Today the only remaining nuclear non-proliferation treaty between the United States and Russia expired leaving the world open to a new nuclear arms race. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) was ratified by both nations in 2011 and capped the deployed nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia while encouraging transparency, communication, and accountability between the two nations.
Last September, Russia offered a year-long informal roll-over on the agreement to give both nations time to hash out a durable replacement to New START. The United States failed to make a formal response. The current Administration’s failure to respond allows the United States and Russia to unabatedly modernize and expand their arsenals, an escalation of nuclear brinksmanship that comes amid the rapid deterioration of trust and transparency in international relations. In response, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds from midnight, the shortest the Clock has ever been in its history.
This failure in international diplomacy is unacceptable. We must call upon our government to pursue an extension to New START at once and to act quickly to begin talks for a renewed agreement.
For decades, the Presbyterian Church has decried the development, testing, or hoarding of nuclear weapons, holding that any concept of nuclear warfare falls outside the bounds of a faithful conception of just war doctrine. Just war criteria such as “proportionality” or “discrimination” are impossible to satisfy in the use of nuclear weapons; therefore, nuclear arms are a direct violation of the sanctity of human life.
The PC(USA) has advocated for the complete dismantling and abolition of nuclear weaponry, declaring that “nuclear war is totally unacceptable as a solution to human problems.” (195th General Assembly, 1983). Our faithful commitment to peacemaking compels us to abandon national interest and rather “seek the good of all humanity and not just of ourselves.” (192nd General Assembly, 1980) Repeatedly over the last few decades, the church has reaffirmed that we seek the good of all humanity by pursuing international treaties like New START which limit or dismantle the nuclear arsenals of the US and other major powers.
The world is less safe and less secure without strong international treaties controlling nuclear arms. Likewise it is further from God’s promised Shalom. We call on you to:
- Call for Congress to pass a framework for preventing a new nuclear arms race by passing H.Res. 317 and S.Res. 323. Learn more about these bills here.
- Call for the Administration to both accept the extension of New START and formally commit to the development of a comprehensive treaty to replace it.
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