The world is once again teetering on the edge of a nuclear precipice, with the United States, Russia, and China now locked in an escalating arms race that has profound implications for global security and humanity’s future. According to The Wall Street Journal and corroborated by multiple international outlets, the nuclear landscape is shifting rapidly, driven by both technological advancements and a breakdown in longstanding arms control agreements.
For decades, nuclear competition was largely a two-player game between Washington and Moscow, governed by a series of treaties that at least attempted to place guardrails on the world’s most destructive arsenals. But that era is coming to an end. The New START Treaty, the last significant arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia, is set to expire in February 2026. In the absence of its renewal, the world could face a far more chaotic and unstable strategic environment, with all three major nuclear powers—plus a handful of ambitious newcomers—expanding their arsenals and capabilities without restraint.
China, in particular, has emerged as the wild card in this new nuclear equation. While Russia and the United States still maintain some arms control limitations, Beijing is under no such obligations. U.S. intelligence assessments cited by The Wall Street Journal project that China will reach near parity with the United States in deployed nuclear warheads by the mid-2030s. At present, the U.S. possesses 5,117 nuclear warheads (with 3,700 retired), Russia 5,459, and China approximately 600—but that gap is closing fast. North Korea, meanwhile, is also expanding its arsenal, now boasting around 50 warheads and developing missile and submarine capabilities that could, in theory, threaten American soil.
“We are now moving toward increasing nuclear arsenals rather than reducing them. We are entering a third nuclear era, which will resemble the Cold War more than the 1990s or 2000s,” warned Matthew Kroenig, director of the Scowcroft Center at the Atlantic Council and a former Pentagon official, in remarks reported by The Wall Street Journal. Kroenig’s assessment is echoed by other experts, who point out that U.S. nuclear modernization programs were built on the assumption that arms reductions with Russia would continue and that China and North Korea would not pose significant threats. Those assumptions, it seems, are now dangerously outdated.
The growing strategic alignment between Moscow and Beijing is creating unprecedented challenges for Washington and its allies in Europe and Asia. This partnership, once little more than a marriage of convenience, now appears to be a concerted effort to counterbalance American power. The resulting uncertainty is forcing the U.S. to prepare for the possibility of confronting two near-peer nuclear adversaries simultaneously—a scenario that would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago.
Russia, for its part, is not standing still. Amid its ongoing war against Ukraine, the Kremlin has repeatedly brandished its nuclear arsenal, seeking to intimidate Western governments and deter them from providing military aid to Kyiv. Yet, as Fabian Hoffmann of the University of Oslo explained to The Wall Street Journal, much of Russia’s so-called “wonder-weapons”—including the Burevestnik missile and the Poseidon underwater drone—are not yet deployable and serve mainly as tools of psychological warfare. “For the Russians, a lot of the motivation is just the fear factor, getting us to talk about this scary missile. It is eating up their research-and-development budget. It’s a Russian waste of money, in essence. The Chinese have a much smarter approach: They’re just building warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles, and aren’t trying to build anything weird and exotic,” Hoffmann observed.
But the U.S. is hardly passive in this new era of nuclear brinkmanship. President Donald Trump has signaled a dramatic shift in American nuclear doctrine, announcing plans to resume nuclear testing for the first time in decades. In October 2025, he instructed the Pentagon to begin preparations for tests in Nevada, citing “testing programs conducted by other countries” as justification. On the night of November 15, Trump stated that such tests would occur “pretty soon”—though he declined to specify whether they would involve the detonation of a live nuclear warhead. According to CNN, senior officials in the Trump administration are now scrambling to convince the president to abandon these plans, warning of the potential diplomatic and security fallout.
The broader historical context is sobering. Since the Cold War, arms control agreements like the 1972 SALT I and ABM Treaties, the 1987 INF Treaty, and the START I and II treaties of the 1990s have provided at least some measure of stability. The New START Treaty, signed in 2010, was the last major effort to institutionalize limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces. Yet, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow suspended its obligations under New START in 2023, and mutual inspections have ceased. With no new dialogue underway, the treaty’s looming expiration could mark the end of meaningful nuclear arms control for the foreseeable future.
What’s more, the line between defensive and offensive postures—between deterrence and outright intimidation—has grown increasingly blurred. Russia’s use of nuclear threats to limit Western involvement in Ukraine is a prime example, as is the U.S. decision to adopt a more confrontational and militarized stance. The “Spider Web Operation” conducted by Ukraine in June 2025, just before the Istanbul mediation talks, demonstrated the renewed strength of nuclear rhetoric as a tool of strategic signaling, if not direct battlefield action.
All of this is taking place against a backdrop of chilling historical memory. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, which obliterated entire cities and killed over 100,000 people instantly, remain a stark reminder of what is at stake. “Nuclear power is far more than a military capability; it is an ethical, psychological and political test of humanity’s very existence,” one analysis noted. The risk is not merely the security of states, but the irreversible endangerment of humanity’s collective future.
As the world edges into this third nuclear era, the boundaries of the possible are being redrawn. China is not yet ready for arms control negotiations, intent first on catching up with the U.S. and Russia. Russia continues to develop new weapons and leverage nuclear threats for strategic gain. The United States, meanwhile, is forced to reconsider its own doctrines and alliances, with even President Trump’s commitment to mutual defense agreements coming under scrutiny.
Whether this new nuclear competition will remain a contest of rhetoric and deterrence or tip into something far more dangerous is the question that now haunts policymakers and ordinary citizens alike. The choices made in the coming months and years will shape not only the global balance of power but the very survival of future generations.
