Arms race

Race escalates for latest class of nuclear weapons

The United States, Russia and China are aggressively pursuing a new generation of smaller, less destructive nuclear weapons. The buildups threaten to revive a Cold War-era arms race and unsettle the balance of destructive force among nations that has kept the nuclear peace for more than 50 years.

It is, in large measure, an old dynamic playing out in new forms as an economically declining Russia, a rising China and an uncertain United States resume their one-upmanship.


U.S. officials largely blame the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, saying his intransigence has stymied efforts to build on a 2010 arms-control treaty and further shrink the arsenals of the two largest nuclear powers. Some blame the Chinese, who are looking for a technological edge to keep the United States at bay. And some blame the United States for speeding ahead with a nuclear “modernization” that, in the name of improving safety and reliability, risks throwing fuel on the fire.