278 752 885 654 34, Passcode: W9Bt96vN Written comments should be submitted by July 16 to PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov]

—

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The stakes could hardly be higher.

Russia, Israel and the United States, all nuclear-armed, are conducting illegal wars of aggression against countries without nuclear weapons. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan engaged in conflict last year across their disputed border, raising the spectre of nuclear escalation.

In February, the last remaining agreement constraining Russian and US nuclear weapons lapsed, with nothing to replace it. The two countries account for nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

And all nine nuclear-armed states are investing vast sums in modernising their arsenals with more capable and dangerous weapons. Deployed nuclear weapons and those on high alert, ready to be launched within minutes, are also rising.

All these developments have brought the Doomsday Clock, which assesses how close the world is to existential catastrophe, closer to midnight than it has ever been since 1947.

What is the NPT?
The NPT is considered a cornerstone of international law in relation to nuclear weapons and disarmament. It has the widest membership of any arms control agreement, with 190 states. These include five countries that manufactured and exploded nuclear weapons before 1967 – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. All other members do not have nuclear weapons.

North Korea is the only state to have joined the NPT and then renounced it. India, Israel and Pakistan, all nuclear-armed, along with South Sudan, are the only countries that have never joined.

The NPT is essentially a bargain struck in the late 1960s between the states that had nuclear weapons and those that did not. The first five nuclear-armed states – also permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto rights – committed to end the nuclear arms race and eliminate their arsenals.

In exchange, states without nuclear weapons agreed to forego acquiring them, with the sweetener of assistance in developing peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established to ensure non-nuclear states did not acquire weapons. However, the treaty did not establish any timeframes, defined processes, or verification or enforcement mechanisms for nuclear-armed nations to disarm.

The NPT entered into legal force in 1970, initially for 25 years. It was hoped the task of nuclear disarmament would be accomplished by then.

When this was clearly not the case in 1995, the treaty was indefinitely extended, thereby removing an important source of pressure on nuclear-armed states to fulfil their side of the bargain. Since then, there have been reviews every five years to debate implementation of the treaty.

Rarely consensus
These conferences, however, have been fraught.

In 2015, for example, Canada, the UK and US blocked adoption of a painstakingly negotiated text at the behest of Israel, a non-member of the treaty. And in 2022, Russia blocked adoption of the final text, mainly due to references to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which it attacked and occupied.

Since 1995, only two review conferences have produced an agreed outcome document.

In 2000, the members agreed to 13 practical steps to progress nuclear disarmament, but these remain almost completely unimplemented. And in 2010, the members agreed to a 64-point action plan, but implementation has been variable and weak, particularly for the 22 actions relating to disarmament.

The NPT has been moderately effective, though, in discouraging additional states from acquiring nuclear weapons. A number of countries, such as Canada, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea and Australia, gave up nuclear weapons programs or ambitions after joining.

But when it comes to disarmament, the treaty has failed dismally.

The head of this year’s conference, Do Hung Viet, has stressed the risk of failing to find consensus again at this year’s review.

It may not put an end to the NPT itself but […] it may hollow out the NPT. We may lose the credibility of the NPT itself.

Two main challenges ahead
In the current dysfunctional international environment, expectations for this year’s conference are low.

Nuclear-armed states have not only failed to disarm, they are growing, modernising and threatening to use their arsenals in an accelerating arms race. And two recent developments are likely to cast further shadows over the debate.

The first is Russia’s unprecedented weaponisation of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, including operating nuclear power plants with huge quantities of radioactive materials in the reactor cores and in spent fuel ponds. Russian forces have engaged in a number of reckless actions, including:

attacking and damaging the facilities
interfering with their operation and terrorising staff
using some as military bases
and jeopardising the power and water supplies critical to the essential cooling of reactors and spent fuel.
These actions risk a radiological disaster extending far beyond Ukraine’s borders.

A major failing of the last review conference in 2022 was that no measures were passed to protect nuclear facilities from attack.

A Russian serviceman guards the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Russian-occupied Ukraine in 2022. AP
The second major issue confronting this year’s review: the US–Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Both countries have cited Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons as a pretext for their attacks, despite the fact US intelligence officials and the head of the IAEA said this wasn’t the case.

The might-is-right attacks by the US and Israel raise profound questions for the world’s non-nuclear nations in the value of adhering to the NPT. Why should they comply with the treaty’s stringent requirements when nuclear-armed states can use illegal force against them, at their will?

Non-proliferation cannot be secured by war. In fact, for the surviving members of Iran’s regime (and leaders of other nations), the war likely reinforces the opposite lesson: preventing military aggression is best assured by having nuclear weapons.

The risk of other states now following the North Korean model – leaving the NPT and developing an initially clandestine nuclear weapons program – is much higher.

In the nuclear age, security is either shared or non-existent. The only safe and sustainable future is predicated on eliminating nuclear weapons. This can only be achieved through cooperation, negotiation and international law, backed up by equitable verification.

—
Jay Coghlan, Executive Director
Nuclear Watch New Mexico
903 W. Alameda #325, Santa Fe, NM 87501
505.989.7342 c. 505.470.3154
jay@nukewatch.org

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AnnualReport-Arsenals-by-Country.png
Which countries have nuclear weapons?
icanw.org

There is no evidence that Iran has even one nuclear weapon although the situation became much more clouded after Trump erased Nuclear Deal. The Council on Foreign Relations: “first-order concern is that Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons would pose a major threat to Israel.” America and Israel leap into a major war because the countries with most powerful militaries in the world are nervous that Iran just might get a nuke.

Trump jumped out of Nuclear Deal saying, “The fact is this was a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made. It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.” It certainly was one sided and collapsed under the egos of Trump and Netanyahu. Those firebrands dragged us into attacking Iran twice since Trump reneged on the Nuclear Deal. Which mad-man leads this Parade?

This could easily blow up into WWlll and go nuclear. There is good reason to believe that nuclear winter could result. The sky would darken, temperatures would drop, agriculture would be greatly limited for as much as 4 or 5 years. Billions would die. .Who has fingers on the release of Nukes? Trump, Hegseth or other lunatics in the Trump’s menagerie or maybe yahu, Ben-Gvir or Smotrich? Where are Hickenlooper, Bennet?? bennet.senate.gov. Hickenlooper.senate.gov.  capitol switchboard. 202-224-3121

Our Congress has been on holiday for the last two weeks as Trump and Netanyahu rain bombs on the people of Iran. Israel murdered 350 people in Lebanon on Wednesday with no letup of their US funded abuse of Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza.

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First official details of the FY27 budget have been released by OMB. The “topline” factsheet has this on defense spending, confirming reports from yesterday:

“The Budget request for the Department of War (DOW) advances President Trump’s delivery of peace through strength by reinvesting in the foundations of American military power—from defense industrial capacity to the readiness and health of the force—and ensuring the United States maintains the world’s most powerful and capable military by continuing to invest in innovative programs such as the Golden Dome for America. The Budget builds upon the historic $1 trillion overall Defense topline for 2026 and requests $1.5 trillion in total budgetary resources for 2027. This is a $445 billion or 42-percent increase from the 2026 total resource level. Of this amount, the Budget includes $1.1 trillion in base discretionary budget authority specifically for DOW in 2027. The Budget also includes a request for $350 billion in additional mandatory resources through reconciliation for critical Administration priorities such as increasing access to critical munitions and further expansion of the defense industrial base. The mandatory funding protects key priorities such as providing flexibility in maturing technology for delivery and allowing for acquisition approaches for portfolios of capabilities that broaden opportunities for new entrants.”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/fiscal-year-2027-topline-fact-sheet.pdf
https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-resources/budget/

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In the world of nuclear weapons (the clock considers nuclear weapons, climate change, bio-threats, and Artificial Intelligence), the Bulletin noted that leaders are explicitly talking about

• new nuclear weapons development

• arms racing

• the resumption of full-scale nuclear testing

• deployment of new types of nuclear capable weapons

• heavy investment in modernizing weapons and production capabilities

• leaders talking about using nuclear weapons on the battlefield

• arms race instability

Noting that the last existing arms control treaty (New START) will expire on February 6, and no steps are being taken to renew the Treaty, the Bulletin’s panel said the decline in nucler weapons stockpiles around the globe has stopped, and we are now seeing the potential for increases.

Bell noted that the movement of the clock toward destruction is not preordained. “It is time to act,” she said. “Every time we have been able to reduce the risks, it has been because of public pressure, people coming together to say ‘We do not accept this.’”

The panel also cited the rise of autocracies and the undermining of the rules-based social and political order as factors in the 2026 clock decision, citing the current Administration action in Minneapolis as an example of the result of the undermining of democractic systems.

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U.S. Congress Ups Nuclear Arms Spending, Tightens Oversight
Arms Control Today
January/February 2026
By Xiaodon Liang

The Republican-led U.S. Congress approved an annual defense policy bill that green lights $901 billion in discretionary spending and adds more than $2 billion to President Donald Trump’s request for expanded funding for nuclear weapons modernization and strategic missile defense.

Robert Kadlec (C), nominee to be assistant secretary of defense for nuclear deterrence, chemical and biological defense policy and programs, testifies during his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing in November. Later confirmed, he holds a new position as central policy lead for nuclear weapons matters. (Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)Robert Kadlec (C), nominee to be assistant secretary of defense for nuclear deterrence, chemical and biological defense policy and programs, testifies during his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing in November. Later confirmed, he holds a new position as central policy lead for nuclear weapons matters. (Photo by Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026, which Trump signed into law Dec. 18, is supplemented by $118 billion in mandatory defense spending approved earlier this year in a budget reconciliation act. It contains various statutory changes relevant to U.S. nuclear forces and their acquisition, while demanding regular briefings on the president’s signature defense program, the “Golden Dome” missile defense system.

Congress will set final budget levels in appropriations bills for fiscal 2026, which remain trapped in negotiations among legislators on a tangle of domestic policy issues.

This year’s defense policy act, which emerged Dec. 7 from negotiations between the House and the Senate, is not as strident as its equivalent from last year in calling for steps to prepare for an arms race. But the legislation reiterates a demand in the fiscal 2025 act for annual briefings on implementation of the recommendations of the 2023 report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, conditioning certain spending on the initiation of these briefings.

The commission report called for planning to upload additional warheads to U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), reconvert certain B-52H bombers for a nuclear role, and open missile tubes on Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, while also acquiring more Long Range Standoff (LRSO) nuclear cruise missiles, B-21 bombers, and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, among other proposals to expand the nuclear force. (See ACT, November 2023.)

This year’s authorization act codifies a requirement that the United States indefinitely deploy no fewer than 400 “operationally available” ICBMs, with 150 launch facilities at each of the three current ICBM bases. This goes beyond a restriction that Congress has imposed in previous years barring the use of annually authorized funds to cut the number of ICBMs or reduce their level of readiness.

The act reflects congressional concern regarding the transition from the presently serving Minuteman III ICBM to the future Sentinel ICBM, which has experienced delays and a large cost-estimate increase. (See ACT, September 2024.) Although the Senate’s version of the policy bill had set a target date of 2033 for the Sentinel to reach initial operational capability, the final version of the act drops the deadline. A Nov. 10 article by the defense trade publication Inside Defense also reported that the service is working toward a late 2033 date.

The new ICBM, which the Air Force expects to cost $141 billion in 2020 dollars, will have an annual authorized budget of $5.3 billion, according to the final version of the defense legislation, $1.2 billion more than Trump requested. That total includes funds appropriated earlier this year in a budget reconciliation act. (See ACT, June 2025.)

Given the delay to Sentinel, which the Air Force had indicated would reach initial operational capability by May 2029, the problem of sustaining Minuteman III missiles has garnered increased attention. (See ACT, October 2025.) The act requires the Pentagon to provide an annual report on its strategy for sustaining the Minuteman III until the Sentinel fully replaces the older missile.

The legislation also authorizes an extra $210 million over the president’s budget and sets a 2034 target for the nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missile to reach initial operational capability, while requiring that the Pentagon and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) provide a “limited number … to meet combatant command requirements” by the end of September 2032.

The Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program is authorized to spend a total of $11.9 billion across discretionary and reconciliation funding, $710 million more than the president requested.

Although the Senate proposed spending an extra $149 million this year to accelerate the LRSO air-launched nuclear cruise missile program, conference negotiators snubbed the idea. The Senate proposal had included $8 million for advance planning for a conventional variant of the LRSO. Total authorized spending on the missile could reach $1.05 billion in fiscal 2026.

The defense policy act makes several changes to the nuclear weapons enterprise and how it is managed. Statutes governing the Nuclear Weapons Council, a body of five senior Pentagon officials and the administrator of the NNSA, are modified to explicitly entrust the council with the responsibility for “developing options for adjusting the deterrence posture of the United States in response to evolving international security conditions.”

Although the council focused previously on setting priorities for NNSA that reflect Pentagon needs, this year’s statutory changes grant the council more authority to monitor nuclear delivery systems acquisition programs managed by the armed services, as well. The act would grant the council the power to “annually review the plans and budget” of the military departments, whereas previously it only reviewed those of the NNSA.

Last year, Congress modified a senior position within the Pentagon to create a central policy lead for nuclear weapons matters. That role, now titled the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear deterrence, chemical, and biological defense policy and programs, has been further augmented in this year’s defense act by specific instructions to the Pentagon to provide authorities and resources to the new office for overseeing relevant acquisition programs

On Dec. 18, the Senate confirmed Robert Kadlec, the Trump administration’s nominee for the position. Kadlec previously served in the George W. Bush and first Trump administrations as a health and biosecurity expert. As assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, Kadlec was an early driver of the Trump administration’s efforts to identify and distribute a vaccine for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Within the NNSA itself, the act creates a rapid capabilities program to “develop new nuclear weapons or modified nuclear weapons that meet military requirements.” According to its new statutory basis, the program will “utilize non-traditional approaches,” adopt “tailored risk-acceptance processes,” “maximize reuse of existing components,” and take other steps to “carry out projects with the goal of achieving first production unit within 5 years of project initiation.”

According to the NNSA’s budget request for fiscal 2026, the agency already has set up rapid capabilities projects under the Stockpile Responsiveness Program “to execute at least two concurrent rapid development activities.”

The act also amends the statutory requirement that NNSA be able to produce 80 plutonium pits per year by specifying that 30 pits be produced at Los Alamos National Laboratories and 50 pits at the future Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility. NNSA’s plans for pit production are the subject of an environmental impact assessment mandated by the outcome of a recent National Environmental Policy Act lawsuit. (See ACT, November 2024.)

NNSA is now only required to publish a report on the Stockpile Stewardship Management Plan each odd-numbered fiscal year, with Congress eliminating a requirement for shorter updates each even-numbered year.

The Trump administration’s proposal to expand U.S. missile defense capabilities, known as the Golden Dome program, receives wary approval in the defense policy act. The legislation codifies changes to the U.S. policy on missile defense, closely tracking the administration’s Jan. 27 executive order. (See ACT, March 2025.)

The new policy states that the government will “provide for the common defense of the United States and its citizens by deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield.” The act nullifies previous language that the United States would “rely on nuclear deterrence to address more sophisticated and larger quantity near-peer intercontinental missile threats,” an assurance that attempted to address concerns in Beijing and Moscow that an expanding U.S. missile defense architecture could undermine strategic stability.

Despite this endorsement of the goals of the Golden Dome, the defense committees expressed concern about the program’s viability in demanding that the Pentagon provide an annual report on the system in addition to quarterly briefings

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Message of the Holy Father for the 59th World Day of Peace 2026: “Peace be with you all: Towards an “unarmed and disarming” peace”

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New START, which runs out on February 5, caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy, and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.

Putin in September offered to voluntarily maintain for one year the limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons set out in the treaty, whose initials stand for the (New) Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Trump said in October it sounded “like a good idea.”

“We have less than 100 days left before the expiry of New START,” said Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s powerful Security Council, which is like a modern-day politburo of Russia’s most powerful officials.

“We are waiting for a response,” Shoigu told reporters during a visit to Hanoi. He added that Moscow’s proposal was an opportunity to halt the “destructive movement” that currently existed in nuclear arms control.
NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL IN PERIL
Russia and the U.S. together have more than 10,000 nuclear warheads, or 87% of the global inventory of nuclear weapons. China is the world’s third largest nuclear power with about 600 warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists

The arms control treaties between Moscow and Washington were born out of fear of nuclear war after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Greater transparency about the opponent’s arsenal was intended to reduce the scope for misunderstanding and slow the arms race.
U.S. AND RUSSIA EYE CHINA’S NUCLEAR ARSENAL
Now, with all major nuclear powers seeking to modernise their arsenals, and Russia and the West at strategic loggerheads for over a decade – not least over the enlargement of NATO and Moscow’s war in Ukraine – the treaties have almost all crumbled away. Each side blames the other.

In the new U.S. National Security Strategy the Trump administration says it wants to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia” – shorthand for reopening discussions on strategic nuclear arms control.

Rose Gottemoeller, who was chief U.S. negotiator for New START, said in an article for The Arms Control Association this month that it would be beneficial for Washington to implement the treaty along with Moscow.

“For the United States, the benefit of this move would be buying more time to decide what to do about the ongoing Chinese buildup without having to worry simultaneously about new Russian deployments,” Gottemoeller said.
Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Lucy Papachristou; editing by Andrew Osborn

____________________

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