Unlike in the Cold War, the United States faces the prospect in the next decade of two peer nuclear adversaries, which will together have twice as many strategic nuclear weapons as it does. According to a senior American official visiting Australia last month, by 2034 China will have as many strategic nuclear weapons as the US does today. So, a decade from now America may be outnumbered by Russia and China combined having over 3,000 strategic nuclear warheads to America’s 1500.

Under the terms of the 2018 New START Treaty, Russia and America are each allowed 1550 strategic nuclear warheads and 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy nuclear bombers. This treaty expires on 5 February 2026. But Russia last year ‘suspended’ its treaty commitments—though it claims it will abide by the numerical limit of 1550 deployed nuclear warheads.

The United States and Russia have successfully negotiated strategic nuclear arms reduction talks from the early 1970s until now. At the height of the Cold War, the US nuclear arsenal numbered more than 32,000 weapons and the Soviet arsenal more than 45,000. The two have also withdrawn about 14,000 tactical nuclear weapons from forward deployments in places such as Europe. But the question now arises whether that era of careful, considered—and verifiable—cuts to strategic nuclear capabilities is over.

The Russians and the Americans are no longer talking at the political level about these vital issues, although expert talks do continue. And several previous bilateral arms control treaties have been cancelled, including the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the Theatre Nuclear Forces in Europe Treaty, the Open Skies Agreement, the Conventional Forces in Europe Agreement and others.

On 7 June, according to Pranay Vaddi—the special assistant to the president for arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation at the National Security Council—Russia, China and North Korea ‘are all expanding and diversifying their nuclear arsenals at a breakneck speed and showing no interest in arms control.’  Vaddi observed that the last decade has revealed serious cracks in the international pillars of reducing nuclear dangers, the salience of nuclear weapons, and limiting strategic arsenals of the largest nuclear powers.

When I was last in Moscow, in 2016, a senior military officer at the colonel general level stressed that tense bilateral relations were all leading to a nuclear miscalculation. Regular meetings and negotiations over intricate technical details were a thing of the past. Since then, bilateral relations between Russia and America have deteriorated further. President Vladimir Putin at least wants us to think he is seriously toying with the idea of using nuclear weapons. Who knows what goes on in his obsessive mind? But Putin needs to remember that at the height of the Cold War, the Pentagon’s calculations were that, in the event of a full-scale nuclear strike on Russia, America would kill about one quarter of Russia’s population, or 70 million people, in the first 48 hours.

China has absolutely refused to be involved with the Americans about nuclear arms control and verification. It claims that its strategic nuclear forces are so modest compared with those of the US that there is no point in any talk about negotiations. It is true that until recently China’s strategic nuclear stockpile has not been much more than that of either Britain or France (200 to 300 nuclear weapons each). However, according to the Pentagon, China now has about 500 nuclear weapons and will reach 1000 by 2030. In this context, I have been advised that the US is already adding to its nuclear military targets in China.

There can be no doubt that the type of limits that the US might be able to agree with Russia would be affected by the size and scale of China’s nuclear buildup and the United States’ deterrence needs in relation to Beijing.

My impression is, however, that as yet there is no plan in the US to equal the combined numbers of nuclear weapons of Russia and China. This would be a hugely expensive step and would likely take a couple of decades. Although warheads could be taken out of reserve stockpiles, finding extra delivery vehicles is quite a different proposition.

The national security adviser to the president has made it clear that America ‘does not need to increase its nuclear forces to match or outnumber the combined total of our competitors to successfully deter them.’

Even so, it would seem obvious that 1500 nuclear weapons will be insufficient if the US is to have the capacity to wage major nuclear war simultaneously on both China and Russia. Vaddi made it quite clear that the US ‘will need to continue to adjust our posture and capabilities to ensure our ability to deter and meet other objectives going forward.’ The special assistant also said the president had ‘recently issued updated nuclear weapons employment guidance, which takes into account the realities of a new nuclear era.’ This updated nuclear guidance emphasises ‘the need to account for the growth and diversity of the PRC’s nuclear arsenal—and the need to deter Russia, the PRC, and North Korea simultaneously.’  Moreover, absent a change in the growth trajectory of adversary arsenals—for which, read those of Russia and China—the US may reach a point in the coming years ‘where an increase from current deployed numbers is required.’

In brief, Russia and China are forcing the US and US allies to prepare for a world where nuclear competition occurs without guarantees of numerical constraints.

There are several ways in which America might remodel its nuclear posture. At present, the US is developing a new ICBM type, the LGM-35 Sentinel, to replace the 450 old Minuteman ICBMs and serve from 2029 to 2075, although the program is running more than two years late. The initial costs of this project have rapidly risen from an initial budget of US$95.3 billion to more than US$125 billion in January 2024 and a revised defence contract estimate of US$141billion in July 2024. According to the secretary of the air force, the Sentinel program has now encountered ‘unknown unknowns’.

I understand that the nuclear weapons load of the Ohio class SSBN can be quickly made significantly bigger if the New START Treaty is not extended in February 2026. In addition, more of the hard-to-detect Northrop Grumman B-21 bombers can be built. However, Russia itself is also going through significant nuclear modernisation, including developing the Sarmat ICBM that will replace the Cold War SS-18 Satan, which carried a single 20-megaton warhead or 10 one-megaton independently targetable warheads. Russia is also developing a new ballistic-missile nuclear submarine (SSBN) as well as a very large nuclear-armed torpedo.

However, it is important here to understand that both China’s and Russia’s so-called survivable second-strike nuclear capability in their SSBNs are highly vulnerable to pre-emptive destruction by the United States’ decisive superiority in underwater warfare. China appears to know that its SSBNs are very vulnerable and is investing heavily in missiles on trucks to complicate US targeting.

Another route to expansion that the US may be contemplating is to use some of its huge holdings of reserve nuclear warheads, which total 4200. According to the 2009 report of the Commission on America’s Strategic Posture, the US retains a large stockpile of reserve weapons ‘as a hedge against surprise, whether of a geopolitical or a technical kind.’

The geopolitical surprise could mean, for example, a sudden change in leadership intent in Russia or China that could pose a threat to the United States, which might drive the US to reload reserve nuclear weapons on available delivery systems. To hedge against technical surprise—such as, perhaps, an opponent’s deployment of ballistic missile defence—the US currently retains two warhead types for each major delivery system. This approach to hedging requires holding a significant number of non-deployed nuclear warheads.

All this suggests that—if America’s strategic circumstances should dramatically worsen or if a highly challenging technological breakthrough had been achieved by one of its nuclear adversaries—Washington could quickly access around 4000 reserve strategic nuclear warheads. The commission noted that the US maintains ‘an unneeded degree of secrecy’ about the number of nuclear weapons in its arsenal, including not just deployed weapons but also weapons in the inactive stockpile and those awaiting dismantlement.

This is also where extended nuclear deterrence comes in. Washington will need to take careful notice of how countries such as Japan will react if it loses its capacity to reassure Tokyo that extended nuclear deterrence will still work. Japan faces potential nuclear threat not only from China and Russia but also from North Korea (whose relatively crude nuclear capability should not be underestimated). Extended deterrence is not, however, a foregone conclusion—not least for America’s allies.

This concept was relatively straightforward in the Cold War because it involved deterring only one nuclear superpower, the Soviet Union. Needless to say, it was never tested in practice as far as Australia was concerned even though we were an important Soviet target with regard to the joint US–Australian facilities at Pine Gap, Nurrungar and North-West Cape. The concept of extended nuclear deterrence remains a theory: it depends on the perceptions by the adversary of America’s nuclear intent to dissuade it from using nuclear force against the US or a US ally. Allies face ever-increasing nuclear and conventional threats from Russia, China and North Korea and may become increasingly worried about the credibility of US guarantees.

In the Cold War, the deterrence calculus was relatively simple. The president authorised guidance to hold a broad array of targets at risk and also authorised the nuclear operational plans for doing so. The deterrent effect was understood to derive from the nuclear damage that an adversary might calculate and its uncertainty as to whether it could bear the cost—or even predict it reliably. The US went to great lengths in the Cold War to ensure that its deterrent was perceived as credible and effective, including through strong declaratory policies that in the event would have made it very difficult for it to back away from its nuclear deterrent commitments.

It is important to understand that deterrence is in the eye of the beholder. Whether potential adversaries are deterred (and US allies are assured) is a function of their understanding of US capabilities and intentions. This implies that the US needs a spectrum of employment options for nuclear and precise conventional forces, along with the requirement for forces that are sufficiently lethal and certain of their result to put at risk an appropriate array of the adversary’s nuclear capabilities credibly.

Whereas during the Cold War the USSR understood all too well that the consequences of nuclear war with the US would have been devastating for Russia, it is not as clear as it needs to be that contemporary China has drawn the same conclusion—despite the fact that the sheer size and density of China’s population makes it especially vulnerable to all-out nuclear war.

This underscores the potential challenges of effective deterrence, as it brings with it more openings for ignorance, motivations, distorted communications and a lack of understanding. Essential to the future effective function of nuclear deterrence is that the US and its allies gain insights into the strategic thinking of the nations being deterred and, so, how best to communicate with them in a crisis.

While extended nuclear assurance and persuasion have been important factors in the US for a long time, there does not appear to be any widely accepted methodology for reaching a decision on how many weapons are needed for these purposes.

As an important first step, the US should consult more closely with its allies regarding their views of what is required for their assurance. This is an issue where Australia should have a much more extensive dialogue with its other key strategic partners in the Asia-Pacific region, especially Japan.

Australia must now pay urgent attention to this important new threat of the US deterring two peer nuclear powers, perhaps simultaneously. Canberra should reverse the decline of resources of the intelligence community devoted to foreign nuclear weapons capabilities, programs and intentions. This subject has not attracted high-level attention since the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago.

The Australian defence organisation has no collective memory of how we dealt with this issue from the early 1970s until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Our hosting of Pine Gap and Nurrungar during that time gave us highly privileged access to US thinking about nuclear war and nuclear deterrence. The Australian defence organisation needs to revisit this critical policy issue now.

A Chinese J-10 fighter intercepted an Australian MH-60R Seahawk helicopter from the destroyer HMAS Hobart over the Yellow Sea on 4 May, dropping flares in its path and endangering the helicopter and its crew, Australia’s Department of Defence says. With uncharacteristic haste, the department issued a condemnatory statement two days later, describing China’s latest harassment of an Australian military asset as unsafe and unprofessional.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese later called it ‘completely unacceptable’.

First and foremost, such behaviour during the conduct of routine and lawful operations around China’s maritime periphery needs to be called out. Official silence would risk complicity in repeated bad behaviour. If the government has absorbed that lesson, after suffering criticism for its hesitant response to China’s dangerous use of sonar pulses against Australian divers from the frigate HMAS Toowoomba in November, then bravo.

But this leaves a basic question unanswered: why do the Chinese armed forces persist with such risky and provocative behaviour? And why do they do it despite improvement in diplomatic relations with Australia and efforts by the US and its partners to engage with them on protocols for safe military encounters?

China habitually denies engaging in irresponsible conduct in its encounters with foreign warships and aircraft. In this case it said ‘an Australian military aircraft deliberately flew within close range of China’s airspace in a provocative move which endangered China’s maritime air security’. Yet the catalogue of unsafe incidents is extensive enough to prove deliberate and organised harassment.

Chinese forces’ behaviour had recently seemed more disciplined. The frequency with which their units have acted unsafely near US forces in the Pacific has declined. Immediately before the latest incident, China’s navy chief, Admiral Hu Zhongming, hosted regional counterparts for a naval symposium in Qingdao ‘for countries to deepen friendship, promote exchanges and enhance mutual trust’. Australian naval chief Vice-Admiral Mark Hammond participated.

But two Australian warships have now been involved in serious incidents within a few months. And a Royal Australian Air Force P-8A Poseidon maritime patroller was unsafely intercepted over the South China Sea in May 2022, just as the current Labor government came to power. It is simply not credible to assert that these incidents are spontaneous or occur independently of the Chinese military chain of command.

A combination of coercive behaviour, including military manoeuvres, with diplomatic charm offensives is familiar in China’s statecraft. India and Vietnam have experienced similar tactics over many years. So Canberra should not be surprised by the combination of stroke-and-poke in the current phase of supposed stabilisation with Beijing.

The tactic has kept China’s interlocutors off-balance and worried about crossing Beijing’s often ambiguous red lines. As with any form of bullying, maintaining silence in the face of it only empowers the bully. So Australia’s quick, clear and measured response to the latest incident is encouraging.

China is also likely to have had specific motivation for the unsafe interception.

The first pointer is timing. It came just days after the ABC revealed that Hammond had urged his Chinese counterpart in Qingdao to prioritise safety. Hammond raised the sonar incident during their encounter.

The second pointer is the operational context. During their deployments to Northeast Asia, the Australian warships were involved in Operation Argos, multinational maritime enforcement of UN-mandated sanctions against North Korea. The activity is focused on the Yellow Sea and East China Sea. In October, the Chinese air force unsafely intercepted a Canadian surveillance aircraft engaged in the same operation.

China’s specific objective here is to dissuade US allies from continuing to physically enforce sanctions against North Korea. Many of the embargoed materials that find their way to North Korean ports, including through ship-to-ship transfers, come from China. And China’s connection with North Korea, as with Russia, is tightening.

Beijing has Australia-specific motivations, too. Canberra should interpret such aggression as a dominance display by the Chinese armed forces, demonstrating that they can make life difficult for the Australian Defence Force wherever they deem its presence unwelcome—and that they can do it dangerously if they please.

China knows how highly Australia regards the wellbeing and safety of its service personnel. These incidents cumulatively test Canberra’s resolve to continue operating in China’s maritime periphery in peacetime.

The latest could even be interpreted as a personal rebuke to Australia’s navy chief for directly questioning Chinese military professionalism and safety. The government should therefore be careful to back Hammond. It should also pre-empt any Chinese perception that Canberra can be coerced into reining in defence operations, not only in Northeast Asia but also in conducting more joint patrols with the US, Japan and the Philippines in the South China Sea.

Actions always speak louder than words to Beijing.

The inauguration of Joe Biden as president on 20 January 2021 will usher in another chapter in the United States’ fraught relations with North Korea. The Trump administration tried summit diplomacy from 2018 through to 2019, after a year of high tensions in which threats of ‘fire and fury’ and nuclear brinkmanship rose to alarming levels. The summit diplomacy—as expected—failed to reverse Pyongyang’s determination to build up its arsenal of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.

The reality is that North Korea will not, under any circumstances, denuclearise, no matter what concessions the US might offer as part of any future ‘principled diplomacy’. Biden must work on the basis that North Korea is a nuclear-weapon state in every sense of the term.

A return under Biden to the Obama administration’s approach of ‘strategic patience’ is highly unlikely, simply because it achieved nothing, and instead only gave North Korea time to develop more capable nuclear forces. Biden knows that North Korea isn’t going to stop developing new nuclear and missile capabilities. New submarine-launched ballistic missiles and road-mobile solid-fuelled intercontinental ballistic missiles are probably high on Pyongyang’s agenda after revealing the massive liquid-fuelled Hwasong-16 ICBM at the 75th anniversary celebrations in October.

The North Koreans have called Biden a ‘rabid dog’ that should be ‘beaten to death’, so it seems unlikely that Kim Jong-un will send love letters as he supposedly did with Donald Trump. Instead, Kim is more likely to test the Biden administration with new missile tests, including the prospect of resuming tests of long-range ballistic missiles—and potentially a new nuclear test. The hope would be that Biden would respond meekly and be cowed into diplomacy that leads to concessions, with Pyongyang giving little or nothing in return.

That’s unlikely to succeed; Biden shares none of the adoration of Kim that Trump clearly developed. Instead, another North Korean long-range missile test would only prompt the Biden administration to move swiftly to reverse the erosion of the US’s relations with South Korea and strengthen the relationship with Japan, and a nuclear test would reinforce the US’s incentive to push back hard against Pyongyang.

The costs of a return to missile and nuclear testing should be clearly communicated to Pyongyang by Biden soon after his inauguration, and he should move to add substance to rhetoric by quickly strengthening US extended nuclear deterrence security guarantees to both Seoul and Tokyo. Such a step would enhance US allies’ confidence in Washington’s commitment to meet the challenge posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. It would send a clear signal to Pyongyang not to act irresponsibly.

Such a move would present its own challenges for the US. Biden is yet to formally announce his administration’s stance on nuclear forces, but strengthened extended deterrence would run counter to the Democratic Party’s 2020 platform of adopting a sole-purpose declaration posture for US nuclear forces. The US’s non-nuclear prompt-strike capabilities for pre-emptive deterrence aren’t mature enough to provide an alternative to traditional nuclear deterrence. Biden may find that the growing nuclear and missile threat posed by North Korea militates against changing the US nuclear posture prematurely.

It’s likely that with efforts by a Biden administration to strengthen extended nuclear deterrence and repair the damage done to the defence relationship with Seoul by destructive bickering over the financial aspects of hosting US forces in South Korea, Pyongyang recognises that the window for diplomatic engagement with the US is closing. The economic sanctions will remain in place, there will be no peace treaty or US withdrawal of forces, and all Kim will have left will be his nuclear stick.

For Kim, this is a trap of his own making. Rather than accept the opportunity for denuclearisation in return for the lifting of sanctions and a peace deal that could eventually see reducing tensions on the peninsula and, one day, the possibility of some form of reunification, North Korea remains defiantly unwilling to denuclearise. The US can’t give Pyongyang concessions without getting something in return.

A token gesture, such as the offer of once again closing Yongbyong made by Kim at the Hanoi summit in 2019, really amounts to trying to sell the same horse twice. It’s not a serious move towards denuclearisation. Step-by-step engagement with the US based on a real and verifiable arrangement for denuclearisation in return for US and allied economic and political engagement would be the enlightened path. That’s not going to happen, so expect a new period of increasing tensions to begin once Biden takes office.

North Korea presents a potential Biden administration with some deeply complicated problems and, quite likely, a crisis to manage soon after the presidential poll in November.

No one would be surprised if Kim Jong-un attempted to generate a crisis during the presidential transition period as a way of gaining Biden’s attention, an attempt to reopen direct communications and a way to extract concessions on sanctions. Pyongyang may test intercontinental-range ballistic missiles or threaten a nuclear test.

What can Joe Biden do about North Korea? He should admit that neither Barack Obama nor Donald Trump had the right strategy. Obama’s ‘strategic patience’ strategy didn’t amount to much more than watching Kim accelerate attempts to develop reliable nuclear weapons and missiles. Few obvious disincentives were put in Kim’s way. Trump’s audacious engagement strategy came to nothing after calmer heads in the administration concluded that the North had no intention to surrender its capabilities.

Biden starts with an empty policy cupboard: the reality that North Korea has a believable but limited nuclear capability and a porous but somewhat effective sanctions regime. Beyond these threadbare realities, I suggest that Biden should take the following steps.

First, Biden should surround himself with a bipartisan group of the smartest policy minds he can recruit, thinking through all possible options for Korean policy. We can only hope that the era of gut instinct and real-estate videos is behind us. Let a creative brains trust have a crack at some lateral thinking.

Second, Biden should reach out to Seoul, reassuring it that America’s presence is rock solid. While he’s at it, Biden should quietly but firmly bring South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe into a trilateral dialogue designed to help South Korea and Japan overcome their differences in the face of far bigger strategic challenges.

Third, Biden should gather the allies to make it clear that the best way to deal with North Korea is from a platform of shared allied intent. This engagement cuts both ways—America needs to understand that the allies are looking for leadership and want to confidently judge that their interests will not be undercut by random deal-brokering of the Trump variety. For his part, Biden should be clear that allies and regional friends must shoulder more of their own security burden. This is not Washington’s problem alone.

Finally, Biden should appoint a high-level representative to engage with North Korea. A direct line of communication has been opened and it should be kept open, but there should be no prospect of a meeting between Biden and Kim until—and if—major strides towards controlled denuclearisation happen.

So many factors could disrupt these plans. Kim’s health looks to be poor. An attempted leadership transition might already be happening. What of coronavirus? Can a nation in deep lockdown for over 70 years really keep the virus at bay?

Biden may well find himself dealing with a North Korean triple crisis of an unsure dynastic succession happening during a viral outbreak and escalating nuclear confrontation. There is no easy transition to a government plan for that.