US President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in a nuclear weapons drawdown among China, Russia and the United States.
With the New START treaty between Washington and Moscow nearing expiration, this is a critical juncture to confront the emerging nuclear “three-body” problem. Trump’s planned April visit to China could provide a meaningful starting point.
New START established guardrails for nuclear parity and reinforced norms of strategic stability that gradually emerged during the Soviet period.
Those norms—imperfect as they were—are now eroding. As the treaty lapses, the absence of a replacement risks accelerating a new arms race among the world’s three major nuclear powers.
At the same time, Russia and China are increasingly aligned geopolitically and are discussing nuclear issues outside any US-led framework.
Their growing military cooperation, including joint exercises near Japan, underscores the need for clarity from Washington about its intentions and its plans to prevent further nuclear escalation.
Trump recently remarked, “we’re the number one nuclear power, which I hate to admit, because it’s so horrible. Russia’s second. China’s a distant third, but they’ll catch us within four or five years,” Trump said.
He added that the three countries were “maybe working on a plan to denuclearize, the three of us. We’ll see if that works.”
Yet administration officials have indicated that no such trilateral plan is currently under active development, leaving uncertainty about US policy as New START expires. That ambiguity has been reinforced by mixed signals in US-Russian diplomacy.
After Trump’s August meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Trump mentioned nuclear weapons were discussed. However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio later downplayed the extent of those talks.
When Putin expressed interest in extending New START, the US response appeared cursory—at least as it was reported in the press. Trump merely said it “sounds like a good idea to me.”
Against this backdrop, Trump’s planned April visit to China stands out as a constructive opportunity. Trade relations will undoubtedly dominate the agenda, but initiating nuclear weapons discussions with Beijing may be at least as consequential.
Trade incentives—such as limited tariff relief—could potentially be used to encourage progress in arms control talks.
China’s comparatively smaller nuclear arsenal provides a practical starting point for negotiations. As in other bargaining contexts, an initial agreement can create an “anchoring effect” that shapes subsequent talks. While negotiations with Russia are likely to remain difficult, negotiations with China could form a bilateral framework that is later extended to Moscow.
A public statement now expressing US interest in negotiating with China on nuclear arms would help dispel uncertainty about the US’ positon as New START expires. At the same time, intensive planning for a detailed proposal to negotiate must begin immediately.
Rose Gottemoeller, the lead negotiator of the New START treaty, has chronicled the intricacies and grind required for successful arms control negotiations. Background work for an offer to negotiate is imperative, especially given the challenges posed by emerging new nuclear weapon and weapon delivery technologies.
Leadership on nuclear arms control will certainly not come from Moscow, given Putin’s entanglement in the war in Ukraine and the resulting strain on relations with Washington.
Nor is it likely to come from Beijing, which maintains that its “nuclear forces are not on the same scale as those of the US and Russia”, which it says “would be unfair, unreasonable and impractical to require China to join.”
The onus therefore falls to Trump and his administration to show leadership. Trump’s April visit to China offers an opportunity to launch bilateral negotiations that could eventually become trilateral if Russia becomes willing once again to permit verification of its nuclear posture—something that it no longer allows the US to do.
The goal should be a new, lower “temporary equilibrium” in nuclear holdings among the three powers, significantly below the levels established by New START.
After the treaty entered into force, then-President Barack Obama argued that the US “could maintain a … strong strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third.”
Although that reduction never materialized, the logic behind it warrants reconsideration and asking why it cannot be even lower—particularly given recent advances in conventional military capabilities.
Trump’s public musings about resuming nuclear testing, as well as his saber-rattling comments regarding the US submarine force, have not helped to build confidence. America’s adversaries are already well aware of its nuclear capabilities.
A sobering final thought: Before his death in 2023, Henry Kissinger reminded colleagues that he believed the eight decades of great-power peace were unlikely to reach a full century. Kissinger was a co-author of the article “Toward a Nuclear-Free World.”
While such an outcome may not be realized anytime soon, it remains a guiding moral ideal. For the US to forgo leadership in shaping a new nuclear arms control regime would be to squander a rare and critical historical opportunity.
Brian Simboli, PhD, is a writer whose work focuses on the interface of ethics and public policy. He is a former Lehigh University research librarian whose work focused on the sciences, psychology and math.
