The Case for a new START and Nuclear Posture Review

Posted: November 10th, 2020

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010. He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.

OPINION – President-elect Joe Biden’s national security transition team should be developing plans for extending the New START strategic nuclear arms treaty with Russia, but also preparing to undertake its own, wide-ranging, Nuclear Posture Review that rethinks the Trump administration’s aggressive nuclear weapons building program.

First up must be the 2010 New START agreement, which runs out on February 5, 2021, just 16 days after Biden becomes President. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants a simple extension while up to now, President Trump has been seeking a variety of new arrangements.

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