When the Cold War standoff between two nuclear superpowers ended, many U.S. officials hoped that nuclear weapons would lose their relevance. Instead, the bomb is “back with a vengeance,” write the nuclear experts Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, China has vastly increased its arsenal, and the diplomatic guardrails that limited proliferation for decades have eroded. Now, for the first time, the United States must “deter and protect its allies from multiple nuclear-armed great-power rivals” at once.
To navigate these rising dangers, the United States needs to upgrade its nuclear capabilities, revive arms control talks with China and Russia, and once again place nuclear affairs at the forefront of American grand strategy, argue Narang and Vaddi. If this effort fails, Washington “could find itself in a full-blown nuclear arms race”—or, worse, face an adversary that uses a nuclear weapon because the United States “appears to be unwilling or unable to deter such an attack.”
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