The Post–New Start Legal Vacuum: A Comparative Analysis Of State Responses To The Collapse Of Bilateral Nuclear Arms Control
Dr. Nitish Kumar Sharma, Bahra University, Waknaghat, District Solan, Himachal Pradesh
ABSTRACT
On 5 February 2026 the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) expired without a successor instrument, leaving the United States and the Russian Federation without any legally binding numerical limit on their strategic nuclear arsenals for the first time in more than five decades. This paper undertakes a comparative doctrinal analysis of how the principal nuclear-armed states, together with relevant multilateral institutions, have characterised and responded to this legal vacuum. Drawing on official statements issued in the immediate aftermath of the treaty's lapse, the paper situates the Russian Federation's proposal for reciprocal, unverified restraint within the unilateral-declarations doctrine developed in the Nuclear Tests Case, contrasts it with the longer-standing, though similarly non-binding, status of China's no-first-use policy, and examines the United States' stated preference for a broader, trilateral, "modernized" treaty. The paper argues that the shift from a verified bilateral treaty regime to a patchwork of unilateral political commitments illustrates the structural fragility of contemporary nuclear arms control law, and that the residual obligation to negotiate disarmament in good faith under paper VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, while doctrinally intact, offers limited practical constraint in the absence of a negotiated instrument. The paper closes with proposals for a verification-capable successor framework.
Keywords: nuclear arms control; New START; NPT paper VI; unilateral declarations; strategic stability; comparative international law.
