The U.S. is weighing a face-saving strategy for keeping an Obama-era nuclear treaty from expiring while it pursues a more sweeping arms pact with both Russia and China, according to current and former Trump administration officials with direct knowledge of the deliberations.

Under the plan, the White House would temporarily extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty while seeking a new agreement with Moscow that also tries to convince China to come to the table, they said.

The diplomatic formula is viewed at the U.S. State Department and National Security Council as a promising way to both prevent the New START from expiring in February and getting Russia to agree — at least in principle — to more comprehensive limits on nuclear arms.

“Both approaches are available, or a mix thereof,” said a State Department spokesperson who asked not to be named.

New START is one of the last remaining pacts aimed at keeping the world’s largest atomic arsenals in check. But concerns have grown among Republicans and Democrats that President Donald Trump could walk away just as he has jettisoned the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia and the Obama-era nuclear pact with Iran.

The administration’s potential approach has gained traction in recent weeks as the Trump administration faces growing criticism that Trump’s goal of negotiating a broader nuclear treaty with both Moscow and Beijing before New START expires is unrealistic and, if it fails, risks igniting a full-blown nuclear arms race.

“There are a host of options or steps that could be taken to accomplish the president’s direction, some of which could be done in fairly short order,” said an administration official also involved in the deliberations. “There’s not a one-size-fits-all model.”

Arms control experts raised a number of questions and concerns, noting that the approach still poses a risk to New START with no guarantee that any follow-on pact would be as enforceable.

But it also has intriguing possibilities, said Jon Wolfsthal, who oversaw nuclear policy on the National Security Council in the Obama administration.

“A six-month extension to buy yourself some time to negotiate something new with the Russians — and call on the Chinese to join — inherently isn’t bad,” said Wolfsthal, who is now a senior adviser to Global Zero, a disarmament group. “It might be a way to square the circle — if you can also be sure that the next administration has the leeway to extend [New START] more.”

New START, which was signed by President Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin in 2010 and ratified by the Senate, limits strategic nuclear arms on both sides to 1,550. It also includes detailed verification measures such as on-site inspections to ensure both sides are complying.

Russia said publicly late last year it is willing to extend the treaty the full five years without preconditions. So far, the Trump administration has insisted that the treaty is flawed because it doesn’t cover a series of nuclear arms in the Russian arsenal such as tactical warheads.

The U.S. has not committed to an extension of the treaty and says Trump instead wants to replace it with a more comprehensive agreement that covers more classes of weapons to include stringent verification measures.

“This is crucial because we’re talking about two countries with abysmal track records in terms of treaty compliance,” Marshall Billingslea, Trump’s special envoy for arms control, recently told the Washington Times. “Russia has violated nearly every single agreement we’ve ever had with them — and the Chinese stand in violation of a number of agreements that they’ve also signed.”

Officials said the first element of the strategy now under serious consideration would be an extension of New START, but for a significantly shorter duration that the maximum five years permitted under the treaty.

Wolfsthal said one major issue is whether the treaty could legally be extended again if the U.S. and Russia — not to mention China — failed to reach any follow-on agreement before the New START extension ran out.

“Could you have multiple extensions as long as those multiple extensions don’t exceed a five-year period?” he asked. “There is some concern that this administration, in order to kill New START, would say we are going to extend six months, but then you burn your bridge. Others are saying, ‘No, you can extend for six months and then extend for four-and-a-half years or three years, as long as the extension periods don’t total more than five years.'”

An even more controversial move would be to pursue a new agreement with Moscow that doesn’t clearly spell out how compliance would be guaranteed.

A former government official who closely tracks nuclear policy described the administration’s evolving thinking as reflecting a growing reality that this late in the president’s term — and as relations with Russia and China continue to suffer — the administration is not likely to be able to achieve the kind of historic diplomatic breakthrough Trump has been promising.

“I don’t think anybody ever thought they were going to get an official deal but they wanted at least [a] gentleman’s agreement,” the former official said. “I’ve heard that used many times in terms of what they want to get from the Russians.”

The administration could seek a “one-year or two-year extension of the treaty while they get something — a gentleman’s agreement is probably too light, I think they wanted something in writing,” the former official explained. “But it wouldn’t be a binding legal document. I think it would just be in principle.”

Added the State Department spokesperson: “It doesn’t necessarily need to look just like New START.”

Some officials have held out the prospect of a follow-on agreement more akin to the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, also known as the Moscow Treaty.

Signed by Putin and then-President George W. Bush, it called for further cuts to nuclear arms on both sides but was less prescriptive than similar treaties and included fewer constraints on how each side could carry out its commitments. Some critics used its acronym to call it the “sort of” treaty.

But a major element at the time was that START I, which predated New START, was still in place for seven more years, and the Moscow Treaty was able to piggyback on its verification measures.

“You still had inspectors on the ground in both countries,” said Wolfsthal. “You still had a fence around their missile production facilities and X-rayed what went out. The intelligence community could certify that we have high confidence that Russia’s was complying with the Treaty of Moscow because of the START verification provisions.”

Without new verification procedures, a short extension of New START would unlikely offer such backup — and that gives arms control advocates pause.

“Gambling with the benefits that New START provides on a very low-odds-of-success bet that a short-term extension will convince the Russians and the Chinese to come to the table and meet our terms does not strike me as a smart or responsible approach,” said Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association.

The State Department, however, says it hopes to restart talks with Russia as soon as possible and reiterated its invitation for China to join the discussions.

“Russia has stated that it has no preconditions to extension, which is a position that we will remember,” said the spokesperson. “In December 2019 we separately formally invited China in good faith to begin a strategic security dialogue on nuclear risk reduction, arms control, and their future. We hope to begin this as soon as possible. We await Beijing’s response.”

But the biggest immediate question, says Wolfsthal, may be whether Trump can be convinced to take the first step.

“The central question is whether there is a way to convince Trump to extend an Obama treaty,” he said. “There is a lot of doubt about that.”

Lara Seligman and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.

BERLIN — If Angela Merkel’s sudden embrace of a €500 billion debt-fueled fund to help Europe’s coronavirus recovery came as a surprise, her success in winning the endorsement of her own conservative party for the plan was a jaw-dropper.

For years, German conservatives railed against proposals in Europe that carried even the slightest whiff of joint liability for debt.

“We’re not going to overcome chronic indebtedness by dividing the debt amongst ourselves,” Horst Seehofer, then-leader of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (and current German interior minister) said at the time of the eurozone crisis. Then-Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen responded to a worsening of the crisis in 2011 by suggesting Germany demand gold reserves or stakes in industrial companies as collateral for any loans to fellow euro members.

Though Merkel shot down von der Leyen’s idea, the chancellor was hardly a pushover when it came to spending German treasure on eurozone weaklings.

Times have changed.

Conservative leaders say they have few qualms about accepting the common debt issuance as it doesn’t entail the kind of large-scale mutualization they so feared during the Greek crisis.

Merkel’s conservatives have put their weight behind the Franco-German plan presented on Monday — which would move the EU one step closer to a bona fide fiscal union — with almost no questions asked.

“We support Chancellor Merkel and President [Emmanuel] Macron’s joint initiative as a major contribution to European solidarity in the corona crisis,” the Christian Democratic Union’s parliamentary group said in a statement, released during the Merkel-Macron press conference.

“This is a process and it’s important that Germany and France take a common position,” Andreas Jung, deputy leader of the CDU parliamentary group, explained on German public television Tuesday.

Even Friedrich Merz, a prominent fiscal conservative who is running for the leadership of the CDU, praised Merkel and Macron for “a very good proposal.”

Conservative leaders say they have few qualms about accepting the common debt issuance as it doesn’t entail the kind of large-scale mutualization they so feared during the Greek crisis.

“This proposal shows that European solidarity can work without mutualization of debt,” Ralph Brinkhaus, the leader of the CDU parliamentary group, told Der Spiegel.

At least when it’s old debt.

Countries would not be allowed to use the money in the fund to repay existing obligations, which in Italy’s case totals about €2.5 trillion. The bonds sold to seed the fund would be issued in the name of the EU. That means individual members would only be responsible for repaying their own share (to be determined by the European Commission) and not liable for others’ portions.

At least in theory. It’s hard to imagine that Germany (even if it’s not legally bound) would allow the EU to default on the bonds if Italy or Spain couldn’t pay what they owed. The fallout would be too damaging. Such concerns are just one reason German conservatives rejected similar plans in the past.

So why did Germany’s conservative bloc go from being the scourge of southern Europe to its enthusiastic savior? In a word, business.

Unlike the euro crisis, which triggered dramatic turbulence in financial markets but left German industry unscathed, the corona pandemic threatens Germany’s own economic stability. The nations in the eye of the euro crisis storm, such as Portugal and Greece, were not key German trading partners. The countries in focus now — especially Italy — are a different story.

Italy is Germany’s fifth-largest trading partner with a total trade volume of more than €125 billion last year. Major German car companies and machinery makers rely heavily on suppliers in Italy’s northern industrial corridor. Permanent damage to those supply chains could also do irreparable harm to German industry.

That’s why German industry, traditionally close to the CDU, has been one of the loudest voices urging Berlin to push ahead with the recovery fund.

“The EU’s response should be unprecedented,” said Dieter Kempf, president of the Federation of German Industries, the country’s most powerful business lobby, in a joint statement with his counterparts from Italy and France last week. “In order to limit the damage to business and society from this crisis, we need a strong financial policy response with a strong show of solidarity for the hardest-hit countries.”

While Merkel appears to have secured the support of key conservatives, and the leaders of the Bavarian faction, her proposal has met with some resistance on the backbenches. Whether those voices, which are louder than they are influential, can mount a conservative uprising is doubtful, however.

For once, the rest of Europe needn’t worry about Berlin’s backing.

The German chancellor is riding high at the moment, with both her personal ratings and those of her party at their highest levels in years.

That’s why the opposition is unlikely to have much luck in derailing the proposal either. The liberal Free Democrats are sticking to their longstanding position that debt mutualization is a no-go. But with the party polling at just 6 percent in opinion polls, its influence is limited.

The far-right Alternative for Germany might have had more luck mounting a counterattack if it weren’t consumed by a civil war over some leaders’ ties to neo-Nazi elements.

For once, the rest of Europe needn’t worry about Berlin’s backing.

Want more analysis from POLITICO? POLITICO Pro is our premium intelligence service for professionals. From financial services to trade, technology, cybersecurity and more, Pro delivers real time intelligence, deep insight and breaking scoops you need to keep one step ahead. Email pro@politico.eu to request a complimentary trial.