A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
OPINION:
In global finance, companies try to hedge against “black swan” events — those that are rare, unpredictable and have potentially catastrophic consequences. The COVID-19 pandemic, the 2008 financial crisis and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks all come to mind.
To forestall another black swan, this one involving nuclear weapons, U.S. policymakers need to focus immediately on the New START treaty between the United States and Russia, which is set to expire in February.
The treaty, in effect since 2011, limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads and delivery systems each country may possess. It requires biannual exchanges of data regarding the size and location of nuclear forces, as well as on-site inspections. The agreement governs an estimated 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.
The impending expiration has received shockingly little attention, but this silence is dangerous. Although the treaty may have fallen off the global radar screen amid the churn of daily chaos, its expiration risks triggering one of the most consequential policy failures of our time: a renewed nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia.
From an economic perspective, nuclear policy is not about likely outcomes; it is about potentially catastrophic outcomes. Even a marginal increase in the probability of miscalculation or escalation carries costs so large that they outweigh almost any conceivable benefit. Arms control, at its core, is not about trust or idealism. It is about managing risk under uncertainty.
New START places limits on deployed strategic nuclear warheads and delivery systems while providing mechanisms for data sharing and on-site inspections. These provisions do not eliminate nuclear weapons, nor do they assume goodwill between adversaries. Instead, they reduce uncertainty. They allow policymakers to make decisions based on shared, verifiable information, rather than fear-driven assumptions.
That informational role matters more than is typically acknowledged. When transparency disappears, governments default to worst-case planning. Intelligence estimates replace verified data, and prudence gives way to unconstrained extremes. The result is predictable: larger arsenals, a surge in the nearly $1 trillion price tag that the Congressional Budget Office has projected for nuclear modernization and greater instability, without a corresponding increase in actual security.
Critics of Russia’s proposal for extension are quick to note, correctly, that Russia’s track record is far from reassuring. After its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow halted its participation in key transparency provisions of New START, including data notifications and on-site inspections. This move directly impaired U.S. ability to verify Russian compliance with the treaty’s numerical limits.
Although Russia has since expressed interest in extending certain limits, it has notably failed to pair those proposals with a restoration of inspection or data-sharing provisions.
This is not a trivial concern. Verification is the backbone of any meaningful arms control agreement. Without it, confidence erodes and skepticism grows. Acknowledging these failures should lead to better-designed agreements, not to abandoning arms control altogether.
The relevant comparison is not between a perfect treaty and a flawed one. It is between constrained competition and unconstrained escalation. A world without any nuclear limits or verification mechanisms is one where uncertainty reigns, incentives to overarm intensify and small misjudgments carry irreversible consequences.
Economists are trained to think in terms of trade-offs and external costs. Nuclear arms races are textbook examples of negative-sum games. Vast public resources are devoted to weapons that cannot be used without catastrophic consequences. These costs are incurred collectively, while the risks — accidental launch, misinterpretation, escalation — are imposed on people who have no say in the matter.
Moreover, nuclear risk is not evenly distributed. The damage of escalation would fall disproportionately on civilians and future generations. Policies that knowingly increase the likelihood of such outcomes are not acts of strength; they are failures of responsibility.
None of this is to suggest that arms control alone guarantees safety. It does not. Yet rules, limits and verification mechanisms reduce the chance that fear and uncertainty drive policy. They make worst-case assumptions less necessary and costly miscalculations less likely.
Allowing New START to expire without a replacement would signal a retreat from risk management at precisely the moment when it is most needed. In a world of nuclear weapons, restraint is not weakness. It is recognition that when the downside risk is existential, even imperfect institutions are better than none at all.
• Abigail R. Hall is a senior fellow with the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, associate professor of economics at the University of Tampa and co-author of the book “How to Run Wars: A Confidential Playbook for the National Security Elite.” Patrik S. Ward is an economics student at the University of Tampa and a member of the Adam Smith Society.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.