Arms control Putin-style goes nowhere

Putin’s offer to extend New START reflects a deeper struggle to achieve recognition for Russia’s status as a global power and a peer competitor to the United States. The Kremlin cannot, nevertheless, develop any innovative framework to address the rapid progress in aeronautics, space, and information/artificial intelligence technologies, which are increasingly foreign to its defense-industrial base. These constraints make performative gestures an important tool for projecting strength and relevance as “European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons” (The White House, December 4). This reality may compel Putin to resort to nuclear brinksmanship even more often.