Lapse of last U.S.-Russia nuclear treaty ‘simply unacceptable,’ says Archbishop Coakley

As global tensions soar, the head of the nation’s Catholic bishops has denounced the lapse of a key nuclear arms agreement, while urging policymakers to hold to its terms. At the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV also made an urgent appeal for renewal. “The current situation requires that everything possible be done to avert a new arms race that would further threaten peace among nations,” he said at the end of his Feb. 4 public audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.

In his Feb. 3 statement, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, “The dangers posed by current conflicts around the world, including the devastating war in Ukraine, make the forthcoming expiration of New START simply unacceptable.”

Signed in 2010, New START limited the U.S. and the Russian Federation to 1,550 nuclear warheads each, allowing for on-site inspections and information exchanges. The treaty’s original 10-year term was mutually extended through Feb. 4, 2026.

With the last remaining bilateral agreement on nuclear arms between the two superpowers now expiring — and with little momentum on either side to seek a renewal of its terms — analysts have predicted an accelerated nuclear arms race.

“The path to unconstrained nuclear competition will be unimpeded,” warned Lynn Rusten — who helped to negotiate the original START and New START treaties — in a Feb. 3 assessment published by the Center for European Policy Analysis, of which she is a nonresident senior fellow.

Rusten, now an independent security consultant, previously served as senior director for arms control and nonproliferation on the White House National Security Council staff. She observed that with New START’s expiration, “for the first time in more than 50 years, the two countries possessing 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons will have no mutually agreed constraints on their arsenals, and no ongoing dialogue to manage their nuclear relationship and reduce the risk of nuclear war.”

On Jan. 27, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced its Doomsday Clock — an indicator of how close humanity is to self-destruction through its own technologies — to 85 seconds to midnight, noting “growing nuclear weapons threats, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence … multiple biological security concerns, and the continuing climate crisis” as “major factors” in repositioning the clock’s arms for 2026.

In his urgent appeal Feb. 4, Pope Leo said that the New START Treaty should not be “abandoned” without “effective follow up.

“It is more urgent than ever to substitute the logic of fear and distrust with a shared ethos capable of guiding choices towards the common good and to make peace a treasure to be cherished by all,” the pope said.

In his statement, Archbishop Coakley pointed to Pope Leo XIV’s prior comments on the New START Treaty to the Vatican-accredited diplomatic corps, the text of which has been cited by numerous U.S. bishops in a number of reflections and pastoral messages.

The archbishop quoted the pope, who had “specified the importance of renewing” the expiring pact, warning that ‘there is a danger of returning to the race of producing ever more sophisticated new weapons, also by means of artificial intelligence.'”

Archbishop Coakley also highlighted Pope Leo’s message for the World Day of Peace, nothing the pope had “cited St. John XXIII’s call for ‘integral disarmament’ that includes adopting a mindset which realizes that ‘true and lasting peace among nations cannot consist in the possession of an equal supply of armaments but only in mutual trust.”

“I call upon policymakers to courageously pursue diplomatic negotiations to maintain New START’s limits, opening pathways toward disarmament,” said Archbishop Coakley.

He added that “international policy disagreements, as serious as they are, cannot be used as excuses for diplomatic stalemates; on the contrary, they should spur us on to more vehemently pursue effective engagement and dialogue.”

Archbishop Coakley’s message builds on a long-running series of messages from the U.S. Catholic bishops over the past four decades urging disarmament, bans on nuclear testing, diplomacy and dialogue as means for establishing international peace.

“I call on people of faith and all men and women of good will to ardently pray that we, as an international community, may develop the courage to pursue an authentic, transformative, and lasting peace,” said the archbishop. “May the Prince of Peace enlighten our hearts and minds to pursue peace around the world in a spirit of universal fraternity.”rince of Peace enlighten our hearts and minds to pursue peace around the world in a spirit of universal fraternity.”

Courtney Mares contributed to this story from Rome.

This story was updated Feb. 4 at 8:35 a.m.

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