US Calls for China to Enter Nuclear Arms Treaty

The United States is calling for a renewal of a 15-year nuclear arms treaty with Russia to include China, following an assertion that it conducted a secret nuclear test in 2020.

Speaking at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Thomas G. DiNanno, under secretary for arms control and international security, described a new era in which Russia was no longer the sole threat.

“As we sit here today, China’s entire nuclear arsenal has no limits, no transparency, no declarations, and no controls,” DiNanno said.

“Today, I can reveal that the U.S. Government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons.”

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) was signed in 2010 as an agreement between Washington and Moscow, and was extended in February 2021.

It capped production and deployment of nuclear armament to 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), 1,500 nuclear warheads deployed, and a total of 800 missile launchers and heavy bombers deployed or undeployed.

An ICBM is a long-range missile that typically carries nuclear warheads and can travel long distances in a short time.

The U.S. counterpart is an LGM-30G Minuteman III with a cover radius of 6,000-plus miles and a speed of approximately 15,000 mph. It has 400 in deployment.

At this speed, an LGM would take approximately 30 minutes to reach Moscow from Washington, a distance of some 4,800 miles.

The New START treaty ended on Feb. 5, leaving no restrictions on either the United States or Russia.

The Federation of American Scientists, an organization working to minimize the risks of nuclear threats, tracks Russia as currently having 5,459 warheads, while the United States has 5,177. 

Next in line are China with 600, France with 370, and the UK with 225.

DiNanno stated that China is on track to have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.

“This confluence of factors …  gives the United States a clear imperative to call for a new architecture that addresses the threats of today, not those of a bygone era.” he said.

President Donald Trump also criticized the current treaty, calling for a revision of the existing agreement.

“Rather than extend ‘NEW START’ (A badly negotiated deal by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Feb. 5.

Russia has welcomed the idea of a new deal, suggesting that France and the UK should also be included.

“Of course the negotiations should be started at the bilateral level. After all, the New START Treaty is a bilateral document. But in the future, it will not be possible to abstract ourselves from these arsenals. Especially since these arsenals are part of the overall problem of global European security and strategic stability,” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state news agency in September.

Evgenia Filimianova and Ryan Morgan contributed to this report.