The specter of nuclear weapons is reemerging, decades after the Cold War's end, as the United States grapples with a rising threat from China.
Could Become Third Superpower
In 2022, the U.S. Congress established the Strategic Posture Commission, a bipartisan panel of 12 experts, to provide guidance on the nation's nuclear strategy, according to Ziare.
The last time such a commission was convened was in 2008, highlighting the gravity of the current global situation.
China's rapid expansion of its nuclear arsenal has become a growing concern for U.S. officials. Western intelligence reports indicate that since 2020, Beijing has significantly increased its stockpile of nuclear weapons, adding launchers and warheads at an alarming pace.
This development has triggered warnings in Washington, as fears mount that China could become a third superpower in a nuclear standoff, reminiscent of the Cold War's bipolar tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
In the Nuclear Era
In its final report issued in October 2023, the commission painted a grim picture of the current global landscape. "
The new global environment is fundamentally different from anything experienced in the past, even during the darkest days of the Cold War," the report stated.
The panel recommended that the U.S. consider expanding its nuclear arsenal for the first time since the Cold War, including more warheads, delivery systems, defenses, and launch platforms.
This shift underscores a deeper anxiety among top experts that the international focus, long centered on post-9/11 anti-terror efforts, is now returning to an era of nuclear build-up.
While some scholars, particularly those focused on arms control, have criticized the commission's report, fearing it could ignite an unnecessary arms race, others see it as a necessary response to an evolving global threat.
Vipin Narang, a senior official in the Department of Defense overseeing nuclear policy, recently echoed this sentiment, declaring, "We are now in a new nuclear era."
