U.S. President Donald Trump had a pre-election plan to show he had gotten something out of his mysteriously friendly relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
In the weeks before the election, the two men would announce that they had reached an agreement in principle to extend New START, the last remaining major arms control agreement between the two countries. It expires Feb. 5, two weeks after the next U.S. presidential inauguration.
Trump has long refused to sign off on a clean five-year extension of the agreement, a step that both leaders could take on their own accord. He has described the Barack Obama-era treaty as deeply flawed — the same thing he said about the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Iran nuclear accord — because it did not cover all of Russia’s nuclear arms or any of China’s.