In 2009, President Barack Obama echoed global hopes around the world when he defined a world moving beyond nuclear weapons. With arms control treaties on the books and Cold War tensions fading, nuclear weapons seemed relegated to history. But that faith has turned out to be unrealistically hopeful. Today, we face a looming nuclear crisis.

China aims to triple its nuclear warheads by 2035, shifting toward coercive deterrence.

The world is now entering an even more challenging and dangerous new atomic era, posing challenges to the United States, and the world is increasingly ill-equipped to confront them. Wrote nuclear security experts Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi in the July 2025 edition of Foreign Affairs. The authors contend that the world’s atomic order is increasingly fragmented and volatile.

China is leading this shift. From having been content with a minimal deterrent, it is now striving to build up its arsenal from some 300 warheads in 2019 to as many as 1,500 by 2035. In addition to new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos and hypersonic weapons, China’s ambitions suggest a major shift toward coercive deterrence. At the same time, Russia uses nuclear weapons as tools of strategic intimidation.

Moscow has threatened to use nuclear weapons if the West intervenes in its invasion of Ukraine, a return to Cold War-era brinkmanship this time without stabilizing mechanisms. The crisis doesn’t end there. North Korea has produced missiles capable of striking U.S. cities. Iran is on the cusp of being able to make a nuclear weapon at any moment, and Pakistan is believed to be developing an ICBM that could hit North America.

All of this is a global chain reaction of nuclear escalation risks.” What the United States is now forced to come to terms with is something it has never had to worry about before: If the situation continues to deteriorate, we may not just have one, but several nuclear adversaries to deter at the same time, and in different parts of the world. That increases the potential for adversaries to coordinate, as with China and Russia both at the same time, instigating crises in the Indo-Pacific and Europe.

The U.S. faces multiple nuclear adversaries simultaneously, increasing risks of coordinated crises.

Even worse, its allies are starting to doubt the reliability of America’s nuclear umbrella. And even Japan is hinting at a possible rethinking of its non-nuclear status. If they take this step, it would destroy the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), one of the few global security pillars that’s left. The United States needs to reassure its allies of its extended deterrence, not only in terms of weapons but in terms of clear political will. If allies such as South Korea and Japan think America won’t come to their rescue, they may choose to go nuclear on their own, and then the global nonproliferation regime could unravel.

The director of a major federation of scientists said three years ago that despite a modernization program that was then more than five years old, America’s nuclear forces were not equipped for this multipolar age. Reducing submarine fleets, delaying missile upgrades, and depending on outdated delivery systems were all decisions based on a calculus that China’s nuclear expansion was dismissed as an exaggeration by skeptics today: the United States needs more than technical upgrades; it needs strategic rethinking.

It needs a rethink. Among the new regional capabilities that are required are sea-launched cruise missiles and flexible theater-based systems. In Europe, NATO needs to contend with Russia’s mounting arsenal of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons. In Asia, the U.S. requires rapid-response systems to prevent Chinese first use.

Arguably, Narang and Vaddi also warn against a “counter-value doctrine, i.e., targeting civilian population centers. Simple as such a posture may seem, it undermines America’s credibility, has moral implications, and may encourage allied proliferation. Instead, the U.S. will need to further develop its capability for counterforce targeting. Although nuclear diplomacy is now in tatters, the authors contend that arms control requires strategic revival.

Allied doubts on U.S. extended deterrence threaten the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s survival.

A new, more flexible model,  one that reflects the realities of China, Russia, and emerging technologies, might bring balance back. History has shown that carefully negotiated limits can work, even among potential adversaries, as demonstrated by the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which successfully restrained naval arms races. We are no longer in a post-nuclear world. Nuclear weapons are once again central to international security calculations. The United States must urgently modernize its nuclear strategy across political, military, and diplomatic fronts or risk sleepwalking into a new, even more volatile Cold War.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.