The newspaper cites former officials and experts as outlining three possible paths forward:
1.
Greenlight for extension: Accept Russia’s offer to preserve the caps for a year, and then launch talks with Russia—and potentially China—on new arms-control agreements2.
Conditioned acceptance: Agree to Russia’s one-year extension of the ceilings only if Russia resumes on-site inspections3.
Rejection and free hand: Let the treaty lapse entirely and prepare for “the projected two-peer world”The third option risks triggering an unpredictable new arms race, the WSJ warns.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said that Russia is still waiting for the US to respond to President Vladimir Putin's proposal to informally extend for a year the provisions of the New START Treaty, which caps the number of deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 on each side. Putin stated last year that Russia is ready to continue observing START’s quantitative restrictions if the US “acts in a similar spirit.”