University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation

In February 2021, the Biden administration announced that it would exercise Article XIV of the New START Treaty—extending the last remaining bilateral arms control agreement between the United States and Russia for five years. The announcement came against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving arms control landscape. The collapse of the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty and the U.S. withdrawal from the Open SkiesTreaty have led many to suggest that the existing arms control regime might be close to its end. Complicating matters arecgrowing calls for emerging military technologies like cyber andcartificial intelligence to be regulated by arms control agreements.

These developments beg several questions for both policymakers and academics: Why does arms control matter today? What are the near-term challenges to the existing arms control regime? And what are the possible paths forward for arms control?