The era of nuclear arms control officially ends this week. On Feb. 5, New START, the last such treaty between the United States and Russia, will expire. That doesn¡¯t necessarily mean that Washington and Moscow will begin deploying more than the 1,550 strategic warheads each that the treaty stipulated; both of them should and probably will observe the old limits for a while longer. Nonetheless, the moment is a milestone.
It marks the first time since the iciest days of the Cold War when no formal arms-control regime will limit the two atomic superpowers. In that way the expiry of New START is yet another step out of a world in which the great powers restrained themselves with rules and into a brave new world of anarchy, in which the only rules are the whims of strongmen.
On paper, a few vestiges of the previous era remain. Some 178 countries still abide by a multilateral treaty that bans the explosive (as opposed to computer-simulated) testing of fission or fusion bombs. And 191 states still subscribe, in theory, to The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (abbreviated NPT), in force since 1970. The signatories include the five powers with the largest nuclear arsenals, who in Article VI explicitly commit to negotiate ¡°in good faith¡± to achieve ¡°general and complete disarmament.¡±
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