The United States is years behind Moscow and Beijing in developing nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles but is working hard to modernize its nuclear arsenal, including the missiles, bombers and submarines that deliver the weapons, senior defense officials say. The modernization could cost up to $1.2 trillion over the next three decades, according to a Congressional Budget Office study.3
“We have lost our technical advantage in hypersonics,” said Gen. Paul Selva, then-vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But, he added: “We haven’t lost the hypersonics fight.”4
Arms control advocates say the competition to develop more advanced nuclear weapons and faster delivery systems signals a dangerous, new three-way arms race among the United States, Russia and China, sparked after Washington and Moscow withdrew from several key arms control treaties in recent years. (See Box.) In this new age of hypersonic nuclear weapons, cyber warfare and the growing militarization of space, U.S. defense hawks argue such accords are outdated and no longer serve the nation’s interest. And amid the new, great-power contest, they insist the best way to deter an apocalyptic nuclear war is to be fully ready and willing to fight one, unconstrained by obsolete treaties. Some now even contend that a limited nuclear war can be won.
U.S., Russia Have Most of the World’s Nuclear We
Although the world’s nuclear arsenals have declined significantly since the 1980s, about 90 percent of the nearly 14,000 strategic nuclear weapons that still exist are controlled by Russia and the United States. The two countries have 6,500 and 6,035 weapons, respectively, far more than any of the other seven nuclear-armed nations. About a third of the U.S. and Russian weapons are retired and awaiting dismantlement; the rest are either deployed or available for use.
Source: Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “Status of World Nuclear Forces,” Federation of American Scientists, May 2019, https://tinyurl.com/junbna7
The crumbling of the international arms control architecture also comes as two new strategic competitors—Iran and North Korea—are asserting themselves in ways that further heighten nuclear risks, experts say. With denuclearization talks between the Trump administration and North Korea stalled, the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, recently declared he no longer feels bound by his self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile testing. Analysts say that while his message has left the door open for diplomacy, it also could set the stage for another angry confrontation with President Trump, who threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” in previous face-offs.5
In addition, after a U.S. drone in January killed Iran’s top military commander, Tehran announced it was resuming its enriched uranium production, signaling what many analysts regard as the death knell of a landmark 2015 international agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program.6
“The risk that the world will stumble its way into nuclear war is higher today than it’s been since the end of the Cold War,” says Thomas Countryman, a former assistant secretary of State for international security and nonproliferation.
Such nuclear alarm bells represent a sharp turnabout from a few years ago, when the threat of nuclear war was successfully managed through a matrix of arms control agreements between the United States and Russia, which together hold more than 90 percent of the world’s nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons, according to the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based advocacy organization.7 (See Graphic.)
By imposing transparency, predictability and limits on each side’s nuclear forces, those agreements created what officials have called a state of “strategic stability” between the superpower rivals that minimized the chances of a nuclear war. The treaties also helped to whittle down the U.S. and Soviet (later Russian) nuclear arsenals from their Cold War highs of tens of thousands of weapons each to their current levels of no more than 6,500 nuclear warheads each.8
Mourners accompany the coffin of Iran’s top military commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed by a U.S. drone strike in January 2020. Iran responded by vowing to resume enriching uranium, taking another step back from a landmark 2015 international agreement to curb its nuclear program.
ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images
However, in the wake of new threats, mutual allegations of cheating and a deep antipathy toward arms control in hawkish U.S. and Russian defense circles, Washington and Moscow in recent decades have withdrawn from two landmark arms control treaties, and Russia has ended a third:
The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which reduced the number of anti-missile batteries each side could maintain against incoming nuclear missiles. In 2002, President George W. Bush withdrew from the treaty, concerned it prevented the United States from fielding adequate defenses in Europe against a missile attack by rogue actors such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned all nuclear-capable U.S. and Soviet missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles. Trump abandoned the treaty in August 2019, accusing Russia of covertly violating the pact, a charge Russia denied.
The 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, which required the two countries to destroy their surplus military stockpiles of plutonium to prevent terrorists from acquiring the material used to make the explosive core in a hydrogen bomb. The treaty collapsed in 2016 when Russia pulled out, charging U.S. violations, which Washington denied.
In addition, in May 2018 Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers, under which the Islamic Republic curtailed its nuclear program in return for relief from nuclear-related sanctions. Trump then imposed harsh economic sanctions that he said would force Iran to accept a more stringent accord, but Tehran has pushed back by resuming uranium enrichment.
Analysts warn that Tehran could produce bomb-grade nuclear fuel, triggering a U.S. or Israeli attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. To prevent that, says Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., Trump might try to destroy Iran’s underground facilities using a tactical, or low-yield, nuclear weapon with about a third of the explosive power of the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.
That leaves only one major bilateral strategic arms control agreement still in force: the Obama-era New START. It allows the United States and Russia each to deploy, or install in the field, no more than 1,550 so-called strategic warheads—large, high-yield weapons that can destroy entire cities—on 700 missiles or other delivery systems. The treaty does not include weapons stored at bomber bases as part of the cap.
New START expires in February 2021 unless the two sides agree to extend it for up to five years. Putin has agreed to the extension, which he says would cover the Avangard and a new, heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) Russia is developing.9 (An ICBM is a guided missile with a range of at least 3,400 miles.)
A chorus of U.S. lawmakers, former military commanders and arms control experts have urged Trump to follow suit. But Trump says he prefers to pursue a broader arms control treaty that would cover small tactical nuclear weapons, which are designed for battlefield use, as well as China’s growing nuclear arsenal. Administration officials say they will soon open nuclear arms control talks with Moscow.10
Arms control advocates have applauded Trump’s ambitions but say there is not enough time to negotiate a full-fledged replacement treaty before New START expires. And Beijing, whose nuclear arsenal is far smaller than U.S. and Russian stockpiles, says it wants no part of any treaty that would limit