TheEconomistJuly 13th 2019 251O
n june 30th, when President Donald
Trump took a few paces inside North
Korean territory with Kim Jong Un at Pan-
munjom, the symbolism suggested a de-
termined new push towards easing nuclear
tensions. Talks between America and
North Korea, stalled since an unsuccessful
summit in Hanoi in February, were due to
resume in Berlin this week. Away from the
world’s cameras, however, the broader pic-
ture on nuclear arms control looks very dif-
ferent. Things are heading not forwards
but backwards, at an accelerating rate.
After the Cuban missile crisis in 1962
took America and the Soviet Union to the
brink, they grew serious about nuclear ne-
gotiations. In 1972 they signed an agree-
ment capping the number of each other’s
strategic delivery systems, and a treaty to
limit defences against ballistic missiles.
Over the next four decades they mustered
seven other big nuclear deals. Their com-
bined destructive potential dropped from
the equivalent of 1.3m Hiroshima bombs in
1973-74 to about 80,000 Hiroshimas now—less obscene, if still horrendous.
Yet nuclear deals are now unravelling.
Mr Trump pulled America out of the multi-
party one with Iran, known as the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (jcpoa),
hoping to press that country into a bigger,
better accord, but so far producing only
heightened tensions. Iran has now
breached the deal’s limit for stockpiles of
low-enriched uranium and gone above the
4% level of enrichment allowed. Last Octo-
ber Mr Trump abruptly declared that Amer-
ica would withdraw from the treaty on In-
termediate-range Nuclear Forces (inf),citing Russia’s violation of its ban on
ground-launched missiles with a range of
500-5,500km (300-3,400 miles). The treaty,
signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail
Gorbachev in 1987, is set to expire on Au-
gust 2nd. Its demise could open the way for
a new arms race in missiles, whether nuc-
lear or conventional, whose time to target
is mere minutes.
That still leaves in place one big nuclear
treaty between America and Russia: New
start, signed by Presidents Barack Obama
and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. It limits
each country to 1,550 deployed nuclear
warheads across 700 delivery systems; its
verification regime includes 18 on-site in-
spections each year and copious data ex-
changes. But New start will lapse in 19
months’ time unless both countries agree
to a five-year extension, which their lead-
ers can do without congressional approval.
The prospects are not good: Russia is keen;
America appears not to be. “There’s no de-
cision”, Mr Trump’s national security ad-
viser, John Bolton, told Free Beacon, a web-
site, last month, “but I think it’s unlikely.”
For an extension to be agreed upon,
some differences would have to be settled.
The Americans worry about Russia’s plans
for new weapons, such as the Avangard hy-
personic boost-glide system; the Russians
have concerns over the way the Americans
got within start’s limits, converting nuc-
lear delivery systems into conventional
ones rather than destroying them. Presi-Nuclear diplomacyOne step forwards, many backwards
Despite the president’s historic foray into North Korea, the Trump administration
risks undoing decades of effort in nuclear arms controlUnited States
26 ProsecutingJeffreyEpstein
27 Teensandcannabis
28 Regulatingfacialrecognition
28 Trainingpolicewhentoshoot
30 Lexington: A farewell to Ross PerotAlso in this section