On February 5, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which set the upper limit for strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550 for both the United States and Russia, expired after its five-year extension period ended.
This means all nuclear arms control treaties between the U.S. and Russia have now been lost.
The governments of these two countries possess over 90% of the more than 12,000 nuclear weapons existing on earth.
They bear a special responsibility to implement agreements for the elimination of nuclear weapons, including the United Nations’ resolution on “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons” that was adopted after the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Abandoning this responsibility is absolutely unacceptable.
This situation starkly highlights once again that sticking to nuclear weapons and reliance on nuclear deterrence by the Trump administration and Putin’s Russia are the greatest obstacles to nuclear disarmament.
The key to breaking the current impasse lies in the development of the power of the governments and civil society that created the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which outlawed nuclear weapons and charted the path toward their total ban. Enhancing public opinion and movements, particularly within nuclear-armed states and their allies, is urgently needed.
In spite of the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings, the Japanese government relies on the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” while pursuing its own “extended nuclear deterrence” and massive military buildup. This runs counter to the global trend toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. The government must break away from the “nuclear umbrella” and join the TPNW.
Text provided by The Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyo)
February 6, 2026
Masakazu Yasui, Secretary General
