Can a President Let a Senate-Ratified Treaty Expire Without Congressional Approval?

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At midnight on February 5, 2026, the world’s last remaining major arms control pact expired. No replacement exists.

What makes this moment matter for how our government works isn’t the policy failure. It’s how it happened.

The Trump administration didn’t formally withdraw from the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. It let the clock run out. Russia had proposed a one-year extension in September 2025.

This raises a question that American constitutional law has never definitively answered: Can a president allow a treaty approved by the Senate to expire through inaction, with no congressional approval?

If presidents possess the power to act alone to let agreements lapse by declining to renew them—avoiding the political costs of formal withdrawal while achieving the same result—then the Senate’s constitutional role in treaty-making becomes largely ceremonial. The two-thirds approval requirement that the Framers embedded in Article II would constrain how agreements begin. But not how they end.

Dozens of other international commitments now face an uncertain future under an executive branch that has shown aggressive willingness to abandon long-standing agreements.

New START’s Verification Measures

New START represented the culmination of five decades of bilateral negotiations. The Senate ratified it 71 to 26, with thirteen Republicans voting yes.

More valuable than the numerical caps were the ways to check that both sides follow the rules. Regular short-notice inspections. Biannual data exchanges. The kind of transparency that gives each side confidence the other isn’t cheating, or at least early warning if they are.

That verification regime collapsed in 2023. Moscow suspended its compliance with New START. No more inspections. No more data sharing. The agreement became what arms control experts call a limit that only applies to one side—constraining U.S. capabilities while providing little assurance about Russian forces.

The Constitution’s Silence on Treaty Termination

The Constitution says absolutely nothing about how treaties end.

The Framers understood they were creating a process for negotiation and approval. They didn’t specify what should happen when either branch wanted out of an agreement later. As the Congressional Research Service explains, the Constitution is silent on who has the power to terminate treaties and how this power should be exercised.

The nineteenth century offered no clarity. Sometimes Congress terminated treaties through legislation. Sometimes the Senate alone passed resolutions authorizing termination. Sometimes presidents acted on their own, and sometimes Congress approved such action after the fact.

Beginning in the early twentieth century, presidents increasingly asserted the power to act alone to terminate treaties with no congressional involvement. President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002.

Congress mostly went along with it. Individual members objected, but no formal mechanism emerged to stop these withdrawals. No legislation passed to block them. No successful court challenges materialized.

This pattern of executive action and congressional passivity created what legal scholars call a widespread assumption that presidents possess built-in power under the Constitution to terminate treaties on their own.

Goldwater v. Carter: The Unresolved Case

The Supreme Court came closest to addressing termination in 1979, in Goldwater v. Carter.

The Supreme Court dismissed the case on procedural grounds. Four justices agreed with dismissal, but for different reasons and with different implications. Justice Lewis Powell suggested that if Congress had formally opposed Carter’s action through a resolution, the case might have been one courts are willing to decide. Justice William Brennan argued the case should have been decided on the merits in favor of presidential power.

The result was a splintered decision. The Court didn’t issue a clear ruling that future courts must follow on the underlying constitutional question.

Yet in subsequent decades, Goldwater has been cited as if it established that presidents possess built-in termination authority—even though no Supreme Court majority ever made that claim. The gap between what the case held and how it’s been interpreted has become a central concern for constitutional scholars.

Constitutional Arguments for and Against Presidential Power

Legal scholars remain divided on whether presidential termination authority has constitutional grounding or reflects congressional weakness.

The case for presidential power to act alone rests on several points. Article II gives the President power over foreign affairs as the single representative of the nation in dealing with other countries, which some argue inherently includes the power to unmake commitments. The President’s duty to ensure laws are followed might require flexibility to abandon agreements that no longer serve national interests. Practical effectiveness in foreign negotiations might demand the ability to move quickly in response to changing circumstances.

The competing argument emphasizes that the Framers required both the President and Senate to approve treaties. If they wanted presidents to terminate treaties on their own, they would have said so—as they did for other powers presidents can exercise alone. Treaties rank as high as federal laws under the Supremacy Clause, placing them on equal footing with federal statutes. Statutes can’t be repealed by presidential inaction. Congress must pass legislation to terminate statutory obligations. By this logic, treaties should require similar legislative action to terminate.

Some scholars propose the mirror principle—the same approval process should apply to ending a treaty as starting one—as middle ground. Senate-ratified treaties would require Senate approval to terminate, while deals the President makes on independent authority could be terminated on the same basis.

Other scholars question whether this principle is workable, noting that practical circumstances differ—an agreement might be negotiated over years, but exiting might require immediate action due to changed circumstances or breach by the other party.

Presidential Terminations Over Seventy Years

Over the past seventy years, presidents have terminated numerous international agreements with varying procedures and varying degrees of congressional involvement.

In 1979, Carter terminated the Taiwan defense agreement—the action that prompted Goldwater. Carter provided minimal notice to Congress. The Senate didn’t vote on termination. Many members viewed it as constitutional overreach, but no formal mechanism existed to stop it, and the courts refused to intervene.

Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002, relying on a withdrawal clause within it. He provided Congress notice but didn’t seek approval. Congress objected but took no formal action to prevent withdrawal.

In 2019, Trump announced withdrawal from the INF Treaty, claiming Russian violations. The U.S. provided required notice and formally withdrew in August. Congress didn’t pass legislation to block it.

Trump withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty in 2020 with no congressional approval, though the House Foreign Affairs Committee pointed out that the relevant statute required 120 days’ notice to Congress before withdrawing—a requirement Trump’s administration asserted was unconstitutional.

In 2018, Trump withdrew from the Iran deal despite objections from congressional Democrats and international allies. This agreement had never been formally submitted to the Senate, but it was a major international commitment. Trump abandoned it on his own.

One significant exception: Section 1250A of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which explicitly prohibited the President from withdrawing from the North Atlantic Treaty with no Senate approval. This represented the first statute in American history to prohibit presidential withdrawal from an agreement on the president’s own authority.

Active Withdrawal Versus Passive Non-Renewal

There’s a difference—at least formally—between actively terminating an agreement and allowing it to expire through non-renewal.

The Trump administration didn’t formally withdraw from New START. It ceased to exist when the extension period ended. Does the Constitution’s silence on termination authority imply anything about allowing agreements to expire through inaction?

Some scholars argue that passive non-renewal is fundamentally different from active termination. When a president provides notice of withdrawal under an agreement’s termination clause, the president is exercising an explicit power granted by the agreement itself. But when a president allows an agreement to expire by taking no action to renew it, the president arguably isn’t exercising a specific power. It ends according to its own terms.

Under this theory, the New START situation presents a different constitutional question than the Taiwan termination in Goldwater or the ABM Treaty withdrawal in 2002.

But this distinction may be more formal than substantive. As a practical matter, a president who declines to renew an agreement—especially when the other party has proposed renewal—is making a policy choice with the same effect as active withdrawal.

Rose Gottemoeller, who negotiated New START for the Obama administration, expressed frustration with this situation in her testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2026. Allowing it to expire avoided the constitutional question but created the same practical outcome: unconstrained arsenals.

If the Constitution requires something to terminate an agreement that the Senate approved, that requirement presumably applies regardless of whether termination is active or passive. Yet no court has been asked to resolve this question. Congress hasn’t formally asserted authority over non-renewal as a matter of constitutional principle.

Expert Reactions to Expiration

When New START expired, reactions from policy experts and former government officials reflected both the practical and constitutional significance of the moment.

Gottemoeller testified that the loss would allow Moscow to expand its deployed forces through rapidly moving warheads from storage to weapons ready to launch, presenting genuine military risk.

Admiral Charles Richard, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, took a different view. He expressed skepticism about extending it in the absence of restored verification measures Moscow had suspended. Richard testified that he “would not recommend a one year extension to the New START Treaty, absent verification procedures being reinstated,” arguing that inspections and data exchanges were essential to prevent it from becoming a one-sided constraint on U.S. forces.

Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts issued a statement urging the Trump administration to “work with Russia to replace New START” and warning that “the expiration of New START brings great risk for a dangerous and costly arms race.”

The UN Secretary-General called the moment “grave” for international peace and security, emphasizing that “for the first time in more than half a century, we face a world without any binding limits on the strategic nuclear arsenals of the Russian Federation and the United States of America.”

China’s foreign ministry expressed “regret” over the expiration but reiterated its refusal to participate in trilateral arms control negotiations, citing the disparity between its arsenal and those of the United States and Moscow.

The Informal Understanding Between U.S. and Russia

In early February 2026, Axios reported that U.S. and Russian officials had begun negotiations shortly before New START’s expiration. Trump administration envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner engaged with Russian representatives in Abu Dhabi. According to sources familiar with the discussions, the two sides were moving toward an arrangement whereby both would informally continue observing the central limits—1,550 deployed warheads and 700 delivery systems—with no formal, legally enforceable agreement.

An unnamed U.S. official stated the arrangement would not be legally formalized but rather “reached an understanding with Russia to engage in good faith and initiate a dialogue about potential updates.” Another source indicated the practical outcome would be mutual agreement to adhere to the stipulations “for at least six months, during which discussions on a new agreement would occur.”

This arrangement presents another constitutional puzzle. Can the President and a foreign leader make a commitment to adhere to numeric limits informally, with no Senate approval, and arguably with no explicit congressional authorization? Whether Congress possesses authority to constrain such an arrangement remains unaddressed. No congressional action was taken regarding the proposed understanding.

Implications for Other International Agreements

If presidents can allow major agreements to expire with no congressional approval or participation, the implications extend far beyond arms control. Numerous major international agreements have expiration dates or renewal provisions that could be similarly abandoned through presidential inaction. World Health Organization agreements. Various trade arrangements. Climate commitments. Other major accords all depend partly on presidential willingness to maintain them.

If the Trump administration has established that a president can effectively withdraw from Senate-approved agreements by allowing them to expire, future administrations might follow suit with other agreements they view as disadvantageous.

The declining use of formal Senate-ratified treaties has accelerated a shift toward deals the President makes on independent authority and political commitments that operate with even less congressional oversight. As fewer major agreements are submitted to the Senate for ratification—because presidents recognize that Senate approval is difficult to obtain—the agreements that do exist become more vulnerable to abandonment on the president’s own authority.

A secretary of state once noted that obtaining Senate approval has become “physically impossible” in the modern Congress, leading administrations to use alternative forms of international commitment that avoid Senate review altogether.

If presidents can also terminate agreements with no congressional involvement, the constitutional framework for shared authority becomes largely theoretical.

Why Courts Are Unlikely to Intervene

No member of Congress has filed suit challenging the Trump administration’s decision to allow New START to expire. No formal legislation has been introduced to compel renewal or to establish that congressional approval is required for expiration.

Under the political question doctrine, courts refuse to get involved in disputes between Congress and the President that the Framers assigned to the political branches. Goldwater relied heavily on this doctrine, with justices differing on whether the matter presented a political question.

More recent Supreme Court jurisprudence suggests this doctrine has narrowed. Cases like Zivotofsky v. Kerry, while acknowledging the President’s leading role in foreign policy, have suggested courts can address constitutional questions about the scope of executive power, even when foreign affairs are involved.

Some scholars argue that if Congress were to challenge a presidential termination through legislation—as it did with the North Atlantic Treaty provision in 2024—a court might be willing to address the constitutional question.

But the burden of bringing a justiciable case is substantial. Congress would need to pass legislation requiring Senate approval for termination. The President would need to violate that legislation. Someone with a direct interest in the case would need to sue. Absent those conditions, courts will likely continue to defer to the political branches.

The Constitutional Gap

The New START situation illuminates a larger constitutional concern: How the Constitution divides power over agreements is precise on entry—requiring presidential negotiation and Senate approval—but silent on exit. This gap has let presidents claim they can act alone while Congress has mostly gone along with it, creating the appearance of settled law in the absence of actual constitutional resolution.

The Framers’ silence on termination may have reflected assumptions that haven’t held up. They may have assumed presidents wouldn’t lightly abandon commitments the Senate had approved. They may have assumed international agreements would be relatively rare and stable. They may have assumed the President and Senate would cooperate in managing the nation’s international commitments.

The modern reality is clear: presidents have increasing power over international commitments while Congress’s role has been systematically eroded, not through formal constitutional amendment but through changes in practice that courts have been unwilling to contest.

The Unresolved Question

As of February 2026, the constitutional question about presidential termination authority remains unresolved. No Supreme Court precedent that future courts must follow establishes that the President may on his own authority terminate Senate-approved agreements. No statute explicitly prohibits it, except in the specific case of the North Atlantic Treaty. Congressional assertion of a role in termination has been sporadic and inconsistent. Legal scholars remain divided on what the Constitution requires.

Meanwhile, the practical consequences of New START’s expiration unfold. The United States and Moscow, possessing approximately 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, now operate with no legally enforceable limits on deployed strategic warheads. Both nations possess the capability to deploy warheads rapidly. The absence of verification provisions eliminates the transparency that had existed for more than a decade. Arms control analysts warn of a peacetime arms race on a scale not seen in decades.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, framed the underlying issue: “For the first time in 54 years, the United States and Russia will have no framework to regulate our respective nuclear forces.”

That period of continuous frameworks represented a commitment to negotiated constraints on the most destructive weapons known to humanity. The ability of a single president to end that commitment, through action or inaction, with no formal congressional involvement, raises fundamental questions about whether the Constitution’s allocation of power retains any meaningful restraint.

The Senate must approve treaties by a two-thirds majority before they take effect. But a president can let them die by doing nothing. And no one—not Congress, not the courts, not the constitutional scholars who’ve been warning about this for decades—has figured out how to stop it.

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