The Duran Podcast - New Start Treaty must be extended or else world in danger

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

New Start Treaty must be extended or else world in danger

All right, Alexander, the new start treaty has expired. And Putin requested of Trump to extend the existing treaty for one more year while they negotiate something new, which is apparently what Trump wants to do. Apparently, Trump wants to include China in these negotiations. That's fine. I think that for Russia was okay. We can talk about it over the next year. But let's make sure that at least the existing treaty that's in place we extended for one year. So we have time to negotiate things.

And in the United States and the Trump administration pretty much showed no interest in taking Putin up on his offer. There was a call between Putin and Xi Jinping yesterday. I imagine they discussed the expiration of the New Star Treaty. And there was a call, I believe, between Trump and Xi Jinping. I wonder if they discussed. the new START treaty. But this is a huge story and it's a very, it's a very dangerous development what has just happened. And if this is, if this does expire, that's it. We have no more, I don't think we have any more treaties, nuclear proliferation treaties left, do we?

We have none. The only thing that's, the only thing that's left is the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty, which is from the 1960s, which is all about preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries. And of course, as we know, that is also a treaty now on the brink of collapse because nuclear weapons technology is spreading. And that doesn't seem to be any way to stop it. But in terms of arms limitation, we are in a unique situation in my life. throughout my lifetime, we have either had negotiations on arms control, on strategic weapons

limitation, or we've had treaties limiting, restricting the possession of nuclear weapons, at least between the two big nuclear powers, which are, of course, America and Russia. To be clear, negotiations on limiting American and Russian nuclear arms. arsenals began in 1959. And the first important treaty that provided some limits on nuclear weapons technology by the superpowers was the partial test ban treaty negotiated by President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev and signed and ratified in 1963. So it goes back that far.

And then we've had the arms limitation treaties, sort one, sort two. We've had start. We've had all of the others, which first limited the numbers of weapons. And then we've had others that actually reduce the numbers of weapons. What we have is the lingering effect of some of those older treaties on nuclear weapons tests. But remember, Trump has himself floated the idea of resuming nuclear weapons tests and on limits on nuclear weapons, numbers of nuclear weapons and types of nuclear weapons, that's all completely fallen away.

Now, that is very alarming. That is very, very frightening. It opens up the possibility of a nuclear arms race, because, you know, because, you know, from this point on, nobody knows what anybody else is doing. Everybody may be worried that the other side is going to start developing new types of weapons and is going to start deploying them. So there's no real contacts, no real discussions, no real inspections, because all of these treaties came with inspections regimes. All of that's gone completely. So we are on the possible brink of a nuclear arms race. Now, I think the reason why it's happened is the one that you've touched on,

which is that in the 50s and 60s and 70s, right up until Obama's time, there were two big nuclear powers, America and Russia. And they could negotiate with each other and they could preserve a rough balance. The Russians were never entirely happy that Britain and France, which are allies of the United States had nuclear weapons and that they weren't counted, but the Russians lived with it because the numbers of nuclear weapons that the British and French had, relative to the American and Russian arsenals, were small. Now we have a situation where there is a third big player on the scene, which is China. It is increasing its nuclear arsenal. rapidly. The Americans are getting very, very nervous about this. They say, if we agree limits with

the Russians, which preserve equality between ourselves and the Russians, that leaves the Chinese the possibility of catching up with us, and then we could find ourselves in a situation where we're facing the Russians, with whom we are equal, and then with the Chinese too. So we find ourselves in a position where our adversaries, China and Russia, have many more nuclear weapons and means of delivery than we do. So the Americans don't want to be in that situation. And they're not prepared, it seems, to agree any limits on nuclear weapons until they can get the Chinese and the Russians to agree to basically have no more weapons than the United States together. Now, the Chinese are not going to agree to that. And they've made that absolutely clear.

And I think that there is apparently a view in the US that if there's going to be simultaneous arms races with China and Russia that the United States should conduct them and it can probably match what the Chinese and the Russians do together, I don't think that's. possible. I think that is incredibly dangerous. I think the Americans are overestimating the capabilities of some of their new defense systems, like the Golden Dome, for example. I think that far better to have done what the Russians proposed, extend the START treaty by another year, talk to the Russians, talk to the Chinese, see maybe whether we can freeze the situation where we are now. But of course, that wasn't done, and we are where we are. As you rightly said,

Putin did speak to see. The Russian readout shows that they did talk about START. Shoygu, who was Putin's national security advisor, was rushed, rushed to Beijing and had a meeting with Wang Yi there, and it seems as if that was also mostly about start. And then directly, after the call with Putin, see if had a call from Trump, and there was some talk there. So maybe something will come out at these discussions. But at this moment in time, we are in a very, very dangerous place where there are no limits on nuclear weapons at all. This means other countries can also start to build up their nuclear arsenal or to get

nuclear weapons, including many of the European countries. Is this what the United States wants to have happen? Perhaps there are some neocons, some hardliners who are saying, you know what, it's okay if it expires, because then we can pass on nuclear technology. We can work with our partners in Europe and they can build up their nuclear arsenal to threaten Russia. Countries, for example, like Finland, like Sweden, like Poland, like Germany, and they're very close to Russia. And if they have nukes, well, then that acts as a direct threat against Russia.

And that gives us leverage? I think there is indeed that thought. Now, I think that this is again where we need to understand the way the treaties work, because I mentioned that the only treaty that's left is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. But that treaty specifically says that there should be no spread of nuclear weapons around the world on the condition and the assumption. that the big nuclear powers, Russia and the United States, reduce their arsenals. If their arsenals are growing, then the whole concept of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty

begins to break down. And at that point, if it collapses, the way is absolutely open for the United States to start supplying nuclear weapons to third-class. countries, including its allies in Europe, Germany, the Scandinavian states, Poland. Now, I have to say, that is a nightmarish idea. I mean, the idea that small countries like, well, relatively small countries like Poland, or Germany led by someone like Friedrich Mertz, should have nuclear weapons, I mean, it absolutely horrifies me.

One of the people it also horrified, by the way, back in the 60s, was President Kennedy. President Kennedy was very strongly opposed to the idea of European countries, including, by the way, Britain, acquiring nuclear weapons at all. He thought it was inherently dangerous and extremely destabilizing. He was, of course, very familiar with European history. and he said to himself, if we start allowing nuclear powers like Germany and other places in Europe to start to acquire nuclear weapons, then given Europe's history, given European wars of the past, we are reducing the nuclear thresholds. We're almost definitely going to create a situation where nuclear weapons are going to be used.

And that was why President Kennedy turbocharged and moved forward the whole policy of nuclear arms control when he became president and why he successfully negotiated the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963 with the Russians. I agree completely with President Kennedy about this, as I agree with President Kennedy about so much else. That was President Kennedy. Now we have President Trump. And we didn't have neocons in those days. I mean, we had we had hawks and we had all sorts of people of that kind. But we didn't have people like the neocons of today with their incredibly dangerous and extreme philosophies.

And it's not just neocons. I mean, you go back to the recent documents that the United States has published, the strategic, the security strategy review. and the new Pentagon Strategy Review. And they say that the burden of deterring the Russians must be taken up by the Europeans. But we see that in conventional military terms, the Europeans can't deter, can't, you know, respond to the Russians. They don't have the military, industrial, technological ability to match the Russians. So if your priority remains to transfer your forces away from Europe and you know that your

allies can't stand up to the Russians by themselves, what you do? You give the nuclear weapons. Yeah, well, they can't have nuclear weapons. Yeah. They can't match the Russians, but I mean, the U.S. can't match the Russians on weapons either. I mean, the Russians seem to be decades ahead of the U.S. when it comes to Torezhniks and Budavestniks and all of this stuff. of hypersonic missiles. The U.S. still hasn't been able to figure out hypersonic missiles.

And obviously, no one can even come close to China's manufacturing capabilities. Well, no one can even come even remotely close to what China can produce. The U.S., though, I understand what you were saying about Trump and the position that he feels he's in by having to deal with a Russia-China partnership or an alliance. That's the way he's looking at it. We're the U.S. We have nukes, a lot of nukes. Russia has the most nukes, even though Trump never acknowledges it. He always says the United States has the most nukes, okay?

Russia has a lot of nukes. And now China has a lot of nukes. So this is unfair. That is what Trump is saying. This is unfair. That us is the United States. It's one against two. This is the way he's looking at it.

But you know what? I'm not saying Trump put the United States in this position, but Biden did. And Trump before Biden and Obama before him. You put yourself in this position by bringing China and Russia closer together because the deep state neo-cons were obsessed with destroying Russia and then China. And so you created an alliance between these two countries because you were hell bent on destroying these two countries. So you put yourself in this position. Implicited your question in your points, the points that you've just made. And it's the absolutely correct one.

is that the United States just does need to accept multipolarity. It cannot have, I mean, it is far too dangerous for it to try to have as many nuclear weapons as the Chinese and the Russians do combined. It can't match China's manufacturing powers. And as you rightly said at the moment, the Russians have significant technological advantages, which will continue to play out for at least a day. decade and probably longer. The United States is facing very, very severe debt issues. So embarking on an arms race with two alternative nuclear superpowers is going to present the US with the same

set of problems that say the Soviet Union faced in the 1970s. It's going to put the, it's going to put the American industrial, financial and economic system under unbearable pressure. And of course, it's going to create a security crisis. So you're absolutely right also. If China and Russia are adversaries of the United States at this particular point in time, certainly with Russia, it was because of the policies that the neocons followed towards it. Ever since the Soviet Union broke up, in the 1990s. And with China, well, there are, I think, grievances that the United States can have over economic and trade issues. But they should never be allowed to confuse thinking of the security relationship. China was not seeking an enormous military buildup 10 years ago.

What triggered that was when, especially Biden, and I have to say it was especially Biden, started to say that the United States had some kind of treaty obligation to defend Taiwan when, in fact, it does not. And that inevitably set the Chinese on this massive program of naval and nuclear rearmament. They already started doing some of it before, but this turbocharged it after. So the right thing to do is to seek detente, a genuine detent with both of these nuclear powers, except the fact that taken together, they're going to have more nuclear weapons than you. Ultimately, nuclear weapons are overkill anyway. I mean, how many nuclear weapons do you realistically need? I mean, just because the Russians have some more than the United States does, it doesn't mean that the United States is in a disadvantageous position towards the Russians.

Even if the Russians and the Chinese have more nuclear weapons than the United States does, there isn't really a critical problem for the United States. So be calmer about this, except that the world has changed and then trying to find ways of either either. tensions with both of these nuclear powers. And as we saw, as President Kennedy realized in the 1960s, the most effective, the most logical and the most pressing way to do that is by negotiating limits on nuclear weapons with both. That was something which President Kennedy, in my opinion, by the way, far and away the most intelligent man to occupy the White House since the Second World War, just to say this. But it was the thing that President Kennedy understood, and it brought us a long period of peace in Europe and stable relations between the Soviet Union of the United States,

and it created the conditions which led to the end of the Cold War, and eventually to the breakup of the Soviet Union. And I think that the United States ought to go back, revisit some of President Kennedy's thinking. And if they did, I think that it might play to their advantage not in the same way as was the case with the Cold War, because history never repeats itself. but to the U.S.'s advantage nonetheless, and of course it would secure peace, and it would ensure that human civilization and humanity itself is preserved. All right. We will end the video there.

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