U.S. and Russian senior officials met this week in Geneva to discuss strategic stability. The American side said it was “committed to stability even at times of tensions” as if seeking praise for engaging. But on every score, it is Washington that has incited dangerous tensions.

The meeting in the Swiss city was a follow-up to the summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 16 in the same location. That summit saw a more engaged diplomatic tone from the Americans and a willingness to pursue dialogue on a range of issues, in particular nuclear arms control.

This week, Wendy Sherman, the Deputy Secretary of State (the second most senior U.S. diplomat), met with her Russian counterpart Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. The diplomats greeted each other in a cordial manner before the talks commenced on Wednesday.

The precise agenda for the formally titled “strategic stability dialogue” was not publicly disclosed, but it is understood that a priority issue was nuclear arms control and extension of the New START treaty limiting the deployment of intercontinental nuclear weapons. When Biden took office in January this year, one of the first executive decisions he took was maintaining the 10-year-old accord. His predecessor Donald Trump was about to let that treaty lapse.

However, for long-term stability, the New START needs to be formally extended for at least another decade and beyond. That is what the American and Russian diplomats were discussing this week. Their next meeting is scheduled for the end of September.

The American ambiguity over New START follows the move by Trump to abandon the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty limiting short and medium-range missiles. Russia subsequently withdrew from the INF accord in response to the American move. Trump also jettisoned the Open Skies Treaty which had allowed each side to fly over respective territories to monitor nuclear weapon deployments. Again, Russia withdrew from the OST in response to the American move.

Further back, in 2002 under George W Bush, Washington resiled from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, thus paving the way for American deployment of so-called missile shields in Europe. That move was highly destabilizing to the strategic balance as it raises the threat of a preemptive strike on Russia by potentially limiting Russia’s defense capability.

Thus, multiple treaties that had provided an architecture of nuclear arms control have been dismantled unilaterally by Washington. The New START treaty is the only remaining accord. And that was in jeopardy of collapsing until Biden entered the White House. His renewal of the treaty is at this stage on an ad hoc basis. There is a need for a formal agreement on the long-term extension of the treaty. It is hoped that both sides can resolve that in coming discussions.

Given this background, it is rather contemptible how the American side characterized the talks this week in Geneva.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said just before the meeting: “We remain committed, even in times of tension, to ensuring predictability and reducing the risk of armed conflict and threat of nuclear war.”

The intimation of U.S. virtuous commitment “even in times of tension” is derisory. For it is the Americans who have wantonly undermined strategic stability by unpicking treaty after treaty. The tensions between the U.S. and Russia (which mirror American tensions with China) have been multifaceted and are not just due to the realm of nuclear arms control. There is a pattern here. And it’s all one-way stemming from American imperialist ambitions for global hegemony.

U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe commented on the talks in Geneva this week, saying: “Already strained relations between Moscow and Washington have deteriorated further since Biden took office in January, with the United States sanctioning Russia over cyberattacks, election meddling, and the poisoning and jailing of opposition politician and Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny.”

Note how these baseless assertions are casually cited as if facts, as is the common practice of the U.S. media and most of its politicians. Biden, as admitted above, has exacerbated tensions by accentuating the American claims – in truth, provocative slanders – against Russia.

At Strategic Culture Foundation, we have demonstrated in numerous articles over the past several years that none of the U.S. claims hold water. Cyberattacks? Where’s the evidence? None. Election meddling? No evidence. Poisoning of Navalny? That saga a preposterous set-up.

We can add much more to the U.S. list of tendentious talking-points that are fundamentally all assertions with no factual or evidentiary basis: aggression towards Ukraine, shooting down of a Malaysian civilian airliner, annexation of Crimea, threatening Europe with the Nord Stream 2 gas project, aiding and abetting a dictator in Syria.

Let’s just deal with one of those idiotic items. The truth is the U.S. fomented a violent coup in Ukraine in 2014 that brought to power a Neo-Nazi regime that is viciously anti-Russian. The U.S. has funded the Kiev regime with $2 billion in weaponry. The U.S. and its NATO allies are currently holding war exercises in Ukraine (and Georgia) right on Russia’s borders. We don’t recall Russia ever holding military exercises in Mexico!

American claims are not information nor journalism. They are disinformation and psychological operations. To the point of being absurd.

These false narratives have been debunked by many of our articles and by other commendable publications. But the Americans and some of their European allies continue to peddle these false narratives as if they are facts, and they have imposed dozens of rounds of sanctions against Russia on that illusory basis. Then they wonder why tensions have become so fraught?

Biden this week reiterated the groundless nonsense that Russia is preparing to “interfere” in the U.S. 2022 mid-term elections. He also repeated the allegation that Russia is conducting cyberattacks on American infrastructure which, he claimed, could provoke a military response from the U.S. That is insane and recklessly unhinged.

Recall, too, that Biden has reached into the gutter to call Putin a “killer”. That was before he met with the Russian leader in Geneva last month where his seemingly genial smiles betrayed the American president’s illogicality and duplicity. How can one comfortably shake hands and smile at an alleged killer?

Biden also this week disparaged Russia as a country that only possesses “nukes and oil”. His ignorance and uncouthness are abject. Lamentably, it is typical of the American political class. And this arrogant, miserable mindset is almost despairing for the prospect of peaceful relations.

For those paying attention to reality, the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, disclosed some home truths this week. He revealed that Russia has been appealing to the U.S. for the past six years to join in forming security mechanisms against cyberattacks and foreign interference in internal affairs. Antonov said that Washington has never responded to any of the Russian initiatives.

Indeed, the United States and Russia need to dialogue earnestly about global security and mitigate dangerous tensions to ensure that war is prevented. But more than this, first of all, the Americans need to stop their relentless and systematic aggravation of tensions.

Nuclear weapons policies and the trillions of U.S. dollars proposed to fund them come into sharp focus this month and through next year as Congress and the Biden Administration engage the nuclear weapons threat.

A threat viewed as existential by bombmakers, presidents, and arms control activists since the first nuclear weapons were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, nuclear weapons deployed today have a capacity to destroy all life on Earth.

Salvaging U.S. nuclear policy from the wreckage left by the Trump Administration, President Biden quickly renewed for five years the New START Treaty which limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads at 1,550 each for the U.S. and Russia

President Biden has also entered negotiations with Iran to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or the Iran nuclear deal) which Trump abrogated in 2017. The JCPOA had been negotiated by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — China, Russia, France, Great Britain, the U.S. plus Germany –all of whom remain committed to it.

All this is a good beginning on the nuclear front for the new Administration, but historic leadership will be required of Biden and members of Congress in the coming months, as Appropriations Committees consider spending up to $1.5 trillion on “modernizing” the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The Fiscal 2022 budget scheduled for presentation May 24 will include provision for a newly designed Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, GBSD—which could wind up costing more than $140 billion, and $250 billion over three decades.] The GBSD, would replace the Minuteman III ICBM’s currently deployed in silos in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming

Democratic Senator Ed Markey (Massachusetts) and Representative Ro Khanna (17^th District, California) have filed bills in Congress to transfer funds from the new ICBMs toward research for universal vaccines against the Novelcorona virus. The Investing in Cures Before Missiles (ICMB) Act, according to Markey, “makes clear that we can begin to phase out the Cold War nuclear posture that risks accidental nuclear war while still deterring adversaries and assuring allies, and redirect those savings to the clear and present dangers posed by coronaviruses and other emerging and infectious diseases. The devastation sown by COVID-19 would pale in comparison to that of even a limited nuclear war. The ICBM Act signals that we intend to make the world safe from nuclear weapons and prioritize spending that saves lives, rather than ends them.”

Proponents of GBSD including its general contractor Northrop Grumman and major sub-contractors have spent at least one hundred nineteen million dollars of lobbying Congress in 2019-2021; the military industrial complex on parade.

Other initiatives would remove from “hair trigger alert” status controlling the four hundred Minuteman III missiles currently deployed in western States. “Hair trigger alert” and “launch on warning” are relics of the Cold War which give decision makers at most ten minutes to evaluate the validity of the warning of a nuclear attack, and to launch hundreds of the U.S. ICBMs before the enemy’s missile reach their targets.

Dozens of false warnings have scrambled B-52 jets loaded with megatons of nuclear bombs, raised Minuteman missiles to highest alert, roused sleeping presidents out of bed, or caused low ranking military personnel to disobey command and control orders to defuse a frantic but false alarm.

Such false warnings consist of flocks of flying swans, a bear climbing a missile pad security fence, the rising moon, the sun’s reflection on an unusual cloud formation, a defective computer chip costing twenty-five cents, and practice tapes of a nuclear attack unwittingly communicated in Hawaii as “This is Not a Drill”.

China has removed “launch on warning” status from its three hundred nuclear armed missiles. China’s Director of Arms Control, Fu Cong, in 2019 called for all nuclear armed nations to remove their nuclear armed missiles from hair trigger alert, which China considers too risky. The consequences of an accidental launch of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic. Standing down thousands of nuclear weapons from “launch on warning” makes all the sense in the world and could bolster the U.S.’ bona fides in nuclear weapons reduction negotiations going forward.

George Schultz, former Secretary of State, and editor of “The War That Should Never Be Fought”, advised that our adversaries are not always wrong, the U.S. is not always right, and verifiable nuclear weapons treaties are the only alternative to escalating nuclear weapons competition and eventual calamity. Nuclear weapons negotiation can bridge intractable geo-political conflicts, build mutual trust, and save taxpayers trillions of dollars.

American administrations rejected Soviet President Gorbachev’s offer to eliminate all nuclear weapons. President George Bush abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001, spawning a new nuclear arms race, and Trump withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty, returning Europe to a no man’s land vulnerable to tactical nuclear weapons.

No First Use (NFU) of nuclear weapons, could provide a logical first step away from the fifty- year policy of “deterrents” and mutually assured destruction, universally referred to by the most appropriate of acronyms — MAD. MAD is designed to discourage adversaries from attacking by assuring that the aggressor, principally the Soviet Union/Russia, or vice versa the U.S. would suffer devastating retaliation. In his inimitable style Robert McNamara calculated the level of assured strategic destruction to be thirty percent of Russia’s population, and seventy percent of Russia’s economic capacity, ie. one hundred million Russian dead etc. QED, Quite Easily Done.

No First Use of nuclear weapons eliminates the need or rationale for a significant part of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Much of the huge cost associated with the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal pertains to the survivability and retaliatory response to a nuclear attack. Yes, NFU means the U.S. is taking a pre-emptive nuclear first strike “off the table”

No First Use is also the subject of legislation filed in this year’s Congress (117^th) by Senator Elizabeth Warren MA and Representative Adam Smith, WA. Smith chairs the influential House Armed Services Committee and describes the NFU bill as, “The United States should never initiate a nuclear war. This bill would strengthen deterrence while reducing the chance of nuclear use due to miscalculation or misunderstanding. Codifying that deterring nuclear use is the sole purpose of our nuclear arsenal strengthens U.S. national security and would renew U.S. leadership on nuclear nonproliferation and disbarment.”

Following Trump’s perverse logic: “Why have nuclear weapons if you cannot use them?”, the Sea Launched Cruise Missile-Nuclear, and low yield submarine launched cruise missiles- nuclear were created. The SLCM-N is considered redundant, provocative, and costs more than ten billion dollars. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Md, and Representative Joe Courtney, CT, have recently filed bills to defund the SLCM-N. “Installing so-called ‘tactical’ nuclear warheads on Virginia-class attack subs is a money drain that will hinder construction of three Virginia-class attack submarines per-year—which both the Obama and Trump shipbuilding plans endorsed,” said Courtney.

Literally and figuratively at the core of the plan to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear arsenal are projects to manufacture new plutonium pits for the next generation of nuclear weapons. Tens of billions of dollars would initially fund construction of plutonium bomb plants at Savannah River Site, S.C., and Los Alamos, N.M. These funds flow through the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. NNSA FY 2021 budget request of nearly twenty billion dollars is more than one-half the entire Department of Energy budget request. Whether new nuclear bombs take precedence over new clean energy technologies should be questioned in Congressional committee hearings in the coming weeks.

Regarding plutonium pit production, the DOE estimates the legacy clean- up cost of plutonium manufacture since the Manhattan Project during WWII at one trillion dollars. Some sites like Hanford WA and Rocky Flats CO are deemed polluted beyond remediation and are ruined forever.

Were Congress and the Biden Administration to pause, review or even defund any or all of the nuclear weapon programs they would also pause the nascent nuclear arms race stalking future generations. President Biden could and should send a clear signal to his deputies who will soon write the Nuclear Posture Review issued every five years. Quoting Ronald Reagan, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” should be the mantra of the Biden Nuclear Posture Review.

By introducing the American public to taboo issues such as “No First Use” of nuclear weapons, taking ICMB’s off “hair trigger alert”, debating the “sole authority” of the President to order a nuclear attack, and working for the eventual verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons, the Biden Administration would enhance its standing in the world’s arms control community–standing squandered by Trump. Biden could save hundreds of billions of dollars by transferring funds from nuclear armed missiles to research to prevent the next pandemic, or cybersecurity. And maybe, if our luck still holds, he could avoid destroying human civilization and much of life on Earth.

Another arena for Biden administration action is the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — the cornerstone of nuclear arms control. Signed in 1968, it is reviewed every five years, this year in Vienna in August. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and U.S. arms control negotiators will bring enhanced credibility to the table if they eschew Trump’s jingoistic nuclear weapons policies.

Article VI of the NPT commits all signatories to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons from their arsenals. The massive nuclear arms build-up the U.S. is considering defies the spirit and letter of NPT’s Article VI.

Since the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, eminent scientists like Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, philosophers like Bertrand Russell, religious leaders like the Dalai Lama and many Catholic Popes, Quakers and Imams—in fact, the great majority of the world’s nations and peoples–have demanded that international treaties curtail and eliminate nuclear weapons from the Earth.

Their efforts have led to decreasing nuclear weapons from 70,000 to the current 16,000, ninety percent of which are held in Russian and U.S. arsenals Forty percent of the world’s population now live in the five Nuclear Weapons Free Zones established under Article VII of the NPT. And nuclear weapons are now illegal in the fifty- four countries that have ratified the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, TPNW, entered into force February 2021.

Still ominous warnings about the renewed nuclear arms race are rising. “The likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe is greater today than during the Cold War, and the public is completely unaware of the danger,” says former Secretary of Defense William Perry. The Biden Administration has quickly reached an inflexion point for U.S. nuclear weapons policy: either double down on new weapons for decades into the future or seek verifiable consequential nuclear weapons treaties.

According to Rutgers Professor Alan Robock, even a fraction of the nuclear weapons currently deployed–one hundred–could create a nuclear winter dispersing high in the atmosphere enough soot to block sunlight and make agriculture impossible, leading to famine for billions of people.

Corresponding with Albert Einstein in 1932, Sigmund Freud remarked that humans have a propensity for violence, and an instinct to kill and destroy. Only multi-lateral laws could abate man’s “death wish,” the two agreed. Such laws do exist in the form of nuclear treaties, like New START, the NPT and TPNW.

Ridding the world of these horrific weapons is not fantasy but is an imperative for world leaders. Biden stated as Vice-President, “The spread of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat facing the country and, I would argue, facing humanity. And that is why we are working both to stop their proliferation and eventually to eliminate them”.

The next few weeks and months will determine the course of nuclear weapons policy for the U.S. and the world. There are only two choices: expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal or reduce it, agree on verifiable nuclear weapons treaties with Russia and China or threaten catastrophic war, spend trillions of dollars on demonic weapons or on medicine, schools and art… life or death.

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There is no guarantee of successful outcome. But at the very least there must be a commitment to work together and to dialogue. Thus, New START is a step in the right direction.

The agreement this week by the United States and the Russian Federation to extend the New START arms control treaty is a symbolic step of reengagement by both sides. That has to be welcomed.

Bilateral relations have deteriorated so badly in recent years that if the treaty was allowed to expire – as it was slated to do next week – then the world was facing the danger of a new, destructive nuclear arms race. The US had already abrogated other arms control pacts. This was the last line of defense, so to speak, for global security.

The fact that President Joe Biden made a phone call to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin – a week after his inauguration – and agreed to extend New START shows that the American side understands the vital importance of securing strategic stability.

Biden and Putin agreed to an immediate five-year extension of the treaty. Already both sides have now opened communications on arranging procedures and mechanisms.

Significantly, President Biden accepted Russia’s insistence that the treaty be extended without any conditions. Under Donald Trump, negotiations on New START had floundered because his administration was wrangling to have China included in the treaty. That was always a non-starter for Russia (and China). The New START is a bilateral treaty originally signed by the US and Russia in 2010. It has nothing to do with another party, but the wrangling by Trump was indicative of the low-caliber diplomacy of his administration and failure to appreciate issues of global security. His attitude was that of a real-estate hustler completely out of his depth.

In any case, there appears to be a return to professional diplomacy in Washington under Biden. On agreeing to a five-year extension, both sides will now have the breathing space and opportunity to formulate a longer-term accord. There may in time also evolve a means for a new broader comprehensive treaty involving other nuclear powers, including Britain, France and China.

For now though the main thing – and it is a crucial cornerstone – is that the United States and Russia have agreed to maintain limits on strategic nuclear weapons as stipulated by the New START. The two powers possess over 90 per cent of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons. It is therefore of paramount importance for them to engage in mutual agreement for the sake of global security.

Russia’s deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov described the decision this week as mutually beneficial and the only right one to take.

“We now have a significant amount of time in order to launch and hold profound bilateral talks on the whole set of issues that influence strategic stability… So, we welcome the decision of the Biden administration to agree to our proposal of a five-year extension,” Ryabkov added.

Senior lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev, who is chair of the international affairs committee in the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, said the agreement on New START was a promising development. He said it may “open doors to make progress on other problems”.

The phone call between Biden and Putin this week hardly marks a “reset” in the badly frayed relations. According to the White House version of the conversation, the American president brought up other subjects, including: allegations about Russian interference in US elections, as well as allegations of Russian cyber attacks, and running assassination plots in Afghanistan against US troops. Biden also raised the arrest of convicted Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny.

Russia has rejected all such allegations of malign conduct as unfounded. If the American side partake in genuine discussions it will find the truth of these matters in time.

But in the absence of any dialogue then the baleful result is that tensions, misunderstanding and distrust can only grow, sending relations into further downward spiral with potentially catastrophic consequences. There are a lot of issues that both sides need to engage on in order to dispel false and unnecessary problems.

President Biden and his team have shown serious misunderstanding and misconceptions about Russia. They are infected with Russophobia as is much of the American political class. This Russophobia has been allowed to fester in large part due to the lack of diplomatic engagement by the American side. The only remedy is to talk.

In a separate address this week, President Putin told the World Economic Forum that international powers must renew communication and partnership on a mutually respectful basis. Global security and many dangerous challenges depend on world powers abandoning Cold War-type mentality and animosities.

“We are open to the broadest international cooperation, while achieving our national goals, and we are confident that cooperation on matters of the global socioeconomic agenda would have a positive influence on the overall atmosphere in global affairs, and that interdependence in addressing acute current problems would also increase mutual trust which is particularly important and particularly topical today,” said Putin.

The first step mandates the engagement in dialogue. There is no guarantee of successful outcome. But at the very least there must be a commitment to work together and to dialogue. Thus, New START is a step in the right direction.

The day after President Joe Biden’s inauguration this week the White House announced that it was seeking a five-year extension of the New START treaty with Russia. The treaty was set to expire on February 4 after a 10-year run. Russia in recent months repeatedly urged the United States to renew the accord, which the former Trump administration had ignored.

Therefore, the new administration’s willingness to save New START is welcome. (But it is not clear cut, as explained below.) If the treaty had expired, there was a grave risk of relapse into a nuclear arms race. Given that the U.S. has already pulled out of several arms controls treaties, it is of paramount importance to maintain the last remaining pact, which specifically limits the bilateral arsenal of intercontinental warheads.

In announcing the Biden administration’s decision on extending New START, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stated: “Just as we engage Russia in ways that advance American interests, we in the Department [of Defense] will remain clear-eyed about the challenges Russia poses and committed to defending the nation against their reckless and adversarial actions.” (Our emphasis.)

White House spokeswoman Jan Psaki articulated a similar testy rationale, saying that despite the extension proposal the Biden administration would hold Russia to “account for reckless and adversarial actions”. (Our emphasis.)

Please note the casual assertion of provocative claims as if they are proven facts. And this, ironically, from a new administration that has piously proclaimed to bring “facts” to public announcements in place of the Trumpian habit of peddling falsehoods and “alternate facts”.

It was then announced that President Biden has ordered his top intelligence officers to carry out a review into allegations of Russian malign conduct. In particular, allegations of a massive cyber attack – the so-called SolarWinds hack – on American government departments and commerce; the alleged poison assassination of Russian dissident figure Alexei Navalny; allegations of Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election; and, lastly, the allegations of Russian military intelligence running bounty-hunter plots in Afghanistan to murder U.S. soldiers. (We can be sure the conclusions are already foregone, only awaiting new media spin.)

Curiously though, the allegation of Russian interference in the 2020 election seems to be a new one for the archive of outlandish anti-Russian accusations. It is not clear what it refers to specifically. Earlier this week, Biden’s Democratic allies House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made ludicrous assertions that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have helped Donald Trump in trying to overthrow the electoral process with the violent assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6.

In any case, Russia has refuted all these absurd allegations as “baseless” and without evidence. This charade of accusing Russia has been intensifying since the 2016 election when Trump was elected. It now looks set to continue under the Biden presidency. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says such fables betray a Cold War mentality of Russophobia which seems to be endemic in the American political establishment.

So Biden’s proposed extension of New START is not the offer of an olive branch to Russia, as it may first appear. It is being done with a cold hand of raw self-interest and in a wider context of continuing and intensifying antagonism towards Russia.

Indeed, in reporting the move on the nuclear pact, the New York Times quoted Biden aides saying that the new administration had no interest in establishing a “reset” in American relations with Russia.

This week also revealed other indications of aggressive mindset in the new administration. During confirmation hearings in the Senate for Biden’s Cabinet and national security team, the recurring theme was how the United States would stand up to purported adversaries. Russia, China and Iran were chief among the targets for American power interest, all described in pejorative terms as enemies.

Avril Haines was confirmed as Director of National Intelligence. Ridiculously, she declared that she would “speak truth to power” and ensure that “intelligence would not be politicized”. This is the same Avril Haines who helped mastermind drone assassinations while formerly serving as deputy director of the CIA and who this week vowed to take a more aggressive stance towards China. Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin are set to become Secretaries of State and Defense. Other members of the Biden team, Victoria Nuland, Wendy Sherman and William Burns (who is to head the CIA) are also alumni of the past Obama administrations (2008-2016) in which Biden himself served as vice president.

All of them are indelibly complicit in propagating illegal wars, regime-change operations and the disastrous 2014 coup d’état in the Ukraine. In fact, Blinken during his Senate hearings this week affirmed that he is in favor of increasing lethal U.S. military supplies to Ukraine.

Joe Biden has a long and sordid record as a former Senator of supporting dozens of U.S. wars and aggressions, going back to the bloody invasions of Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989 and the bombing of former Yugoslavia in 1999, among others. But it was his pivotal support for the U.S. war on Iraq in 2003 which marks his most vile act as a warmonger and surrogate for American imperialism.

Biden has indulged the Russophobic fantasies of “Russiagate”, alleging collusion between the Kremlin and former president Trump, which have poisoned U.S.-Russia relations. Biden has even resorted to cheap ad hominem attacks on Putin calling the Russian leader a “thug”. How rich is that for someone who caused over one million deaths in his sponsorship of one war alone in Iraq, never mind dozens of others.

Alas, unfortunately, what we are seeing in Washington is a new administration with old aggression.

The cognitive dissonance afflicting America is something to behold. U.S. media this week were swooning over the inauguration of Democrat President Joe Biden as a “return to normal” after four years of turmoil under Donald Trump. The “adults have returned” goes the saying among pundits. More accurately, that should be the adult psychopaths and imperialist warmongers have returned.

In other matters, Biden announced a “war-time effort” to control the coronavirus pandemic which has devastated the United States. The American death toll from the disease stands at over 400,000 as of this week and is set to reach half a million by next month. The U.S. has the biggest death toll in the world, accounting for 20 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths. Concurrent with the U.S. public health crisis is an economic crisis of poverty, unemployment, homelessness and inequality. It makes you wonder how it is that the Biden administration can devote so much interest on “foreign enemies” amid such catastrophe at home.

One dubious blessing perhaps is that United States will be so preoccupied with salvaging its own domestic woes that its warmongering politicians might not have the stomach nor nerve for overseas adventurism and wars. Although, don’t bet on it.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin sent New Year greetings to US President-elect Joe Biden and other world leaders calling for greater international cooperation. The message is more pertinent than ever and should be heeded.

The devastating worldwide impact over the past year from the coronavirus pandemic on human health and economic conditions is perhaps the most stark illustration of the need for international cooperation and solidarity. We are all in this crisis together and we must get out of it together. As the world develops vaccines to overcome the disease, there must be a systematic process and spirit of cooperation between all nations to ensure effective control of the pandemic. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was correct to admonish any politicization of vaccines which will only thwart the necessary eradication of the disease. To that end too, it is deplorable in this context for the United States to impose sanctions on other nations which is hampering their access to vaccines. Indeed, it is execrable that any nation should be applying sanctions at this critical juncture. The European Union’s economic restrictions levied on Russia, Syria and Venezuela, among others, are another reprehensible example. Such measures flagrantly violate the principle of cooperation and solidarity, and ultimately are self-defeating. This year must see the end of unilateral sanctions, which should be properly defined as a crime against humanity.

The New START treaty limiting nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia is another glaring example of the need for cooperation. The decade-old treaty is due to expire in a few weeks because the outgoing Trump administration refused to renew it in spite of earnest appeals to do so from Russia. If New START is abandoned then it will be a huge retrograde step undermining global security and peace. A new arms race looms. President-elect Biden has indicated he is in favor of extending the treaty. When he is inaugurated on January 20, Biden must make it a top priority.

But here is the catch. Biden and many others in his incoming administration, as well as the wider US political class, are obsessed with anti-Russian ideology. This animosity has dominated American politics and media for the past four year. It is an anachronistic throwback to the Cold War. The most recent expression is the hysterical and unfounded claims of Russian cyberattacks on US governments and corporations. Indeed, far from seeking cooperation and a reset in bilateral relations, Biden is vowing retaliation against Russia when he takes office. This is lunacy. One can imagine the arrogant, and ignorant, disdain the new president showed when he received Putin’s New Year letter.

Nonetheless, the world has undergone a seminal change for the better. The United States no longer has the unipolar dominance it could claim after the Soviet Union collapsed nearly 30 years. A multipolar world is emerging in which Washington no longer has a global monopoly or veto on developments.

The signing last week by the European Union and China of a major trade and investment pact is a clear signal of this new multipolar world.

Practical necessity of partnership and progress prevailed over an ideology of confrontation. The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment is a landmark step towards further integration of nations and economies. It also has wider benefit for the entire Eurasian continent, from Russia’s far-east to the western arc of Europe. It was also highly notable how the United States objected to the EU

concluding this accord with China, which was seven years in the making.

The needs and means of today’s global economy make Cold War-style zero-sum mentality a relic of the past. It is untenable and unviable. It is dangerous and destructive. It is a fetter on global progress.

Lamentably, the United States and its ruling class is the single-biggest repository of this regressive ideology. The nature of US capitalist power is predicated on imperialist hegemony. Confrontation is the currency of its ambitions. Cooperation is anathema.

We only have to look at the present array of international tensions. Virtually all of them have the United States as the common denominator. Whether it is tensions with Russia over NATO expansionism and relentless Russophobia regurgitated on a daily basis in US media, or tensions with China over the South China Sea and Taiwan, or tensions with Iran from US military threats in the Persian Gulf. The list of American aggression goes on. War is the ultimate and ineluctable result of the ideology that dominates the American regime. But even without a catastrophic outcome of war, the manifestation of confrontational ideology is seen in a plethora of pernicious problems, from poverty, insecurity, to frustrated cooperation between nations and the many harms that entails for human development and health.

We have reached a point in history where confrontation and conflict are no longer justifiable in any form. They are seen nakedly as the criminal function of American capitalism. Cosmetic propaganda can no longer hide the ugliness that lies beneath.

The only way forward is for cooperation in the spirit of common humanity and mutual economic planning. And there is much to be hopeful for – despite the terrifying threats of war that the United States’ rulers are synonymous with.

Happy New Year from Strategic Culture Foundation! Wishing the world peace and prosperity with a courage based on belief in our common humanity and ability to overcome anything through cooperation and solidarity.

Similarly optimistic, if not delusional, remarks of an “agreement in principle” were made this week separately by Mike Pompeo, the U.S.’ top diplomat, as well as Trump’s special envoy on arms control, Marshall Billingslea.

The sanguine posturing by the Trump administration amounts to absurd grandstanding. It’s obvious that with three weeks to the presidential election there is an attempt to inflate the image of Trump into a master deal-maker and hence to score some “good news” for the American people in a bid to boost his re-election ambitions.

What’s going on here is unscrupulous and shabby gimmicking around with the onerous matter of global security. The main issue at hand is the New START accord governing limitations on strategic nuclear weapons. The treaty came into effect in 2011 and is due to expire in February next year, only four months away. It is the last-remaining arms-control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, specifically limiting the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles deployed by either side. Given that the U.S. and Russia together possess over 90 per cent of the world’s total stockpile of these weapons, it is incumbent on both to secure the landmark treaty.

It should be noted that Washington has already abandoned several arms-control treaties: the Anti-Ballistic Missile accord, the INF treaty, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Open Skies Treaty.

However, there is no need for dramatics seen this week from the U.S. side. The New START accord allows for a five-year extension if both sides simply agree to it. The Trump administration seems to be creating an illusion of “breakthrough” in deal-making when all that is required is for both sides to calmly agree to an extension. Russia has consistently advocated for an extension of the New START without preconditions as a bridge towards a longer-term, more comprehensive regime of arms control taking into account new concerns about strategic stability, such as weaponization of space and missile defense systems.

It is the Trump administration which is using the issue of extension as leverage for demanding conditions. It is withholding extension to extract concessions from Russia, such as including China into negotiations (but not American NATO allies) and latterly demanding a freeze on short-range nuclear weapons. It should be noted that there was already a treaty on limiting short-range, or tactical, nuclear warheads – the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) accord, which the Trump administration resiled from last year.

Despite earlier warnings from Russia, as well as from some European and American politicians, that the New START was in danger of falling into obsolescence, the Trump administration had adopted a cavalier indifference towards negotiations. It was only until this summer that the White House began to engage in negotiations to renew the treaty. But even then it became clear that the Americans were playing cheap politics. The opening of bilateral talks in Vienna in June involved a facetious propaganda stunt by U.S. negotiators aimed at shaming China into joining discussions. Such a ridiculous drama and fabrication purporting to show empty Chinese seats at the venue was nevertheless an eye-opener into the lack of professionalism and integrity on the U.S. side as an honest partner.

It is evident that the U.S. side has been using the threat of an arms race as pressure on the Russian side to capitulate to its unilateral demands. Russia has stood firm on its position that it will not sign up to unilateral conditions set by Washington for New START. It is because of unethical and puerile politicking by the U.S. which has resulted in the New START heading for expiry. Global security is gravely being undermined precisely because of American shenanigans.

Democrat contender Joe Biden has indicated that if he is elected to the White House on November 3, he will sign an immediate five-year extension to New START. That may well turn out to be a vote-winner for Biden. But it shouldn’t come down this, whereby global security is being jeopardized because of American bad faith.

A major contemporary talking-point across the globe is the rapid decline in American international standing. There are many ways to illustrate the waning of U.S. power and reputation, from backsliding on international agreements, to the imposition of callous sanctions against stricken nations, to the uncouth squabbling in its so-called presidential debates. But the grubby duplicity and irresponsible conduct of the Trump administration regarding its obligations on nuclear-arms control and global security is a particularly lamentable demonstration of American disgrace.

Ahead of talks with Russian delegates, the Americans took a stealthy photo of the venue contriving to show Chinese flags sitting atop vacant tables.

U.S. envoy Marshall Billingslea then tried to twitter-shame China by declaring: “Vienna talks about to start. China is a no-show… We will proceed with Russia, notwithstanding.”

China had categorically stated several times over past weeks that it had no intention of attending the talks in Vienna which were designated anyway as bilateral discussions between Washington and Moscow on the future of arms control.

The Russian delegation was evidently blindsided by the PR stunt. Both China and Russia condemned the attempt by the American side to contrive Beijing as somehow derelict. China slammed it as “performance art”. While Russia published a photograph of the American and Russian delegates in discussions without any Chinese flags present.

The fiasco shows that the talks were really aimed at coaxing China into trilateral talks to satisfy Washington’s geopolitical agenda. In the weeks before the Vienna bilateral talks, U.S. envoy Billingslea had repeatedly called on China to attend in a trilateral format. Such wrangling is inappropriate and undermines diplomatic protocol with Moscow.

Beijing has consistently stated that it will not participate in arms control talks with the U.S. and Russia until both nuclear powers first substantially reduce their vastly greater arsenals. China’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is a mere fraction – some 5 per cent – of either the U.S. or Russia’s. Beijing maintains that Washington must proceed with its obligations for disarmament, along with Russia. Moscow has said it respects China’s position.

The Trump administration has let it be known that it wants to include China in arms control talks with Russia. In principle such comprehensive limitations may seem reasonable. Russia has said that other nuclear powers such as France and Britain should also be included. But what the U.S. side is angling for is not a comprehensive accord in principle; rather it is seeking to rope China into limitations for its own geopolitical agenda of rivalry with Beijing. If Washington is serious about finding a comprehensive treaty, then it should, as China points out, prioritize the scaling back of its own inordinate possession of nukes. The U.S. and Russia account for over 90 per cent of the world’s total nuclear arsenal.

What the propaganda stunt with Chinese flags by the U.S. side in Vienna shows is Washington’s petulance from not being able to cajole China into the talks format with Russia.

As it turned out, the U.S. and Russian sides agreed to hold a second round of talks to follow this week’s meeting.

Russia’s foreign ministry stated: “During the Vienna consultations, the sides agreed to conduct a meeting of experts on military doctrines and nuclear strategies, including the issues of use of nuclear weapons.”

The ministry added: “Russia is open to further dialogue on strategic stability, it seeks to build further relation with the U.S. in arms control, strictly on a parity basis and in reliance on the principle of mutual accounting of interests and concerns of the sides.”

The main issue going forward is the future of the New START treaty governing strategic nuclear weapons. That treaty is due to expire in February next year. Moscow has repeatedly called for an extension, but the Trump administration has demurred about its future, suggesting that it is willing to let it expire. After walking away from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty last year, the Trump administration appears to be conducting a policy of creating global instability and playing with fire by unleashing a new arms race.

Again, lurking behind this reckless brinkmanship is the U.S. objective of coercing Russia and China to acquiesce in its agenda of controlling both by turning bilateral agreements with Moscow into trilateral arrangements with Beijing. Russia has said it will not comply with this stealth conduct by Washington.

What the U.S. needs to do is honor its bilateral relations with Russia and get down to genuine mutual negotiations on strategic stability and arms control. The New START treaty is a test case for Washington’s commitment to its obligations for nuclear disarmament as agreed to from historic bilateral negotiations with Moscow.

The cheap stunt with China’s flags and distortion of the bilateral talks in Vienna with Russia does not inspire confidence in U.S. commitments or intentions. At least under the present administration.

It does not bode well for American credibility in pursuing bilateral talks with Russia on extending the New START treaty which expires in eight months. Indeed, it smacks of bad faith. Playing fast and loose with global security is deplorable.

If the Trump administration follows through on its threat to re-start nuclear tests, it will complete the unraveling of more than 50 years of arms control agreements, taking the world back to the days when school children practiced “duck and cover,” and people built backyard bomb shelters.

It will certainly be the death knell for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, passed by the UN’S General Assembly in 1996. The Treaty has never gone into effect because, while 184 nations endorsed it, eight key countries have yet to sign on: the US, China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, Iran and North Korea.

Evan without ratification, the Treaty has had an effect. Many nuclear-armed countries, including the US, Britain, and Russia, stopped testing by the early 1990s. China and France stopped in 1996 and Indian and Pakistan in 1998. Only North Korea continues to test.

Halting the tests helped slow the push to make weapons smaller, lighter and more lethal, although over the years countries have learned how to design more dangerous weapons using computers and sub-critical tests. For instance, without actually testing any weapon, the US recently created a “super fuze” that makes its warheads far more capable of knocking out an opponent’s missile silos. Washington has also just deployed a highly destabilizing low-yield warhead that has yet to be detonated.

Nonetheless, the test ban did—and does—slow the development of nuclear weapons and retards their proliferation to other countries. Its demise will almost certainly open the gates for others—Saudi Arabia, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Turkey, and Brazil—to join the nuclear club.

“It would blow up any chance of avoiding a dangerous new nuclear arms race,” says Beatrice Fihn of the Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and “complete the erosion of the global arms control framework.”

While the Trump administration has accelerated withdrawal from nuclear agreements, including the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement, and START II, the erosion of treaties goes back almost 20 years.

At stake is a tapestry of agreements dating back to the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty that ended atmospheric testing. That first agreement was an important public health victory. A generation of “down winders” in Australia, the American Southwest, the South Pacific and Siberia are still paying the price for open-air testing.

The Partial Test Ban also broke ground for a host of other agreements.

The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) restricted the spread of nuclear weapons and banned nuclear-armed countries from threatening non-nuclear nations with weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, key parts of the agreement have been ignored by the major nuclear powers, especially Article VI that requires nuclear disarmament, followed by general disarmament.

What followed the NPT were a series of treaties that slowly dismantled some of the tens of thousands of warheads with the capacity to quite literally destroy the planet. At one point, the US and Russia had more than 50,000 warheads between them.

The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty reduced the possibility of a first-strike attack against another nuclear power. The same year, the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement (SALT I) put a limit on the number of long-range missiles. Two years later, SALT II cut back on the number of highly destabilizing multiple warheads on missiles and put ceilings on bombers and missiles.

The 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement banned land-based medium-range missiles in Europe that had put the continent on a hair-trigger. Four years later, START I cut the number of warheads in the Russian and American arsenals by 80 percent. That still left each side with 6,000 warheads and 1600 missiles and bombers. It would take 20 years to negotiate START II , which reduced both sides to 1550 deployed nuclear warheads and banished multiple warheads from land-based missiles.

All of this is on the verge of collapse. While Trump has been withdrawing from treaties, it was President George W. Bush’s abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 that tipped the first domino.

The death of the ABM agreement put the danger of a first-strike was back on the table and launched a new arms race, As the Obama administration began deploying ABMs in Europe, South Korea and Japan, the Russians began designing weapons to overcome them.

The ABM’s demise also led to the destruction of the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement (INF) that banned medium-range, ground-based missiles from Europe. The US claimed the Russians were violating the INF by deploying a cruise missile that could be fitted with a nuclear warhead. The Russians countered that the American ABM system, the Mark 41 Ageis Ashore, could be similarly configured. Moscow offered to let its cruise be examined, but NATO wasn’t interested.

The White House has made it clear that it will not renew the START II treaty unless it includes Chinese medium-range missiles, but that is a poison pill. The Chinese have about one fifth the number of warheads that Russia and the US have, and most of China’s potential opponents—India, Japan, and US bases in the region—are within medium range.

While Chinese and Russian medium-range missiles do not threaten the American homeland, US medium-range missiles in Asia and Europe could decimate both countries. In any case, how would such an agreement be configured? Would the US and Russia reduce their warhead stockpile to China’s 300 weapons, or would China increase its weapons levels to match Moscow and Washington? Both are unlikely.

If START II goes, so do the limits on warheads and launchers, and we are back to the height of the Cold War.

Why?

On many levels this makes no sense. Russia and the US have more than 12,000 warheads between them, more than enough to end civilization. Recent studies of the impact of a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan found it would have worldwide repercussions by altering rain patterns and disrupting agriculture. Imagine what a nuclear war involving China, Russia, and the US and its allies would do.

Partly this is a matter of simple greed.

The new program will cost in the range of $1.7 trillion, with the possibility of much more. Modernizing the “triad” will require new missiles, ships, bombers and warheads, all of which will enrich virtually every segment of the US arms industry.

But this is about more than a rich payday. There is a section of the US military and political class that would like to use nuclear weapons on a limited scale. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review explicitly reverses the Obama administration’s move away from nuclear weapons, reasserting their importance in US military doctrine.

That is what the recently deployed low yield warhead on the US’s Trident submarine is all about. The W76-2 packs a five-kiloton punch, or about one-third the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, a far cry from the standard nuclear warheads with yields of 100 kilotons to 475 kilotons.

The US rationale is that a small warhead will deter the Russians from using their low yield nuclear warheads against NATO, The Trump administration says the Russians have a plan to do exactly that, figuring the US would hesitate to risk an all-out nuclear exchange by replying in kind. There is, in fact, little proof such a plan exists, and Moscow denies it.

According to the Trump administration, China and Russia are also violating the ban on nuclear test by setting off low yield, hard to detect, warheads. No evidence has been produced to show this, and no serious scientist supports the charge. Modern seismic weapons detection is so efficient it can detect warheads that fail to go critical, so-called duds.

Bear baiting—and dragon drubbing in the case of China—is a tried and true mechanism for opening the arms spigot.

Some of this is about making arms manufactures and generals happy, but it is also about the fact that the last war the US won was Grenada. The US military lost in Afghanistan and Iraq, made of mess of Libya, Somalia and Syria, and is trying to extract itself from a stalemate in Yemen.

Just suppose some of those wars were fought with low-yield nukes? While it seems deranged—like using hand grenades to get rid of kitchen ants—some argue that if we don’t take the gloves off we will continue to lose wars or get bogged down in stalemates.

The Pentagon knows the Russians are not a conventional threat because the US and NATO vastly outnumber and out spend Moscow. China is more of a conventional challenge, but any major clash could go nuclear and no one wants that.

According to the Pentagon, the W76-2 may be used to respond “to significant non-nuclear strategic attacks” on the US or its allies’ “infrastructure,” including cyber war. That could include Iran.

Early in his term, President Trump asked why the US can’t use its nuclear weapons. If Washington successfully torpedoes START II and re-starts testing, he may get to do exactly that.

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U.S. envoy Marshall Billingslea is, rather belatedly, making enthusiastic sounds about arms control talks to be held with Russia later this month. The talks are scheduled for June 22 in Vienna. The Kremlin has confirmed the venue and discussions, with deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov representing the Russian side.

On announcing the June 22 meeting with Russia, Billingslea showed an unseemly haste to link the event to the possibility of China also attending. “China also invited. Will China show and negotiate in good faith?” he added.

That sounds odd, if not inappropriate. The talks are supposed to be bilateral efforts by the world’s foremost nuclear powers to get down to serious negotiations on global security. After all, the U.S. and Russia possess over 90 per cent of the world’s total number of warheads. Why the haste by the U.S. side to get China involved at this stage?

The U.S. envoy sounds more like a dodgy salesman than a principled negotiator on arms control. Billingslea’s career history as an accused advocate of torture techniques under President GW Bush and his stint at the Treasury with responsibility for imposing sanctions on other nations does not inspire confidence that he has expertise in arms control issues nor has serious scruples about advancing global peace.

From previous announcements by the Trump administration, it is clear that the real U.S. aim is to use the talks with Russia as a way to rope China into trilateral arms control. This is hardly the spirit of trust and genuine negotiations.

The Trump administration has been abandoning nuclear security treaties with gusto. Last month it walked away from the Open Skies Treaty. In 2018, it ditched the international nuclear accord with Iran, and last year binned the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. The latter step gravely undermines security architecture in Europe. The American side disingenuously accused Russia of breaching the INF, but it has since become clear that Washington wanted out of that treaty in order to have a free hand to confront China with short and medium-range missiles.

Under Trump, the U.S. has promoted the endeavor to weaponize outer space in violation of an existing United Nations’ treaty.

His administration has also adopted a mercurial, non-committed attitude towards the New START accord governing long-range nuclear warheads. Despite repeated appeals from Moscow for clarity, the U.S. side has demurred on whether it will extend the treaty which is due to expire in February 2021. If START is abandoned – the last remaining arms control treaty – then there is a real danger of a new global arms race being unleashed.

The U.S., it seems, is using veiled threats of leaving New START as a leverage point on Russia to corral China. Such a negotiating ploy shows a reckless, gambling disregard for global security and peace. It also illustrates a total lack of integrity and principle.

For its part, China this week said it has no intention of joining trilateral talks in Vienna. Beijing points out that its nuclear arsenal is a fraction of those belonging to the U.S. and Russia. It is up to Washington and Moscow to first drastically reduce their nuclear inventories before Beijing is obligated to join wider efforts for disarmament.

“We noticed that the United States has been dragging China into the issue…whenever it is raised, with the intention of deviating from its responsibility,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.

Given the relentless vilification of China by the Trump administration over the Covid-19 pandemic, trade and cybersecurity, Hua rightly added that Washington’s claims to want to negotiate in good faith seem “extremely ridiculous and even surreal”.

Russia’s envoy Sergei Ryabkov has cautiously welcomed the Vienna meeting, but it is noticeable that Moscow is keeping expectations low key. Ryabkov ruled out Moscow being used in any way to put pressure on China to become involved in trilateral discussions. He said Russia “respects” China’s position.

The Russian diplomat also made a valid point about the incongruity of American demands for China to join arms limitations at this stage while the U.S. makes no such demands on its allies, Britain and France. Both of these NATO members have nuclear arsenals of 200-300 warheads, which is approximately the same as China’s. The U.S. and Russia each have a total stockpile of 6,000 warheads, according to a 2019 tally made by the Arms Control Association. If China is to be included in arms limitation negotiations, then why shouldn’t the same obligation be made on Britain and France?

There’s a discernible lack of credibility about the U.S. side in its present approach to global nuclear security. On one hand, it is tearing up treaties, as well as ramping up military forces in Russia’s Arctic region and in the South China Sea. Yet now the other hand is being extended in a supposed willingness to negotiate on arms control with Russia in a bilateral forum which it wants opened up to include China.

In the interests of diplomacy and keeping communication lines open, Russia is participating in the talks in Vienna. Regrettably, however, the words and deeds so far from the Trump administration do not augur well for substantive achievement.

Unfortunately, there is little sign of genuine desire for arms control by the American side. Its conduct is one of pursuing an ulterior agenda and exploiting nuclear fears for its own selfish geopolitical gain regarding China. That’s not a premise for progress.

There is growing concern that the Trump administration will let the last-remaining arms-control treaty fall – the New START (2010) which limits strategic nuclear missiles held by the U.S. and Russia. If it goes, then the world is facing an arms race not seen since the Cold War. It will be open season for nukes.

Into the malign mix are the current heightened tensions between the U.S., NATO, Russia and China. Confrontation could spin out of control with catastrophic consequences for the planet. There is a grim sense that risk of nuclear conflagration is greater than at any time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis more than half a century ago.

There is strong suspicion that the Trump administration is deliberately playing the mad man as a negotiating tactic. It’s an unconscionable and extremely dangerous gamble with world security, but this would seem to be Trump’s diabolical art of the deal.

What the U.S. president wants is to tie China into arms-control treaties along with Russia. China’s nuclear arsenal is a mere fraction of either the U.S.’s or Russia’s – reckoned at one-twentieth of their combined stockpile. Beijing has stated over and over that it will not enter into arms limitations with the U.S. or Russia until the two nuclear superpowers first make drastic reductions in their number of warheads. That seems reasonable. The onus is on Washington and Moscow to first demonstrate progress on disarmament, as they are obliged to do under the 1970-founded Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Trump has repeatedly indicated possible extension of the New START with Russia, but only if China is brought into a trilateral deal. He therefore seems to be using the threat of an arms race as a way to lever Russia and China into a trilateral accord. But New START is a bilateral treaty between Washington and Moscow. By pushing the trilateral idea to include China, Trump is trying to rewrite the deal with Russia out of Washington’s desire to control Beijing.

Trump is affecting to show that he is prepared to throw away America’s signature – and jeopardize global security – in order to force China to the negotiating table on Washington’s terms.

When the Trump administration walked away from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty last year, it accused Russia of breaching that accord. Moscow denied those claims as unfounded. It later emerged that the real reason for Washington rescinding the 1987 treaty was its desire to deploy short and medium-range missiles against China in its rivalry over Asia-Pacific.

In ditching the INF, the Trump administration is destabilizing European security and putting pressure on Moscow over potential threats from the return of U.S. short and medium-range missiles to European territory.

The ratcheting up of insecurity and the specter of an arms race is Trump’s calculated tactic for bringing China into arms limitations along with Russia. The scrapping of the INF and the threatened abandonment of the New START are all part of the same negotiating ploy. This is not just serial loosening of arms controls for its own sake, but rather as a way to lever both Russia and China. Perhaps, the Trump administration is calculating that it can unnerve Moscow so that the latter will in turn put pressure on Beijing to accept Trump’s “grand bargain”.

The announcement on quitting the Open Skies Treaty (OST) appears to fit into this game plan. The treaty was signed in 1992 and became effective in 2002 with some 35 member nations as signatories, most of them European states. The treaty allows for reconnaissance flights over territories to build trust.

Like the INF treaty, the Trump administration is using alleged violations of the OST by Russia as a pretext to jettison another arms-control accord. Again, the real objective is to create insecurity and latent threats in order to apply pressure on Moscow for concessions. The ultimate prize for the Trump administration and Washington state planners is to maneuver China into trilateral arms control.

When Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal of the Open Skies Treaty, it was done with noticeable ambiguity.

“Russia didn’t adhere to the treaty. So until they adhere, we will pull out, but there’s a very good chance we’ll make a new agreement or do something to put that agreement back together,” said Trump said at a press briefing last week.

His Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also dropped hints at deal-making with Russia while declaring an end to U.S. participation in the OST.

It seems more than coincidence that in the same week, Trump’s envoy on arms control, Marshall Billingslea, made a pointed offer to Moscow of extending the New START – but only if China were brought into a trilateral nuclear limitation treaty.

“We intend to establish a new arms-control regime now precisely to prevent a full-blown arms race. It’s for all of these reasons that President Trump has expressed his strong desire to see China included in future nuclear arms-control agreements,” Billingslea is quoted as saying during a virtual conference at the Hudson Institute. “A three-way arms-control agreement will provide the best way to avoid an unpredictable three-way arms race.”

It might be asked: what is wrong with seeking a trilateral accord on nuclear weapons involving the U.S., Russia and China? Surely, a grand bargain like that might be deemed as making progress towards general nuclear disarmament.

But such rationale is putting the horse before the cart. The U.S. and Russia must first significantly reduce their arsenals as they are obligated to do. Moreover, arms controls and disarmament is all about trust and integrity. Washington is destroying trust and integrity by deliberately creating insecurity in order to achieve its geopolitical objective of controlling China. How can Trump build trust and do a genuine deal when he is doing all he can to kill any trust in a genuine commitment to obtaining international security and peace?