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After New START: Strategic Stability Without Guardrails

As the expiration of New START draws closer, the future of strategic arms control looks increasingly uncertain. In this episode of The Nuclear Table, Dr. Ian Fleming Zhou sits down with Dr. Nikolai Sokov, a veteran arms control negotiator and former official in both the Soviet and Russian Ministries of Foreign Affairs, to examine what comes next when treaties erode but nuclear risks remain. The conversation explores why numerical limits without verification offer only fragile stability, how modernization programs and emerging “new strategic systems” complicate arms control, and why efforts to multilateralize negotiations particularly by bringing China into the fold remain deeply contested. Dr. Sokov also reflects on how complacency about nuclear war has replaced the urgency that once drove Cold War–era arms control, leaving today’s policymakers without the pressure or fear that once compelled restraint. As arms control infrastructure erodes and atomic anxiety quietly grows, this episode asks a central question: can strategic stability survive without guardrails or are we drifting toward a more dangerous future?