Expiration of New Start
Floor Speech
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Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague, Dr. Foster, for yielding, for organizing and hosting this Special Order hour, and for his leadership on nuclear nonproliferation issues.
In my many years as a Member of Congress, I have watched many a fiery floor speech filled with overstatement and hyperbole, grandiose pronouncements laced with exaggeration and puffery, but it is entirely right and proper to say that the expiration of the New START treaty will make the world and every inhabitant blessed to live on it less safe.
Formally, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, otherwise known as New START, caps U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals and underpins onsite inspections.
It is the latest in a series of treaties that have reduced the global nuclear warhead stockpile from a high of 70,000 in the mid-1980s to roughly 12,000 today.
Now that is meaningful, serious progress, but instead of building on that progress, we are weeks away from reversing those hard-earned gains.
On February 5, New START is slated to expire. That expiration will mean the end to limits or verification of the still-formidable nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia.
New START is by no means perfect, but removing these safeguards will create a vacuum, and we all know nature abhors a vacuum. Without these limitations, there are fewer constraints, fewer eyes, and fewer brakes on how Vladimir Putin expands and modernizes Russia's nuclear forces. In this wilderness, we would see a broader breakdown of norms on nuclear weapons.
Both the United States and Russia have openly mused about potentially restarting nuclear weapons testing. After we have worked so hard to bring some clarity to nuclear weapons regimes, we risk the steady erosion of the few safeguards against these terrible and awesome weapons, but the U.S. is not without options or agency.
If this expiration comes to pass, it is because we have allowed it to happen. Russia has offered to voluntarily maintain the New START limits for 1 year. We should take that deal not because we trust Vladimir Putin but because inspections and limits protect us, not him.
Arms control is neither an act of faith nor of naivety. It is an act of cold logic and discipline, a process that reduces the risk of miscalculation, escalation, and catastrophic error. The year will not only keep America and the world safer, but it will also give time to hammer out a new accord.
As the U.S. sits across the negotiation table, there should be no illusion. We know that Putin and his cronies in the Kremlin are adversaries of the United States. They would like nothing more for our Nation to falter, but they are also self-interested.
Both the United States and Russia benefit from a stable, controlled nuclear regime. That mutual self-interest lies at the heart of why New START was signed in the first place. To throw it all away would be a mistake of immense proportions.
While time is short, we can step away from the edge. I add my voice to a host of others calling on, pleading for, demanding action from the Trump administration.
I know the threat of nuclear weapons can often seem so large and abstract, so unimaginable that it becomes easier just to ignore it all, but to say nothing is not an option, especially for someone like me.
Many of my family, my distant family, were in Hiroshima on the day the atom bomb fell. That memory is not just historical. It is personal for me and my family.
Mr. Speaker, the atomic bombs of 1945 caused unimaginable horror. Some died instantly, many over subsequent days and months. Others suffered for the rest of their lives, afflicted with burns, radiation, and cancer.
The modern nuclear weapons of today are orders of magnitude more horrifying. It is incumbent on all of us to ensure that these weapons are never used again.
New START is a concrete step toward ensuring that future. It is one where no person--no man, woman, or child--lives under constant threat from nuclear annihilation.
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