UNITED States President Donald Trump said he had a long talk of more than an hour with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Friday on a wide range of world issues, the most important of which was the possibility of a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to further limit the number of nuclear warheads that continue to exist in the world today.
The first such treaty was signed in 1994 by then President George Bush of the US and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The USSR came to an end in 1991, but its nuclear warheads passed on to the Russian Federation. START was renewed in 2001, and again in 2011 by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. The 2011 treaty will expire in 2021.
At the height of the Cold War before the dissolution of the USSR, there were an estimated 40,000 nuclear warheads with a total of 13,000 megatons, according to a report of the United Nations in 1980. In 1983, there was a near outbreak of nuclear war when a Soviet warning station reported five incoming Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) but the Soviets were able to confirm the error in time.
Today, aside from the 40,000 nuclear warheads held by the US and Russia, there are hundreds in the hands of Israel, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, and Pakistan. The START treaties between the US and Russia limited these warheads to 1,550 in the hands of the two nations, but any nuclear exchange would have billions of casualties, not just from the initial blasts but also from the “nuclear winter” that could last for decades.
This is why the nations around North Korea, including the Philippines, have been so concerned over Kim Jong-Un’s threat to bomb the US, which would invite US retaliation, and the resulting exchange would kill billions.
The report that Trump and Putin had a long conversation on US-Russia relations, including a new nuclear agreement, is therefore welcome news to the entire world. For these two nations by themselves still have 1,550 nuclear warheads ready to be fired from nuclear submarines and land-based silos.
We also hope that Trump and North Korea’s Kim will be able to resume their long-delayed talks for an agreement that will end the nuclear threat from North Korea. Kim was reported to have resumed tests for short-range ballistic missiles. But he is believed ready to end testing of all kinds as soon as President Trump gives the word.
