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The New START Treaty — the last arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia — is set to expire next week, unless President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin make a last minute decision to renew it. Letting the treaty expire would increase the risk of nuclear conflict and open the door to an accelerated nuclear arms race. A coalition of arms control and disarmament groups is pushing Congress and the president to pledge to continue to observe the New START limits on deployed, strategic nuclear weapons by the US and Russia.

New START matters. The treaty, which entered into force on February 5, 2011 after a successful effort by the Obama administration to win over enough Republican senators to achieve the required two-thirds majority to ratify the deal, capped deployed warheads to 1,550 for each side, and established verification procedures to ensure that both sides abided by the pact. New START was far from perfect, but it did put much needed guardrails on nuclear development that reduced the prospect of an all-out arms race.