Save New START- Nuclear Arms Treaties Must Not Expire

Letting New START expire would end more than a treaty — it would end the last remaining restraint on nuclear escalation.

By Leah Yanaton

On 5 February 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) — the last remaining arms-control pact between the United States and Russia — is set to expire. Moscow offered to Washington to voluntarily extend it for a year, but Trump recently shrugged it off and told the NYT, “If it expires, it expires.” POTUS has also recently been in the headlines for saying that he doesn’t believe he is required to follow any laws except his own morality, accountable to no one.

I often think about the pre-election livestreamed conversation between Trump and Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX is now in charge of orbital dominance for the U.S. Space Force over planet Earth. When Trump expressed fear of nuclear disasters like Fukushima, Musk responded by defending nuclear energy, despite the fact that a country that has the ability to create and maintain nuclear-power facilities is technically capable of creating nuclear weapons, and despite the fact that we still do not have the technology to remediate (detoxify) nuclear waste.

Musk went even further, minimizing the danger of nuclear weapons themselves. During the conversation which took place 11 August 2025 (just three days after the 80th anniversary of the nuclear attack on Nagasaki), at an hour and 17 minutes Musk said, “It’s like, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re like full cities again. So it’s really not something that, you know, it’s not as scary as people think, basically. But let’s see.”

No. We do not ever want to see nuclear weapons used again. The basis of any valid moral system means doing everything you can to minimize the harm you cause to others, and making amends for the harm you do cause. Nuclear weapons are designed to destroy entire cities.

Those who survive the initial blast endure slow, excruciating deaths from radiation sickness, burns, cancers, and generational genetic damage— as did so many in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is nothing “not as scary as people think” about this.

Recently, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at SpaceX announced that Elon Musk’s Artificial Intelligence software GROK, from Musk’s private corporation xAI, will be integrated into Pentagon networks. Hegseth said:

“I demand and we demand that we arm our war fighters with overwhelming and lethal technology right now… This strategy will unleash experimentation, eliminate bureaucratic barriers, focus on investments, and demonstrate the execution approach needed, to ensure that we lead in military AI and that it grows more dominant into the future. In short, we will win this race.”

The only race being fueled in the planet’s current poly-crisis is the race to extinction, where there are only losers. The current push by the Department of War to accelerate AI-driven warfare alongside the development of new nuclear weapons eerily echoes the War Room scenes in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, where General “Buck” Turgidson treats mass murder and nuclear holocaust as a logistics problem and a branding opportunity. Reality is stranger than fiction when today’s enthusiasm for automation, speed, and “dominance” mimics satire like in Kubrick’s dark comedy. When machines shorten decision time and leaders prioritize advantage over restraint, the system begins to outrun moral judgment.

It was only a few Presidencies ago in 1985 when the U.S.A. under Reagan reached a joint agreement with Soviet leader Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The dialogue implied that neither side would seek military superiority, with the intention to lower the risk of catastrophic conflict and to advance arms-control negotiations.

From survivors of nuclear tests on American soil — in New Mexico to Nevada to San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point Shipyard — to communities across the Pacific, from the Marshall Islands to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are innocent victims who experienced the horror of nuclear weapons. Their testimonies exist. Their pain is documented. Their warnings are clear:

“On the roads I saw thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children fleeing the hell of Hiroshima. All of them, without exception, were covered with terrible wounds. Their eyebrows were completely burned off. On their faces and hands the skin was burned too and hung in strips. If many of them held their two arms stretched toward the sky, it was purely to try and calm the pain. These unfortunate creatures had their whole bodies swollen up, like drowned men who have been a long time in the water. Their eyelids were swollen so that their eyes were completely shut, while the skin all around was bright red. They were all blind…Most of them were naked to the waist…girls completely naked, women without a hair on their heads, an old woman with both arms dislocated, walking along with them hanging by her sides, the flesh, burnt as if on a grill, came away from the bones; blood was flowing abundantly and a yellow liquid like fat mingled with it…There wasn’t a single person who wasn’t wounded. A woman was lying on the ground, her head split open horizontally. The whole inside of her head was red, like a watermelon. In spite of this horrible wound the woman was still alive and crawled along the ground, leaving behind her a long red streak…”

 — part of the statement of Mrs. Yoko Ota, a Japanese writer who put down this description shortly after the Bomb destroyed Hiroshima.

Survivors of nuclear weapons deserve to be listened to — not dismissed, not minimized, and not disregarded.

Nuclear weapons should never have been created, yet we live with their existence. If the New START treaty lapses, there will be no legally binding limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals. A new arms race would not make anyone safer — but it would make weapons manufacturers wealthier. According to The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), “The private sector earned at least $42.5 billion from their nuclear weapons contracts in 2024 alone.”

Companies positioned to profit include defense contractors and tech-military hybrids, many of which already benefit from massive government contracts. Elon Musk’s companies, particularly SpaceX, stand to gain further through expanded “orbital infrastructure” and defense systems. Trump’s proposal for an impossible “Golden Dome” missile defense system would funnel billions more into contractors like SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman — all while creating the illusion of safety rather than actual security — and leaving the working class impoverished and degraded. “Food, not bombs,” has been a persistent slogan among people who demonstrate for peace.

Letting New START expire would end more than a treaty — it would end the last remaining restraint on nuclear escalation. Secretary of War Hegseth announced that the U.S. military will “learn from failure” as a strategy — so wouldn’t it be efficient strategy to learn from the failures of dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and take the opportunity now to renew New START?

Contact your senators in writing or call your representatives at the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121, and urge them to support extending the New START Treaty before it expires on 5 February 2026. Without it, there will be no legal limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, triggering a costly and dangerous arms race. We need immediate diplomacy to preserve New START, as nuclear arms control is a present and urgent challenge.

Leah Yananton is a teacher, and a filmmaker and writer, with attention on biosphere dynamics, human connection, indigenous stewardship, nuclear disarmament, and the peace economy.