Marshal Billingslea, U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy for arms control on talks with Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on nuclear arms control, informs the press in Vienna, Austria, Tuesday, June 23, 2020.
(AP Photo/Ronald Zak)BERLIN American and Russian negotiators have concluded a round of nuclear arms control talks in Vienna, aimed at producing a new agreement to replace the New START treaty that expires in February the last remaining pact constraining the arsenals of the world's two major nuclear powers.
We both agreed at the termination of our talks that the strategic environment has changed significantly since the New START treaty was signed, he told reporters.
It became the last nuclear arms pact between the two nations after the U.S. last year scrapped the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia, a Cold War-era agreement that both sides had repeatedly accused the other of violating.
Of course we will not be left behind, but we seek to avoid this, and this is why a three-way nuclear arms control deal, in our view, has the best chance of avoiding an incredibly destabilizing three-way nuclear arms race.Billingslea said he wouldnt rule anything in or out but that the U.S. did not think Britain or France, with much smaller nuclear arsenals, should be included.