Senior Policy Director John Erath spoke with CNN about U.S. claims that Russia is violating the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the last remaining arms control agreement between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.
John Erath, senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, emphasized to CNN on Tuesday that Russia’s noncompliance “doesn’t mean that they are building vast numbers of nuclear weapons secretly.”
“That’s not the part that they’re being found not in compliance with,” he said. “It’s the verification provisions.”
But he added that Russia is likely using its noncompliance as leverage to attempt to end the war on their terms.
“They have fixed on New START as a piece of leverage they have,” Erath said. “They know that we would like to see it continue, and we would like to see it implemented because everybody feels better when there’s a functioning arms control agreement.”
Russia, he continued, is “using their noncompliance as a way to gain a little bit more leverage so that we will say, ‘Oh, this war is threatening arms control, that’s important to us. Hey Ukrainian friends, don’t you think you’ve done enough? How about stopping?'” Read more
