In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to seek a world without nuclear weapons. While he delivered on his promise to negotiate a New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia a year later, progress has since stalled.
To break the deadlock, the current bilateral framework for negotiation, which has remained largely unchanged since the Cold War, must be transformed into a trilateral framework that includes China.
To be sure, such a move would significantly complicate negotiations. After all, while decades of bilateral dialogue have given the United States and Russia a good sense of each other's strategic perspectives — including the issues on which they disagree — China's perception of strategic stability is unfamiliar. But trilateral dialogues, catalyzed by skillful U.S. diplomacy, could also serve as an opportunity to manage the countries' strategic relations, which are characterized by contradictions and mistrust.