By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

How to Survive the New Nuclear Age

In 2009, when U.S. President Barack Obama came into office, nuclear weapons looked increasingly superfluous. As the Cold War faded into history, Moscow and Washington, the world’s two nuclear superpowers, had long been working together to reduce their arsenals. At the same time, after years of protracted conventional wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the broader “war on terror,” the U.S. defense establishment was far more preoccupied with counterterrorism and counterinsurgency than with nuclear strategy and great-power rivalry. The notion that any other country would attempt to reach nuclear parity with Russia and the United States seemed far-fetched, and American leaders were all too happy to delay an expensive refurbishment of the aging U.S. arsenal. So strong was the consensus that nuclear arms were a relic of a previous era that four top former national security officials—Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and William Perry, not one of them a dove—publicly called for “ending” nuclear weapons “as a threat to the world.”

A decade and a half later, things could not be more different. The United States now faces a Category 5 hurricane of nuclear threats. After decades of maintaining only a minimal nuclear capability, China is on pace to nearly quintuple its 2019 stockpile of some 300 nuclear warheads by 2035, in a quest to attain an arsenal equivalent in strength to Russia’s and the United States’. Far from being a partner in arms reductions, Russia is using the threat of nuclear weapons as a shield for its aggression in Ukraine. Meanwhile, North Korea continues to expand its arsenal, which now includes missiles capable of hitting the continental United States. Iran is closer than ever to producing a nuclear weapon. And in May, the world witnessed India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed powers, strike each other’s heartlands with conventional weapons in the aftermath of a terror attack, a confrontation that—already unprecedented—could have escalated to a nuclear standoff.

These multiplying threats have not just brought nuclear strategy back to the center of U.S. defense concerns; they have also introduced new problems. Never before has the United States had to deter and protect its allies from multiple nuclear-armed great-power rivals at the same time. Like Russia, both China and North Korea may integrate nuclear weapons into offensive planning, seeking a nuclear shield to enable conventional aggression against non-nuclear neighbors. Moreover, there is a growing possibility that two or more nuclear powers—for example, China and Russia, or North Korea and Russia—might try to synchronize military aggression against their neighbors, stretching the U.S. nuclear deterrent beyond its means. Finally, the rapid erosion of nuclear guardrails, the diplomatic architecture that has for decades limited proliferation and brought security to dozens of countries under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, has pushed some Asian and European allies to consider acquiring their own nuclear weapons. All this has happened in an era in which the United States’ antiquated nuclear arsenal has fallen into disrepair, with ongoing modernization efforts mired in delays and rampant cost overruns.

This coming nuclear hurricane poses far-reaching challenges. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, Washington will need to develop more, different, and better nuclear capabilities and begin to deploy them in new ways. Given the scale of the problem, nuclear concerns can no longer be treated as a niche issue managed by a small community of experts. Officials at the highest levels of government will need to incorporate them into core defense policy in each of the major theaters of vital interest to the United States: Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East. At the same time, Congress will need to back an accelerated effort to overhaul the U.S. arsenal with significant funding and give the project urgent priority, to be able to address not just today’s changing threat environment but tomorrow’s as well. Above all, for the United States to effectively handle a highly volatile and quickly changing nuclear order, nuclear affairs must once again become a central part of American grand strategy.

 

China’s Big Play

The most momentous shift in the global nuclear weapons landscape is China’s determination to become a nuclear powerhouse. As recently as 2019, the small Chinese arsenal scarcely factored into U.S. nuclear strategy. After first testing nuclear weapons in 1964, Beijing sought nuclear capabilities almost exclusively for defensive purposes and to be able to deter the United States (or the Soviet Union) from nuclear attack and “blackmail.” To achieve these limited goals, Beijing maintained a handful of unfueled intercontinental ballistic missiles and stored the warheads separately—an arrangement that required hours, perhaps days, to prepare the ICBMs for launch. This posture enabled a retaliation-only strategy, accompanied by a “no first use” pledge to the world. As a result, U.S. strategists, both during the Cold War and after, were able to set China’s nuclear forces aside as a “lesser included case” and concentrate on deterring the Soviet Union and its successor, Russia.

Sometime during the last decade, however, Chinese leader Xi Jinping ordered a breathtaking expansion of his country’s nuclear arsenal. Along with hundreds of new ICBM silos, the new force will include regional low-yield ballistic missiles (and possibly cruise missiles), hypersonic delivery systems, an orbital warhead-delivery system designed to evade U.S. missile defenses, and an expanding submarine-based deterrent designed to survive a nuclear first strike. Moreover, Beijing is building this arsenal even faster than Washington had initially anticipated: in just five years, it has doubled its number of operational warheads to 600, a figure that is estimated to reach 1,000 by 2030 and possibly 1,500 by 2035. As a result, the United States may soon face not one but two rival great powers with large, diverse strategic nuclear forces comparable to its own.

China’s nuclear rise poses a complicated dilemma for U.S. planners. Since the dawn of the nuclear age, American nuclear strategy has centered on convincing any adversary that there is no viable pathway to using nuclear weapons to achieve its political-military goals against the United States or any U.S. allies. This strategy has three parts. First and most important, the U.S. arsenal must be able to survive a first strike and impose assured destruction on its attacker in retaliation for such a strike. Second, to the extent possible, it needs to be able to meaningfully limit the amount of damage the attacker can inflict on the United States and its allies. To do this, the United States must maintain the capability to destroy as many of the attacker’s nuclear weapons as practicable before or after they are launched, a principle known as counterforce targeting. Thus, in addition to flexible regional nuclear options that can manage escalation, Washington needs highly accurate U.S.-based strategic nuclear forces that can threaten to destroy the adversary’s long-range arsenal, to prevent a limited war—wherein one or two nuclear weapons might be exchanged in theater as an escalatory step in an intense conventional conflict—from turning into a far more destructive one. The ability to limit damage is a core requirement of U.S. deterrence strategy and its nuclear guarantee to allies—that the United States could likely save Berlin without losing Boston. Third, the U.S. arsenal needs to be large and survivable enough to retain sufficient nuclear capabilities after an initial exchange to deter further attack by a weakened adversary or opportunistic aggression by one of the smaller nuclear-armed states. A nuclear force that is designed to meet these three goals with respect to only Russia, however, as the U.S. arsenal currently is, will be insufficient to do so against both China and Russia at the same time.

Adding to this problem is the specific composition of Beijing’s new arsenal. Had Xi’s nuclear expansion focused on building up survivable nuclear forces—for example, by placing more warheads on ballistic missile submarines—then U.S. strategists would mainly need to focus on enhancing antisubmarine tools. But Xi has chosen also to build hundreds of new silos for land-based ICBMs, which can be launched within minutes to devastate the U.S. homeland—a posture that seems designed to break U.S. strategy. For the United States to be able to credibly limit damage from China, it will need to account for each new silo. Moreover, the United States cannot assume, as some have argued, that Beijing merely wants a more credible assured retaliation capability. By acquiring new ICBMs and lower-yield short-range weapons, it could be fundamentally shifting the orientation of its nuclear strategy. For example, China could use lower-yield weapons “locally” in a battle against conventional forces, whether on the battlefield or to deter the United States from using similar capabilities if a Chinese offensive imperils U.S. conventional forces. The new ICBMs could also help China counter the United States’ ability to threaten strategic escalation. Given the number of new Chinese ICBM silos and their geographic spread, and China’s potential shift to a strategy that enables regional coercion, the United States will likely need a larger—and different—deployed nuclear arsenal to be able to deter both China and Russia in twin crises.

 

Danger At Every Corner

To make matters worse, China’s emergence as a major nuclear weapons state comes at a moment when Russia and other smaller nuclear powers have begun wielding their arsenals in far more dangerous and destabilizing ways. In recent years, Moscow has not only steamrolled over almost every arms control agreement with Washington but also made explicit nuclear threats against the West. In the fall of 2022, for example, when Russia’s front in southern Ukraine appeared at risk of collapse, Russia’s nuclear threats took on a new edge as its senior leaders credibly discussed using low-yield nuclear weapons to avoid conventional defeat. The U.S. intelligence community judged that the odds of such use were higher than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis—a “coin flip,” as one aide to U.S. President Joe Biden put it. The Biden administration urgently set out to convince Putin that using a nuclear weapon would have “catastrophic consequences,” and Putin decided not to test Western resolve—this time.

Nevertheless, the threat crystallized Moscow’s stakes in the conflict and forced the United States and its allies to carefully weigh the escalation risks of providing military aid to Ukraine. Moreover, there was no “the other guy blinked” moment, as U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk famously stated when describing the Soviets backing down to end the Cuban missile crisis: the threat of Russian nuclear use may have receded after the 2022 crisis, but the conditions that generated it have persisted and intensified. Since then, the Kremlin has suspended the 2010 New START treaty—which had brought the U.S. and Russian arsenals down to their lowest levels in 60 years. It has also revised its nuclear doctrine, clarifying that it would consider targeting nuclear-armed states, such as France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, that provide aid to a nonnuclear belligerent at war with Russia, such as Ukraine. Putin has begun to deploy Russian nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, and U.S. officials assessed that Russia may have a reckless plan to put nuclear weapons in space.

Notwithstanding Russia’s saber rattling, Washington and its European allies announced more expansive military support to Kyiv, including F-16s, new munitions, and missiles that would allow long-range strikes against Crimea and into Russian territory. The United States and NATO allies also suspended compliance with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe following Russia’s withdrawal in 2023, a step that allows a greater number of U.S., NATO, and other forces to be stationed closer to the Russian border if necessary. Amid heightened Russian nuclear rhetoric and growing risk-taking by both sides, the nuclear threat has become a permanent feature of the conflict. What’s more, Russia’s strategy in Ukraine has provided a possible playbook not only for China but also for North Korea for using the threat of a nuclear attack as a shield to enable increasingly ambitious regional aggression.

Indeed, the complexities of the emerging nuclear landscape go well beyond rising China and revisionist Russia. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is steadily expanding his country’s nuclear arsenal, seemingly disinterested in Trump administration efforts to reduce nuclear tensions in exchange for sanctions relief. In recent years, along with a newer generation of ICBMs capable of reaching U.S. territory, North Korea has added enough regional nuclear weapons to its arsenal to deter a combined U.S.–South Korean attack. North Korean strategists aim to convince Washington that it should not risk San Francisco to protect Seoul—that it should abandon South Korea to fend for itself. Meanwhile, Iran continues to advance its nuclear program, reducing the time required to sprint to a weapon to potentially days. Weakened by the dismantling of its network of proxy forces over the past 18 months, it may also feel more urgency than ever to weaponize its nuclear capability. If Israel and the United States conclude that the Iranian regime is about to cross that threshold, they might feel compelled to launch a preventive attack, possibly setting off a destabilizing regional war. Although the Trump administration has said it is open to a new nuclear deal with Iran, making progress will not be easy. Too much pressure could backfire, causing Iranian hard-liners to push for rapid weaponization. But readiness to compromise could embolden Tehran to continue its secretive, creeping progress toward a weapon, setting the stage for future war.

Yet another threat comes from Pakistan. Although Pakistan claims its nuclear program is strictly focused on deterring India, which enjoys conventional military superiority, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Pakistani military is developing an ICBM that could reach the continental United States. In acquiring such a capability, Pakistan might be seeking to deter the United States from either trying to eliminate its arsenal in a preventive attack or intervening on India’s behalf in a future Indian-Pakistani conflict. Regardless, as U.S. officials have noted, if Pakistan acquires an ICBM, Washington will have no choice but to treat the country as a nuclear adversary—no other country with ICBMs that can target the United States is considered a friend. In short, mounting nuclear dangers now lurk in every region of vital interest to the United States.

 

Nuclear Bullies, Anxious Allies

Although each of these rising nuclear antagonists poses a challenge in its own right, the possibility of coordination or collusion among them is even more worrying. To aid Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example, Iran has furnished the Russian military with drones; North Korea has provided at least 14,000 soldiers and huge amounts of munitions and has cemented a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Russia. In addition to giving North Korea a dependable Russian veto in the UN Security Council against any additional global sanctions, the growing Moscow-Pyongyang axis means that a conflict on the Korean Peninsula could draw in China, Russia, and the United States, with each supporting its respective ally—creating a true nuclear nightmare.

By far the greatest concern, however, is the growing alignment of China and Russia. In 2023, China provided Russia with approximately 90 percent of its imports of goods that are subject to the G-7’s high-priority export control list, according to a study by the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. Filling a massive import gap, this Chinese supply chain has helped Russia sustain its war economy and quickly reconstitute its depleted conventional capabilities. In return, Russia has helped China in strategic military domains such as space, missile defense, and early warning technologies—including a system that can detect an adversary missile attack from anywhere on the globe, a capability that only Russia and the United States possess.

Indeed, U.S. defense planners must now consider the possibility that Beijing and Moscow may try to synchronize aggression against their neighbors to further limit the U.S. ability to respond. If China attacks Taiwan while Russia is attacking eastern Europe, for example, U.S. forces would be split and stretched thin. Hypothetically, if it failed to deter Russia from using a nuclear weapon to further Moscow’s regional aims, the United States might need to respond with nuclear use, and potentially with a larger nuclear exchange if it is unable to reestablish nuclear deterrence in Europe. In such a situation, with overall U.S. deterrence weakened, China could exploit the moment to launch a conventional attack against its neighbors, or even be emboldened to use nuclear weapons to stave off the United States. Confronted with this two-war dynamic, given the current U.S. arsenal, a U.S. president might be compelled to back down in one or both fights, with catastrophic consequences for American and global security.

Amid these volatile developments, several non-nuclear states—including, for the first time this century, Washington’s allies—are contemplating developing their nuclear arsenals. For decades, a key pillar of American nuclear strategy has been extending the U.S. nuclear deterrent to at least 34 formal allies across two vast oceans, a responsibility no other power assumes. This policy was born not out of altruism but out of self-interest: the United States and its collective deterrent are stronger with the geography, capabilities, and political unity that allies provide. Fewer nuclear powers means fewer opportunities for nuclear use, a goal that has also allowed Washington to centralize alliance decision-making under its command.

With the rapid changes in both the global nuclear environment and U.S. foreign policy, however, some American allies have begun to question Washington’s ability and willingness to extend deterrence. South Korea—anxious about American abandonment—is now most likely to engage in nuclear proliferation, although some NATO powers could also be candidates. In Europe, the United Kingdom’s and France’s nuclear arsenals can compensate to some degree for reduced U.S. engagement. But these forces, even combined with additional non-nuclear capabilities, are not positioned to limit the damage that Russia can cause to allies and thus cannot credibly replace the nuclear umbrella offered by the United States. As a result, countries such as Poland or even Germany could decide to seek their nuclear weapons if they become convinced that the United States is no longer willing or able to protect them.

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The advent of more nuclear powers, regardless of whether they are U.S. allies, would open a Pandora’s box that Washington has fought for decades to keep closed. For one thing, the same nuclear powers these countries are seeking to deter—China, Russia, and North Korea—could decide to wipe out any emerging nuclear programs in a preventive attack. And even if a U.S. ally succeeds in acquiring nuclear weapons, its small arsenal would become vulnerable to more powerful adversaries as U.S. security guarantees fade, leading to growing instability. Consider South Asia, where India and Pakistan continue to engage in increasingly intense conventional strikes despite the ever-present threat of nuclear use, testing the limits of the so-called stability-instability paradox, wherein the existence of nuclear stability between two countries may increase the likelihood of conventional conflict. Moreover, if one U.S. ally—say, South Korea—developed nuclear weapons, it would likely encourage others, such as Japan, to quickly follow suit. This would deliver a damaging blow to an already fragile Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which has for decades served as a crucial brake on the spread of nuclear weapons. Keeping allies non-nuclear and preserving the treaty are core American interests—if nothing else, to prevent other states from starting, and dragging Washington into, nuclear wars that the United States has to finish.

 

Game Without Rules

Among the remarkable facts about the nuclear order in previous decades has been the general observance of formal and informal guardrails to limit the growth, spread, and use of nuclear weapons. Even at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States saw mutual benefit in verifiable strategic arms control. And after successful negotiations on shaping and limiting their arsenals in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the 1970s, the two countries began a series of agreements to massively reduce their military armaments, from the U.S.-Soviet Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987 to the U.S.-Russian New START Treaty in 2010. In this way, the countries managed a steady and precipitous reduction in their forces from the heights of Cold War military competition.

Today, these constraints are crumbling. Under Putin, Moscow has partially or fully abandoned many of the earlier agreements, and Beijing continues to refuse even discussing arms limits as it rapidly expands its arsenal. The looming 2026 expiration of New START, which limits Russia and the United States to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads each on intercontinental delivery systems, may be a crucial inflection point. Without a successor agreement, the United States could find itself in a full-blown nuclear arms race for the first time in half a century—this time with both China and Russia expanding their arsenals simultaneously. At some point, Beijing, Moscow, and Washington may come to recognize that limits on strategic arms are in their mutual self-interest. But for the foreseeable future, the United States may have to face unconstrained nuclear competition in which it is potentially outnumbered and outgunned and does not have the means to quickly even the odds.

The lack of guardrails makes the new nuclear age all the more dangerous. The United States has had to deter a great power with a similar nuclear arsenal before, but it has never had to deter two. It has assured allies against a single major nuclear adversary in Europe, but it has never had to assure distinct groups of allies, thousands of miles apart on land and sea, against two. The United States has worked to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to so-called rogue states since the end of the Cold War, but it has not previously had to stop nervous allies from pursuing them this century. Although there are no easy solutions to these multiplying threats, U.S. leaders can significantly mitigate them by making astute, yet still modest, changes to the arsenal itself and to the overall role of nuclear strategy in U.S. foreign and defense policy.

Watching a military parade in Moscow, May 2025

In theory, the United States is already upgrading its nuclear posture to address these challenges: for 15 years, the government has been committed to a trillion-dollar-plus nuclear modernization program to update the land-, sea-, and air-based weapons that constitute the U.S. nuclear “triad.” This includes replacing decades-old systems with more advanced alternatives: the 1970s Minuteman III ICBMs and Ohio-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines, for example, will be replaced by modern Sentinel ICBMs and Columbia-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines. The new B-21 stealth bomber will be equipped with a long-range nuclear stand-off cruise missile that can be launched at a target from outside an enemy’s air defenses. In 2024, fifth-generation F-35 fighters began carrying the modern B61-12 gravity bomb for regional deterrence in Europe.

Yet this overhaul was conceived in 2009, when the United States had not even anticipated, let alone accounted for, the nuclear expansions of China and North Korea. Thanks to its strategic arms control agreements with Moscow, Washington also assumed that global nuclear stockpiles would continue to shrink, and it did not even seek to replace the full number of legacy capabilities. Take the submarine-based nuclear forces, which are both the backstop of nuclear survivability—deterring an adversary from targeting the U.S. homeland—and also essential for targeting as many of an adversary’s ICBMs as possible. According to the modernization plan, the existing 14 Ohio-class submarines, which can (without New START limits) carry a maximum of 336 Trident ballistic missiles, are to be replaced by just 12 Columbia-class submarines with maximum capacity for only 192 Tridents—representing a launcher reduction of more than 40 percent, just as China completes its construction of hundreds of new ICBM silos.

Moreover, because of the low priority accorded to nuclear-armed conflict at the time, many parts of the plan started late, and further delays now mean that new capabilities are still years away and billions of dollars over budget. With the Sentinel ICBMs now likely ten years behind schedule, the legacy Minuteman III will need to be maintained until at least 2050, well beyond its designed life expectancy. Even if the United States completes the modernization as planned, the country’s arsenal will still be insufficient to confront today’s and tomorrow’s nuclear challenges.

 

More, Different, Better

The United States will need innovative approaches and a far more comprehensive strategy to manage the multiplying threats from China, North Korea, and Russia. Although the second Trump administration is pursuing an ambitious “Golden Dome” homeland missile defense architecture, the plan comes with risks of its own. Not only will it take decades to be fully realized and cost hundreds of billions of dollars that could be spent on other capabilities, but it may also spur adversaries to cheaply build and deploy more warheads and decoys, as well as more destabilizing exotic technologies, to potentially evade and saturate the system. More advanced missile defenses will be necessary to intercept small or residual adversary nuclear forces, but they—including Golden Dome—cannot replace the nonnuclear and nuclear forces that may be required to first eliminate as many adversary forces as practicable if an adversary miscalculates or threatens escalation in a war. As a result, the United States will need a nuclear arsenal that breaks sharply from that of past decades, and that deploys, for the first time this century, more, different, and better nuclear systems.

Europe, the United States, and NATO must assess what is required to create a strong regional deterrent against a revisionist Russia. Currently, Moscow possesses up to 2,000 lower-yield “battlefield” nuclear weapons that are unhindered by any existing arms limits. NATO has an opportunity to build resilience and redundancy into its nuclear mission, taking advantage of the common F-35 program and the expanded geography of the alliance with new members Finland and Sweden. But in the face of improving Russian air defenses, the alliance may need to develop a longer-range air-launched nuclear weapon for deployment on F-35 fighter jets, or more cost-effective ground-based options, as successors to the B61-12 gravity bomb.

In the Indo-Pacific, the regional nuclear cupboard is even more bare. Although B-2 and B-52 bombers stationed in the United States can deliver gravity bombs and long-range, air-launched nuclear cruise missiles to the region, the tyranny of distance reduces the bombers’ effectiveness. To enhance its sea-based regional deterrent, the United States has developed a lower-yield warhead (the W76-2) deployed on Ohio-class Trident ballistic missiles. But these weapons must take the place of higher-yield warheads, reducing the United States’ overall counterforce capabilities, as well as the strength of the survivable second-strike force on which it relies to deter attacks on the homeland.

A promising alternative is to build dedicated regional deterrence capabilities for Asia. In 2023, Congress mandated that the Pentagon develop a lower-yield, sea-launched nuclear cruise missile for U.S. attack submarines. Such a weapon could deter China’s first use or provide a limited escalation option should China attack a U.S. ally. It could also free up the Trident missiles for higher-yield strategic warheads, thus allowing the United States to more effectively target the growing number of Chinese ICBM silos within existing capabilities. The problem is that the new sea-launched cruise missiles may not be ready soon enough. In addition to exploring quicker ways to acquire this capability—such as by pairing lower-yield nuclear warheads with existing Tomahawk missiles on older, Los Angeles–class attack submarines—policymakers should assess the viability of apportioning to the Indo-Pacific some of the future air-launched or ground-based missile systems developed for Europe. Given the long timelines for developing new weapons, the United States needs to anticipate future needs in Asia and Europe now so that it can be ready when the storm hits.

If China or Russia were to escalate a regional conflict beyond Asia or Europe, Washington would have to turn to “central” strategic deterrence to credibly deter a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland. In a nuclear world in which either China or Russia can test the United States on its own, and in which the two U.S. adversaries could align to do so simultaneously or in rapid succession, a key challenge is figuring out how to deter one without compromising the ability to deter the other. The Biden administration first recognized this problem in its Nuclear Weapons Employment Planning Guidance, a report issued in 2024. This updated guidance directed the Department of Defense to prepare for deterring China, North Korea, and Russia “simultaneously in peacetime, crisis, and conflict.” The broad implication is that Washington needs to deploy not only more warheads but also more systems than originally planned under the modernization program.

To do so amid continued delays, the Biden administration considered near-term options such as uploading additional warheads to Minuteman III ICBMs, which now carry a single warhead apiece; extending the operating lifetime for Ohio-class submarines for several additional years to ensure there is no immediate launcher shortage; and adding more Trident missiles to Ohio-class submarines, which have had four of their 24 missile launchers deactivated, or “capped,” to comply with the expiring New START limits. To avoid the looming launcher cliff in the crucial sea component of its nuclear triad, however, the United States must build a larger number of Columbia-class submarines in the 2040s and beyond—at least 14, and perhaps more, to hedge against the further growth of adversaries’ arsenals.

To be clear, there is no need for the United States to deploy more nuclear forces than those of China and Russia combined. Deterrence is not—and never has been—a function of raw warhead comparisons. The U.S. nuclear stockpile today, for example, is not identical in size or composition to that of Russia, which has a larger number of weapons overall, including its large number of regionally focused, nonstrategic nuclear warheads and delivery systems. Still, to counter the ICBM silos that China is now developing while maintaining deterrence against Russia, the United States will need to consider deploying additional warheads. Precisely how many more is uncertain and will depend largely on the choices adversaries make and on how much risk a president is willing to accept in both the most plausible and worst-case nuclear scenarios.

In response to China’s nuclear expansion, some experts have called for a fundamental shift in U.S. nuclear strategy to avoid having to deploy additional nuclear weapons. According to the current counterforce approach, which in concert with missile defenses seeks to limit damage against allies and the homeland, the United States needs to deploy a sufficient number of nuclear and non-nuclear forces to be able to target adversary nuclear forces. Given the challenge of maintaining this capability against two growing nuclear peers, some strategists advocate shifting to a so-called countervalue approach, in which the United States would not try to target adversaries’ nuclear forces, but would instead target a smaller number of key population centers, infrastructure, and sources of political control and economic wealth. Proponents argue that this strategy shift would require no adjustments to U.S. posture because U.S. submarines, hidden deep beneath the seas, could assuredly retaliate against centers of political power, infrastructure, and population in response to an adversary’s first strike, deterring the attack in the first place.

Military vehicles carrying ballistic missiles during a parade in Beijing, September 2015

Leaving aside the legal and moral issues of intentionally targeting civilian populations, abandoning the objective or even the option of damage limitation would force a U.S. president to expose the American homeland and population to a devastating reprisal. That prospect raises questions about whether a countervalue strategy would effectively deter adversaries and the extent to which it would unnecessarily risk additional American lives, what any U.S. president would value the most. The countervalue approach would also cause allies to question whether the United States would be willing to use nuclear weapons to defend them in a regional war. With American cities under increased nuclear threat, and the United States holding its arsenal in reserve to deter against such attacks rather than to maintain extended deterrence, allies may conclude that they need to seek their nuclear arsenals. A strategy built for general deterrence of attacks against the U.S. homeland is not credible in an era of extended deterrence, a lesson the United States learned in the 1960s and never revisited, as national leaders then and today correctly prioritized nonproliferation as a key component of nuclear strategy.

In view of these drawbacks, a better approach would be to adapt the current counterforce strategy for the new era. Since counterforce targeting is driven by the composition and not the size of adversaries’ nuclear arsenals, this would require only a modest adjustment to account for China’s growing ICBM silos. Indeed, unless China and Russia choose to increase the size of their arsenals above what they already plan, the United States should not have to expand its overall existing stockpile of 3,800 or so warheads. But changing the composition of the arsenal will be crucial. This includes assessing the importance of regional nuclear capabilities to deterring local aggression by China and Russia, and analyzing how to prioritize, say, sea-based versus land-based capabilities to fortify strategic deterrence in a world of multiple major nuclear powers, given available forces. For example, although additional Columbia-class submarines may take decades to build, U.S. planners have various ways to use existing forces to rebuild credible deterrence, as the near-term options outlined by the Biden administration make clear. Designed in the right way, even modest short-term and long-term adjustments can maintain credible deterrence against both China and Russia at a reasonable cost. But unless the United States is prepared to radically depart from its enduring nuclear strategy—and risk exposing the homeland to nuclear attack and undermining the credibility of its extended deterrence commitments—it will need to deploy more, different, and better nuclear forces. America needs a more flexible and robust arsenal, not to fight a nuclear war but to prevent its outbreak.

 

Hurricane Watch

To make its nuclear strategy effective in a world of multiplying threats, Washington can no longer relegate nuclear issues to a small, insulated community of experts. The transformation of the nuclear landscape requires deep engagement from the most senior government leaders, as occurred during the Cold War. Nothing will enhance the credibility of the extended deterrence that the United States offers to allies in Asia and Europe more than a clear demonstration that the country’s most senior leaders are actively preparing for the coming challenges.

To inhibit allies from seeking their nuclear deterrents and to ensure that U.S. “hardware”—its military capabilities—is fit for purpose, the United States must explicitly reaffirm that its “software”—its political willingness to defend allies with the full range of capabilities—is equally strong. Washington must show that it remains committed to the concept of extended deterrence and that it is determined to make this guarantee credible against new and emerging threats. Previous U.S. efforts in this direction, including during the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, spurred allies to make greater contributions to NATO’s nuclear deterrence mission, including by procuring and deploying more of their non-nuclear capabilities. Similarly, in the Indo-Pacific, Washington’s efforts to upgrade its extended deterrence relationships with Australia, Japan, and South Korea have helped reaffirm the U.S. nuclear umbrella. These efforts must now be redoubled to avoid a wave of proliferation of Washington’s own making.

In addition to reaffirming extended deterrence, the United States should seek to revive arms control and nuclear risk-reduction efforts, even if today’s environment has made such measures far more difficult. By adjusting its nuclear posture, the United States could motivate China and Russia to come to the table. If that happens, Washington should tailor agreements to allow for evolving and emerging threats. For example, by permitting a higher warhead ceiling for deployed weapons, an updated New START agreement with Russia could, in theory, maintain mutually stable deterrence between Moscow and Washington while permitting the United States to counter and prioritize the increasing threat from China’s ICBM silos. Because Russia retains a relatively fixed number of strategic nuclear delivery systems, a Russian effort to increase the number of warheads on a given delivery system would be largely immaterial to U.S. strategists: to maintain an effective counterforce deterrent, U.S. Strategic Command would still need to target an unchanged number of Russian delivery systems but would have the required additional warheads available to target Chinese ICBMs.

Getting the three major nuclear powers to agree to some form of nuclear guardrails across all domains—nonstrategic and strategic nuclear weapons, missile defenses, and space—will be highly complex. To have even a chance of success, any such agreement will need to be innovative and flexible. For example, it might impose warhead limitations on all nuclear weapons states but allow for specific exclusions, including for capabilities that address imbalances in the relative number of warheads, strategic delivery platforms, or other big-ticket items. A model for such an approach might be the 1922 Washington Naval Conference, which limited the overall tonnage of great-power navies to prevent a naval arms race, but tailored the specific limits to each party’s needs, relationships, and naval status. Regardless of the path taken, American policymakers must urgently craft creative, practical solutions, both formal and informal, to manage a world of multiple nuclear actors that are currently unwilling to negotiate in good faith.

In the decades after the Cold War, many senior U.S. officials hoped that nuclear weapons might recede from global politics entirely. But that prospect turned out to be an illusion. Instead, nuclear weapons are back with a vengeance. To maintain a credible strategy for this new nuclear age, the United States must begin by recognizing and understanding the world as it is, not as many hoped or wished it would be. It will need farsighted analysis by some of the country’s finest strategic minds. It will need to reaffirm American leadership to allies across the world. In no future is the United States safer without its network of allies, regardless of the costs the country must pay to ensure that its security guarantees and extended nuclear deterrent remain credible. And it will require a concerted effort by senior U.S. officials and members of Congress to realign the U.S. arsenal to meet today’s and tomorrow’s threats: the United States cannot simply hope that China’s large nuclear expansion might someday be reversed.

One thing is clear. If the United States does not urgently prepare for the impending nuclear hurricane, it could find itself in a place it has never been: a situation in which China, North Korea, or Russia—acting separately or in concert—uses a nuclear weapon against a U.S. ally or even the U.S. homeland because Washington appears to be unwilling or unable to deter such an attack. The world has never lived through such a storm. For eighty years, U.S. strategists have successfully fought to prevent it from arriving. But it is now coming faster than anyone forecast, and complacency may be deadly.

 

 

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