Russia said today that it is still waiting for a formal response from the United States to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal that they jointly continue to abide by the last remaining Russian-American arms control treaty, New START, which expires in less than two months.

That treaty, which expires on February 5, sets a cap on the number of nuclear warheads the US and Russia can deploy, as well as on the deployment of surface and submarine-launched missiles and bomber planes that can carry them.

In September, Putin proposed voluntarily adhering for one year to the limits set by the (New) Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty on deployed strategic nuclear weapons.

Trump said in October that this sounded “like a good idea.”

“We have less than 100 days before New START expires,” noted Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu.

“We are waiting for an answer,” he added in remarks to reporters during a visit to Hanoi. Moscow’s proposal represents an opportunity to stop the “destructive trend” that currently exists in nuclear arms control.

Nuclear arms control at risk

Russia and the US together possess over 10,000 nuclear warheads, or 87% of the world’s nuclear weapons stockpile. China is the third-largest nuclear power with about 600 nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

The arms control treaties, concluded between Moscow and Washington, came about because of fears of nuclear war after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Greater transparency about an adversary’s arsenal was intended to reduce the margin of misunderstanding and slow down the arms race.

With an eye on China’s nuclear arsenal

Today, with all the major nuclear powers seeking to modernize their arsenals, and Russia and the West locked in strategic confrontation for more than a decade-including over NATO enlargement and Moscow’s war in Ukraine, treaties have all but collapsed, and each side blames the other.

In the new US National Security Strategy, the Trump administration says it wants to “re-establish strategic stability with Russia,” short for reference to the resumption of talks on strategic nuclear arms control.

Rose Gotemuller, who was the lead US negotiator for New START, noted in an article for The Arms Control Association this month that it would be beneficial for Washington to implement the treaty with Moscow.

“For the US, the benefit of this move would be to buy more time to decide what to do about the ongoing Chinese deployment without having to worry about new Russian deployments at the same time,” Gautemuller noted.