The world has just found itself on the nuclear brink

Against the backdrop of the gradual disintegration of the international order that has existed since the end of World War II and the assertion of the politics of force in international relations, the world today finds itself at another dangerous crossroads.

The last nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, New Start, which was signed sixteen years ago in Prague by the then presidents of the United States and Russia, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, has expired. For Obama, this was a symbolic step in his quest for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Both powers still have the greatest nuclear potential, but no negotiations on their limitation or control are currently taking place.

Although Russia proposed extending the agreement by a year in September last year, the United States has not officially responded to this. US President Donald Trump only called it a "great idea" and in January only gave a vague hint that a new better deal could be created.

During the Cold War, the process of limiting and controlling nuclear weapons between the US and the Soviet Union was one of the dominant features of their mutual relations, which was mainly symbolized by the negotiations between their then leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. But now we find ourselves in a political vacuum.

This reflects the intensified competition between key global powers. Moscow sets conditions as a condition for further disarmament negotiations. In an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Medvedev, now Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, emphasized that Russia mainly wants respect for Russian security interests from the United States, which obviously means recognition of its sphere of influence not only in Ukraine.

Trump wants China, which he considers to be the main American challenger, to be a signatory to the new agreement. Beijing refuses to do so, even though it has more than doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal in recent years. However, it should be added that it still reaches only about a tenth of the American and Russian ones.

"If Trump and Putin do not reach an agreement in the near future, it is likely that Russia and the United States will start equipping their missiles with more warheads," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. This is a latent threat of a resumption of the global arms race.

India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel, which have nuclear weapons even though they have not signed any international non-proliferation treaties, are certainly watching closely. This may be an impulse to further increase their nuclear potential.

The Doomsday clock hands managed by the non-profit organization Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which symbolically counts down the time remaining to a global catastrophe, have thus moved to 85 seconds to midnight this year, which is the closest to a global catastrophe in the history of their existence since 1947.

Miloš Balabán, Právo Daily