Jon Wolfsthal walks CBC host Jayme Poisson through what’s at stake as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty falls apart. “We ended the cold war once because the public cared about it … the hope is that we’ll do it again.”

The decision to withdraw from the INF was not based on a military necessity, but a political one. Jon Wolfsthal explains in The National Interest.

“Extending New START is a no-brainer. More nuclear weapons does not result in more security,” Derek Johnson, executive director of Global Zero, an international movement for the elimination of nuclear weapons, said in a statement emailed to Newsweek.

NPR’s Michel Martin asks Jon Wolfsthal, former director for non-proliferation at the National Security Council, if the U.S. withdrawal from a nuclear arms treaty spells a new arms race with Russia.

Thomas Countryman, a veteran U.S. diplomat who now chairs the Arms Control Association, said that “without the treaty, there is a serious risk of a new intermediate-range, ground-based missile arms race in Europe and beyond.”