The Alliance for Peacebuilding’s Call to Action: Renew START Treaty Limits on Nuclear Weapons and Stop the Resumption of Testing
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 6, 2025
CONTACT
Nick Zuroski | nick@allianceforpeacebuilding.org
Washington, DC, USA — The Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP), a network of 250+ organizations working to prevent violent conflict and build sustainable peace in 181 countries, is joining the growing “call to halt and reverse a new nuclear arms race.”
AfP calls on the United States and Russia to commit to abide by the limits of the New START Treaty—the last remaining nuclear arms reduction agreement in place, set to expire in February 2026—and begin negotiating a follow-on treaty. Arms control agreements between the U.S. and Russia were critical in reversing the dangerous nuclear arms races of the Cold War. At a time of increasing and record-breaking global violent conflict, the world needs the U.S. and Russia to immediately renew arms control commitments. Further, to meet the moment, global leaders must initiate wider arms control talks involving China and other nuclear powers.
AfP is concerned about recent announcements from the U.S. and Russia that they are considering the resumption of nuclear weapons testing. Such testing would likely fuel a new destabilizing nuclear arms race and increase future conflict risks. Decisions by world powers to stop nuclear testing three decades ago were a profound achievement, as no country other than North Korea has tested nuclear weapons in the last 25 years. New testing would directly threaten citizens’ health and well-being; estimates suggest that nuclear testing in the 20th century contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans alone.
Today, nuclear weapons are once again becoming a significant threat to the future of peace and security. Many older Americans remember the widespread fear of nuclear war that hung over ordinary life for several decades, up to the 1980s. Leaders regularly talked about intercontinental ballistic missiles and global thermonuclear war on the news. Movies depicted the horror of nuclear conflict and fallout, with the 1983 film, The Day After, being viewed by more than 100 million people in the U.S., which accounted for almost half of the population. The “nuclear freeze” movement of the 1980s is credited with helping to end the nuclear arms race by raising public awareness and creating political pressure that contributed to a shift in the U.S.-Soviet relations and eventual arms control agreements.
In many ways, the peacebuilding field emerged from the anti-nuclear citizen and scientific movements of the Cold War. “AfP is committed to renewing critical collaboration between arms control and peacebuilding organizations so that we can build toward a broader movement,” says Liz Hume, AfP Executive Director. “To be successful, we need to rebuild a new peace movement that includes everyday peacebuilders and leaders who can champion commonsense policies to prevent and reduce this new, dangerous era in the nuclear arms race.”
The Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP), named the “number one influencer and change agent” among peacebuilding institutions worldwide, is an award-winning nonprofit and nonpartisan network of 250+ organizations working in 181 countries to prevent and reduce violent conflict and build sustainable peace. AfP cultivates a network to strengthen and advance the peacebuilding field, enabling peacebuilding organizations to achieve greater impact—tackling issues too large for any one organization to address alone.