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Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future - Strategic ...

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currency. <strong>Russian</strong>-American strategic nuclear arms<br />

reductions neither preclude, nor guarantee, favorable<br />

prospects for multilateral disarmament or nonproliferation.<br />

This discussion first reviews the New START<br />

agreement <strong>and</strong> its implications for deterrence stability<br />

<strong>and</strong> arms control. Second, we develop <strong>and</strong> test the viability<br />

of a hypothetical, post-New START agreement<br />

with significantly lower numbers of operationally deployed<br />

strategic nuclear weapons. Third, we model a<br />

constrained nuclear nonproliferation regime, based<br />

on the post-New START agreement described earlier.<br />

A fourth section summarizes pertinent conclusions.<br />

POLICY<br />

New START Gets Done.<br />

U.S. President Obama <strong>and</strong> <strong>Russian</strong> President Dmitry<br />

Medvedev signed the New START agreement<br />

April 8, 2010, in Prague, Czech Republic. Replacing<br />

the START I that had already expired in December<br />

2009, the New START agreement called for reductions<br />

in the number of deployed long range nuclear<br />

weapons <strong>and</strong> their delivery systems: intercontinental<br />

missiles <strong>and</strong> heavy bombers. Part of the “reset” in<br />

U.S.-<strong>Russian</strong> relations following the acrimony of the<br />

Vladimir Putin <strong>and</strong> George W. Bush presidencies, the<br />

New START agreement was seen as a prelude to further<br />

<strong>Russian</strong> <strong>and</strong> American nuclear force reductions<br />

<strong>and</strong> to broader cooperation between Moscow <strong>and</strong><br />

Washington on other nuclear related matters, including<br />

nonproliferation.<br />

Under the new START agreement, each state<br />

would be required to reduce its number of deployed<br />

strategic warheads to a maximum of 1,550 <strong>and</strong> its<br />

418

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