NYRB: "[A]rms control brought down the total number of nuclear weapons held by [Russia and the US] from 60,000 to roughly 11,000 today. (The exact number is classified). Under the most recent treaty, New START, signed in 2010, each side is limited to 1,550 deployed weapons, with the rest in storage. By any accounting, that 80 percet drop (95 percent counting just deployed weapons) is--or was--a notable achievement.
Unfortunately, the past tense is correct, because since the US withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 [...] the other agreements have fallen one by one. In February 2026 [...] New START, the last remaining brick in the edifice so painstakingly built, will expire, leaving the United States and Russia with no restrictions on their nuclear arsenals for the first time in half a century."
"we might have to look back on the period since the end of the cold was as 'nuclear intermission'"