US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that any nuclear deal with Russia needs to include China, hours before the historic New START treaty between Washington and Moscow was to expire.
"The president's been clear in the past that to have true arms control in the 21st century, it's impossible to do something that doesn't include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile," he said on Wednesday.
China's nuclear arsenal is growing quickly, but is still well below the levels of Russia and the United States.
Trump, in his first term, also looked ready to let New START lapse as he insisted on including China.
Joe Biden agreed with Russia to extend New START for five years after he defeated Trump in the 2020 election, but tensions between the two countries later deteriorated over the Ukraine war.
The treaty, signed in 2010 by then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and his US counterpart Barack Obama, limited each side's nuclear arsenal to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, a reduction of nearly 30 percent from the previous limit set in 2002.
It also allowed both sides to carry out on-site inspections of the other's nuclear arsenal, although these were suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic and have not resumed since.
In 2019, the two countries withdrew from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which limited the use of medium-range missiles.
In 2023, Putin signed a law revoking Russia's ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, although Moscow said it would stick to the moratorium on atomic testing.
The Russian leader in 2024 signed a decree lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons.
Trump in October ordered the Pentagon to start nuclear weapons testing to equal China and Russia, although he has not followed through.
Iran
Rubio also said that the venue for talks with Iran is “still being worked through”, and discussions must address Tehran’s ballistic missiles, nuclear programme, regional “sponsorship of terrorist organisations”, and “treatment of its people”.
Rubio emphasised that any talks with Iran would not amount to “legitimisation.”
“For talks to actually lead to something meaningful, they will have to include certain things, and that includes the range of their ballistic missiles, that includes their sponsorship of terrorist organisations across the region, that includes a nuclear programme, and that includes the treatment of their own people,” he said.
