CRS Report – Arms Control and Nonproliferation: A Catalog of Treaties and Agreements, August 25, 2022: “Arms control and nonproliferation efforts are two of the tools that the United States has occasionally used to implement its national security strategy. Although some believe these tools do little to restrain the behavior of U.S. adversaries, while doing too much to restrain U.S. military forces and operations, many others see them as an effective means to promote transparency, ease military planning, limit forces, and protect against uncertainty and surprise. Arms control and nonproliferation efforts have produced formal treaties and agreements, informal arrangements, and cooperative threat reduction and monitoring mechanisms. After the end of the Cold War, the pace of implementation for many of these agreements slowed during the Clinton Administration. The Bush Administration usually preferred unilateral or ad hoc measures to formal treaties and agreements to address U.S. security concerns. The Obama Administration resumed bilateral negotiations with Russia and pledged its support for a number of multilateral arms control and nonproliferation efforts, but succeeded in negotiating only a few of its priority agreements.The Trump Administration withdrew the United States from the INF Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty. It did not support the full five-year extension of the New START Treaty but did seek to negotiate a short-term extension during the latter half of 2020. These talks failed to produce an agreement. It also advocated discussions on a future treaty that would limit all types of U.S., Russian, and Chinese nuclear weapons, but most arms control analysts doubt that China would participate in this process. The Biden Administration supported the full five-year extension of New START and reached an agreement with Russia that took effect on February 3, 2021..The international community has also adopted a number of agreements that address non-nuclear weapons. The CFE Treaty and Open Skies Treaty sought to stabilize the conventional balance in Europe in the waning years of the Cold War. Other arrangements seek to slow the spread of technologies that nations could use to develop advanced conventional weapons. The Chemical Weapons and Biological Weapons Conventions mandate elimination of both types of weapons..”