The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The End of Nuclear Arms Control || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

The last remaining US-Russia nuclear arms control agreement has expired, which means for the first time in decades, we're in a world with no active nuclear arms control.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4aeIJfH

Hey, everybody, Peter Zion here, coming to you from Colorado. Today is the 4th of February. You're going to be seeing this in the morning on the 5th. And it's a big day because for the first time, in several decades, for the bulk of my lifetime, there is no active nuclear disarmament or arms control deal in effect. The last one, the start deal, the revised start deal, expired today. And there is really no appetite within the administration of the United States or the Russian Federation. to negotiate a new one. What this means is we're now in a situation where both sides have

between 1,000 and 2,000 warheads, and there are no longer any legal restrictions on them expanding those arsenals. Now, some people try to put the blame for this on Donald Trump, and I will not say that the Trump administration is really a champion of arm control in any form, but this is really mostly a Russian thing. You see, the Russians know that they're the strategically inferior partner in these deals. And the only really really, that they were originally negotiated back in 1979 to 1985 is that they faced just a crushing overwhelming American superiority in technology, reach, and alliance structure. And so they knew that if there was a conflict, the United States had a bomber fleet,

they had a missile fleet, it had a subfleet, and they really just only had the missiles. And they were not confident that they could survive a first strike in order to deliver a second strike. So arms control back then was largely designed as a way by the Soviets to, to deflate tensions and eventually set the stage for a lasting detente that eventually ended the Cold War. Things really picked up after 1986 with Mikhail Gorbachev, who was really the only economist to ever run the Soviet Union, and he realized that the system was breaking, and there was a limited amount of time, and so Toxie accelerated.

And then in the post-Soviet system under Yeltsin, we were no longer enemies, so getting rid of the thousands of warheads made a lot of sense to everybody. But in the time since that, we've had 20 years of Vladimir Putin. And the Russians, rightly or wrongly, feel that the West has betrayed them time and time and time again. And the only way that they are treated seriously is as if they're threatened the destruction of the human race with nuclear weapons. To that end, we've had two big trends that have happened in the last decade. Number one, bit by bit, the Russians have abrogated or cheated on every single one of the treaties in order to prompt the Americans to be the ones to cancel them. And Trump, one, did cancel a couple, and others have expired.

And so, you know, you can blame Trump if you want to, but the real fact was, is that the Russians were testing and fielding new weapons that were explicitly barred by the treaties and did them anyway, saying that they were still abiding by the conditions. The second issue, of course, is more recent with the Ukraine war. They're in a hot war. And the idea that the Russians are going to voluntarily abide by any sort of meaningful arms control when they're actually in the process of shooting a lot of people, people is a bit rich. Just like back in the late 70s and into the 80s, the reasons that the Russians

thought they needed to do this is because they didn't think that they could win on a field of battle. And unless and until they feel that way again in Ukraine, the chances of them going into any negotiations with good faith are pretty, pretty weak. Also, again, keep in mind that the Russians have abrogated or cheated on every single arms control treaty nuclear or conventional that they have ever signed. So any meaningful deal has to involve invasive inspections by both parties onto the other side in order to confirm these weapons are actually being taken out of service, dismantled, and eventually spun down so they can't be used for weapons again.

That requires a degree of intervention in the American military complex that we've done before. It would require a degree of intervention in the Russian complex that they have done before, but it also would require a degree of trust. on both sides that at the moment just simply doesn't exist. And again, again, again, they are in a hot war. The Russians are in a hot war right now. So the idea that you can have American military and civilian personnel poking around into the Russian nuclear complex. It's not feasible. So next steps. As to arms control, there really aren't any. Because until there's a substantial change in mindset in Moscow, the idea that they're going to negotiate with anyone in good faith

simply evaporates. And that leaves the situation open for everybody else. Now, the Americans and the Russians combined have over 90% of the nuclear weapons that are available in the world today. But they're not the only ones. Israel has some. France and Britain have some. And the Chinese, of course, have a significant arsenal, although it's not nearly in the same class as either Russia or the United States. And less than until we have some sort of deal between the Russians and the Americans and what a ceiling might look like, other countries not only don't have an incentive to limit their own production of weapons, they have a very strong incentive to build more and more and more, not just to get to bigger tables, but to secure their own existence.

And that is as true for China as it is for Israel and Pakistan and India. And unfortunately, now true for Korea and Japan and Poland and Germany and Sweden and Finland as well. So we are not simply at the end of the great era of arms control. that literally took tens of thousands of weapons out of circulation. We are now at the dawn of a new era of massive proliferation because we no longer have a structure to limit it and the changes to the international strategic environment

basically demand it. Because if you're a country that has been on the sidelines for the last 50 years and relying on the bilateral system between the Russians and the Americans to kind of keep a lid on things, and all of a sudden that is gone, you no longer have the time. that is necessary to build up a conventional force. Building up a nuclear force is the fastest way to get to a degree of security where you actually hold some cards. And we are now going to see that

in country after country after country after country for at least the next 15 years.