How the 2026 National Defense Strategy Reshapes the Future of Arms Control

The 2026 National Defense Strategy represents a sharp change in 50 years of United States arms control and non-proliferation policy. An ontological change in the management paradigm of multilateral treaties and verification to unilateral capability and denial. Traditionally, U.S. policy rallied on multilateral and bilateral treaties such as New START or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that aimed at limiting the number and nature of weapons by mutual consensus. The 2026 NDS is based on the doctrine of Flexible Realism that the stability of the international system will be guaranteed not by diplomatic negotiation but rather by the concept of peace through strength. This approach argues that a true balance is created through developing excessive military dominance, especially in the nuclear and defense-industrial arena, to the level of effectively disarming or putting off competitors. The US 2026 NDS suggests a break with legally binding arms-reduction treaties, where security is ensured by a powerful, secure, and efficient nuclear arsenal, along with modern defense systems, including the Golden Dome to America by President Trump.

The 2026 NDS rejects the traditional arms control approach with China, as they mostly rely on verification. National Security Strategy gives up the quest to negotiate a New START-type treaty with China as it acknowledges the fact that China has been historically opposed it. Rather, it suggests a de-confliction-based strategic stability model with denial. The Department of War is planning to create military-to-military communication lines with narrow communications on what can be done to avoid accidents and how to deal with escalation, as opposed to negotiations on arms limits. Besides, the plan will be based on building a strong denial defense along the First Island Chain to manage the military balance. In this light, the diplomacy of arms control has not been reached by negotiating the denial of the missile arsenal of China but by making the offensive power of China diplomatically irrelevant, by establishing a posture of defence so powerful that the offensive strength of China would be rendered physically denied, and not diplomatically registered.

The radical response to the future of arms control, perhaps, lies in the approach to the Iran case, where the approach creates precedence to kinetic disarmament. The report mentions the success of Operation Midnight Hammer, which is said to have destroyed the nuclear program of Iran, as an example of unquestionable victory. It is a radical change of approach to diplomatic paradigms that have been promoted in the past decades, including the JCPOA, which aimed at freezing proliferation in exchange for sanction relief. The 2026 NDS also places military force as the main tool of counter-proliferation, sending a message to the rogue states that the United States has the will and the capability to single-handedly disarm them through precision strikes. The strategy, by positioning the destruction of the nuclear infrastructure of Iran as a precedent to be followed, implies that future arms control would be enforced by focused, decisive action instead of prolonged diplomatic talks, which would fundamentally shift the cost-benefit analysis of states seeking nuclear arms.

The arms-control environment with Russia and Europe is also transformed by the strategy in terms of decentralization of the burden of deterrence. When the United States chose to label Russia as a persistent yet manageable threat and by compelling its allies in NATO to take on the leading role of conventional defense of Europe with a new 5 per cent target on GDP expenditure, the latter sends a message that it is abandoning its conventional role as the main enabler of European security. This means that the relationship between future arms-control and Russia will be a European issue and not a bilateral U.S.-Russia issue. As the U.S. moves its interest to the Indo-Pacific and the homeland, Europe will likely experience a major military buildup to fight Moscow. This change might lead to a localization of arms control, in which European nations, with minimal U.S. aid, acquire regional intermediate-range forces to replace the failure of the INF Treaty to control, which would put regional stability under a pose of overwhelming local power, and not transatlantic treaties.

Lastly, the focus of the strategy on the U.S. Defense Industrial Base (DIB) of super-charging the system significantly changes the economic rationale of arms control. In the past, it was customary to have treaties to curb the destructive arms race; the 2026 NDS believes that the United States is able and even needs to out-produce its enemies. According to the strategy, which promotes a national mobilization and a resurgence as the leading arsenal in the world, the United States is planning to emerge victorious in any arms race by having better industrial capability. Herein, arms control is perceived not as a limitation to competition but rather as one of the stages of competition in which the United States is well placed to win. Re-shoring and the utilization of allied manufacturing by the United States aims to generate a surplus of military power that, in itself, acts as a deterrent. The 2026 NDS does not see this as a future in which arms control is a negotiated compromise between equals but rather a concession to the undisputed military and industrial power of the United States and its renewed alliances.