11:47 17-11-2025

U.S. Enters New Nuclear Era Amid Russia–China Rivalry

The article examines how the U.S. enters a new nuclear era as Russia and China expand arsenals, raising strategic uncertainty and reshaping global security dynamics.

The United States has already stepped into a fresh arms race and now faces the prospect of a hard-edged confrontation with Russia and China. That warning comes from a recent analysis published by The Wall Street Journal.

According to the paper, Moscow and Washington still operate under several limits set by long-standing arms-control agreements, including the New START Treaty, which expires in February 2026. Beijing, unbound by comparable restrictions, is rapidly expanding its strategic forces. U.S. analysts estimate that by the mid-2030s China may approach America in the number of deployed nuclear warheads.

Deepening ties between the Kremlin and Beijing only sharpen the strategic uncertainty facing the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia. Compounding the anxiety is a growing sense among those allies that President Donald Trump may not be fully committed to mutual-defense obligations.

The newspaper relays the view of Matthew Kroenig, head of the Scowcroft Center at the Atlantic Council and former U. S. Defense Department official, who argues that the world is moving toward an expansion of nuclear arsenals rather than reductions. He described this period as the emergence of a «third nuclear era», one resembling the Cold War more than the comparatively stable decades of the 1990s and 2000s.

Some experts, the report notes, believe Washington reacted too slowly to the shifting threat landscape. The U.S. nuclear-modernization program had been based on assumptions that further reductions with Russia were likely, and that China and North Korea would remain secondary concerns. Those assumptions have now proved misguided.

It was against this backdrop that, on October 30, the American president instructed the Department of Defense to begin nuclear testing immediately, saying the decision was driven by the behavior of «other nuclear powers».