The Biden administration’s renewal of New START, the strategic arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia, has drawn barely a yawn in Asia. That should surprise no one. Asia has long been marginal to a nuclear balance of power long defined by U.S. and Soviet (later Russian) arsenals.
It’s not just in Asia, of course, that interest in U.S.-Russian arms control has declined since the end of the Cold War. The sense of a perpetual confrontation between the two Cold War superpowers that could escalate into a nuclear catastrophe at a moment’s notice has eased. Even in Washington, nuclear arms control is no longer the all-consuming political preoccupation it once was. It is now a boutique issue in U.S. political discourse.
