The "New START" treaty was in the news. What is this treaty?

Option A is correct. New START was signed in Prague in April 2010 by Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev and entered into force in February 2011. It is a bilateral arms control treaty between the USA and Russia that replaced START I, which expired in December 2009. It caps each side at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed delivery vehicles.

• B is wrong. The East Asia Summit is a regional forum and has no energy security treaty of this kind.
• C is wrong. Russia and the EU have energy dialogues, but New START has nothing to do with EU energy security.
• D is wrong. BRICS is an economic grouping, and New START is not multilateral at all.

Core concept: strategic arms control and nuclear deterrence stability. For Mains GS-2 and GS-3, this links to India's position on disarmament and the NPT regime, and to the erosion of arms control architecture.

Note that Russia suspended its participation in February 2023, and the treaty was due to expire in February 2026. Its 'in the news' status has changed since 2011.

Trap: candidates pick B or D because the answer seems to involve a regional or economic grouping. The words 'strategic' and 'nuclear' should anchor you to arms control, and 'bilateral' rules out multilateral options.