Thẻ: Nuclear arsenal

Nuclear deterrence is dying. And hardly anyone notices

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Thebulletin.org By Alex Kolbin | January 30, 2026

A man in a dark coat stands outdoors holding a black umbrella, illuminated by a red light in the background at night.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.

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3 Nuclear Superpowers, Rather Than 2, Usher In a New Strategic Era

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nytimes.com

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.

  • April 19, 2023

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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.

President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir V. Putin walk side by side smiling down a hall with people in suits.
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

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