Jul 30, 2025 #AJStartHere #CubanMissileCrisis #IsraelIranTensions Israel and the US – both nuclear-armed states – recently attacked Iran. They said it was to prevent Iran getting a nuclear weapon, something Iran denies it’s trying to do. What determines which countries can, and can’t, have nuclear weapons? And are we seeing a new nuclear race?
Chapters: 01:09 – How the Cuban Missile Crisis led to a new nuclear order. 01:58 – The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the nine nuclear-armed states. 04:49 – The key factors that affect a country’s calculation on nukes. 05:47 – Security: do nuclear weapons make a country more, or less, safe? 07:22 – The US nuclear umbrella – can it still be trusted? 08:10 – Do nuclear weapons enhance a country’s status? 09:40 – What’s going on with Iran? 14:32 – Who gets to police the global nuclear order? 14:52 – How the nine nuclear-armed states are increasing their spending on nukes.
President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One on January 9, 2026. The day before, the President told New York Times reporters, “If it expires, it expires,” referring to New START—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which expires on February 5. (Photo: White House/Molly Riley)
For decades, nuclear weapons have been treated as the ultimate arbiter of international politics. They were supposed to deter great-power war, impose caution on leaders, and anchor what strategists liked to call strategic stability. Today, that framework is eroding in plain sight. Yet the reaction from policymakers and much of the expert community remains oddly muted.
Put simply, nuclear weapons are no longer functioning as a decisive factor in global security.
For almost four years, Russia—the world’s largest nuclear power—has been subjected to missile strikes carried out with systems supplied by several other nuclear-armed states. The United Kingdom now openly speaks of developing new tactical ballistic missiles for Kyiv and of placing “leading-edge weapons” directly into the hands of Ukrainians. Russia itself employs nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic Oreshnik missiles as if they were any other conventional weapon system for punishing Ukrainian infrastructure. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump casually commented on New START—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which expires on February 5—“If it expires, it expires.” And former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, currently serving as a Deputy Chief of the Russian Security Council, stated, “No START-4 is better than a treaty that only masks mutual distrust and provokes an arms race in other countries,” referring to what may come next after New START expires.
China is on track to massively expand its nuclear arsenal, just as Russia suspends the last major arms control treaty. It augurs a new world in which Beijing, Moscow and Washington will likely be atomic peers.
By David E. Sanger, William J. Broad and Chris Buckley David E. Sanger and William J. Broad have covered nuclear weapons for The Times for four decades. Chris Buckley reports on China’s military from Taiwan.
WASHINGTON — On the Chinese coast, just 135 miles from Taiwan, Beijing is preparing to start a new reactor the Pentagon sees as delivering fuel for a vast expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, potentially making it an atomic peer of the United States and Russia. The reactor, known as a fast breeder, excels at making plutonium, a top fuel of atom bombs.
The nuclear material for the reactor is being supplied by Russia, whose Rosatom nuclear giant has in the past few months completed the delivery of 25 tons of highly enriched uranium to get production started. That deal means that Russia and China are now cooperating on a project that will aid their own nuclear modernizations and, by the Pentagon’s estimates, produce arsenals whose combined size could dwarf that of the United States.
This new reality is prompting a broad rethinking of American nuclear strategy that few anticipated a dozen years ago, when President Barack Obama envisioned a world that was inexorably moving toward eliminating all nuclear weapons. Instead, the United States is now facing questions about how to manage a three-way nuclear rivalry, which upends much of the deterrence strategy that has successfully avoided nuclear war.
China’s expansion, at a moment when Russia is deploying new types of arms and threatening to use battlefield nuclear weapons against Ukraine, is just the latest example of what American strategists see as a new, far more complex era compared to what the United States lived through during the Cold War.
China insists the breeder reactors on the coast will be purely for civilian purposes, and there is no evidence that China and Russia are working together on the weapons themselves, or a coordinated nuclear strategy to confront their common adversary.
But John F. Plumb, a senior Pentagon official, told Congress recently: “There’s no getting around the fact that breeder reactors are plutonium, and plutonium is for weapons.”
It may only be the beginning. In a little-noticed announcement when President Xi Jinping of China met President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow last month, Rosatom and the China Atomic Energy Authority signed an agreement to extend their cooperation for years, if not decades.
When President Xi Jinping of China met President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow last month, Russia and China’s nuclear authorities signed an agreement to extend their cooperation for years.Credit…Grigory Sysoyev/Agence France-Presse, via Sputnik
China’s rapid nuclear expansion will result in it overtaking the U.S. as the nation with the largest atomic power capacity by 2026, according to BMI Research.
The world’s second-biggest economy will almost triple its nuclear capacity to nearly 100 gigawatts by 2026, making it the biggest market globally, analysts said in a note dated Jan. 27. The nation added about 8 gigawatts of nuclear power last year, boosting its installed capacity to about 34 million kilowatts, according to BMI.
China has committed to boosting nuclear power, which accounted for about 1.7 percent of its total generation in 2015, to help reduce reliance on coal, which accounts for two-thirds of its primary energy. The nation has 20 reactors currently under construction, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Another 176 are either planned or proposed, far more than any other nation, according to the World Nuclear Association. Tiếp tục đọc “China’s nuclear power capacity likely to overtake America’s within a decade”→
Một số người khi bàn luận về tình hình quân sự Việt Nam-Trung Quốc đã lo ngại việc Trung Quốc có thể tấn công hạt nhân sang Việt Nam nếu xung đột bùng phát từ biển rồi lây lan vào đất liền. Tuy nhiên Trung Quốc có ít nhất 4 rào cản khiến họ không thể làm vậy.
Năm 2006, một báo cáo được trình bày trong Bộ Tổng tham mưu quân đội Trung Quốc đã đánh giá tình hình khu vực và quốc tế ảnh hưởng đến Trung Quốc. Trong đó quan hệ Việt Trung được trình bày ngay đầu tiên.
MT&ĐS – Thật khó có thể tưởng tượng một nhà máy điện hạt nhân châu Âu lại được xây dựng và vận hành bởi Trung Quốc. Thế nhưng, tại Vương quốc Anh, các lò phản ứng hạt nhân đang sắp được khởi công với sự tham gia của Trung Quốc và hơn nữa, đó mới chỉ là bước khởi đầu. Các tập đoàn năng lượng Trung Quốc đang khởi động nhiều dự án mới trên toàn cầu và có tiềm năng trở thành nhà cung cấp công nghệ hạt nhân dân sự lớn trên thế giới.
Lò phản ứng hạt nhân tại Liên Vân Cảng, Trung Quốc. (Ảnh: Shutterstock.com)
President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One on January 9, 2026. The day before, the President told New York Times reporters, “If it expires, it expires,” referring to New START—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow, which expires on February 5. (Photo: White House/Molly Riley)
CVD 