China’s rapid push for nuclear parity with the US and Russia is cracking Cold War-era deterrence and igniting a volatile global nuclear arms race with no guardrails.
This month, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported that China’s nuclear arsenal is undergoing the fastest expansion among all nuclear powers.
The institute states that China’s warhead stockpile rose from 500 to up to 600 between January 2024 and January 2025. It also notes that China is building approximately 350 new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos, some of which are now loaded with missiles.
SIPRI further reports that China is, for the first time, deploying some warheads on missiles during peacetime, while also modernizing sea- and air-based delivery platforms.
SIPRI observes that Russia, meanwhile, has nearly completed a major overhaul of its strategic forces. According to the institute, Russia has deployed the new Sarmat and Yars ICBMs, as well as the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV).
It notes that Russia is expanding its Borei-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) fleet and developing innovative systems, such as the Poseidon nuclear torpedo.
The institute also states that the US, while maintaining a steady stockpile, delivered more than 200 modernized nuclear weapons in 2023, its highest annual total since the Cold War.
It notes that the US is pressing ahead with next-generation ICBMs, SSBNs and strategic bombers. Despite a global decline in total warhead numbers, SIPRI stresses this reflects the dismantling of retired warheads, not a de-escalation; it emphasizes that active arsenals are growing due to modernization.
As China closes the gap with the US, Russia flaunts new nuclear systems and US alliances fray under Donald Trump’s transactional politics, the world risks sliding from a fragile tripolar balance into an unstable multipolar arms race with global proliferation consequences.
Deye Li’s 2024 paper for the Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) warns that tripolarity erodes crisis stability. He writes that, unlike bilateral deterrence, tripolar dynamics foster ambiguity in signaling and increase risks of opportunism, misperceptions and fragile coordination.
The evolving nuclear triangle among the US, China and Russia is characterized by mistrust, strategic opportunism and incompatible threat perceptions, conditions that he warns could easily lead to miscalculation.
Tong Zhao’s July 2024 report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) notes that US analysts often see China’s buildup as an effort to match the US as a nuclear peer and potentially create ambiguity about China’s willingness to escalate in a Taiwan crisis.
He writes that China views its nuclear buildup as a necessary response to perceived US hostility, one that it considers essential for the survival of its Communist Party-led regime and for securing international recognition of its status as a great power.
Similarly, Mike Albertson and Nikolai Sokov’s April 2023 report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) states that the US views Russia’s buildup as a pressure tactic aimed at securing concessions on Ukraine and NATO.
They write that Russia perceives US missile defenses and NATO expansion as existential threats, prompting its nuclear upgrades to maintain parity amid fears of conventional military inferiority.
At the same time, China and Russia, frequently billed as “all-weather friends,” show signs of distrust.
In February 2024, the Financial Times (FT) reported leaked Russian documents revealing rehearsals for tactical nuclear strikes in response to a hypothetical Chinese invasion.
The report states that this reflects fears that China might exploit Russia’s distraction in Ukraine to gain influence in Central Asia. Additionally, Newsweek recently reported that other leaked documents reveal Russia’s concerns about China reclaiming territories in the Russian Far East annexed in the 19th century.
Ankit Panda highlights two factors in a recent Chatham House article that are expected to heighten tripolar competition: the impending expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in 2026 and the US Trump administration’s ambivalence towards alliances. He warns that the end of New START will remove caps on US-Russian arsenals, inflaming an already volatile three-way race.
He argues that China’s drive for parity, Russia’s aggressive posture and weakening US extended deterrence are leading allies across Europe and Asia to contemplate nuclear options of their own.
In Europe, Sophia Besch and Anna Bartoux note in an April 2025 CEIP article that doubts over the US commitment to NATO’s nuclear umbrella are reviving calls for independent deterrence. They write that France and the UK, Europe’s only nuclear powers, are exploring the expansion of nuclear sharing.
They also note that Germany and Poland have advocated for closer nuclear cooperation with France, while French President Emmanuel Macron has signaled a willingness to extend France’s nuclear deterrent to cover European allies.
Yet significant caveats remain. Besch and Bartoux point out that France refuses to relinquish exclusive nuclear decision-making and keeps its arsenal separate from NATO nuclear sharing.
Furthermore, Jacklyn Majneme and Patrick Gill-Tiney mention in a London School of Economics (LSE) article this month that, unlike France, which operates an independent nuclear arsenal, the UK relies on the US to maintain its Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), raising doubts about its nuclear autonomy.
Moreover, Besch and Bartoux emphasize that Europe lacks sufficient fissile material production capability for rapid arsenal expansion, and absent robust conventional forces, an independent European umbrella remains politically and militarily vulnerable to Russian coercion.
In Asia, Joel Petersson-Ivre writes in an April 2025 Asia-Pacific Leadership Network (APLN) report that Japan and South Korea calculate nuclear salience based on US capability and political will. He argues that their trust in the US nuclear umbrella hinges less on the number of warheads than on whether the US would act in a crisis.
He notes that domestic US politics, alliance credibility and shifting power balances all shape nuclear perceptions in Japan and South Korea. He adds that rising Chinese and North Korean threats and doubts on US extended security guarantees have intensified quiet internal debates on indigenous deterrents, including nuclear arms.
On those doubts, Bec Strating notes in an April 2025 article for The Interpreter that US tariffs on Asian allies, a transactional foreign policy, and fears of a US-China grand “deal,” which could prioritize economic ties over security commitments, have cast deep doubts on US resolve.
As the world enters a multipolar nuclear age, old models of deterrence are eroding. What remains is a volatile mix of shifting alliances, opaque intentions and accelerating arms buildups, fueling a cascade of nuclear proliferation with no clear off-ramp and no credible crisis management framework.
Israel is a small country having around 200-300 nuclear warheads.USA and Russia both had huge stockpile of nuclear warheads. China is going to number one economy in near future.To safeguard its interests and resisting bullying and intimidation by USA China need at least some kind of parity…When this reporter present this article he deliberately not mentioning USA and Russia nuclear stockpile and hot head israeli stockpile..shame this kind of reporting.
China is at 600 nuclear weapons. How many thousands do both the US and Russia have? Is China aiming for “parity” or for an effective deterrent? So far, I see a defensive posture.
The US is the country that does not rule out a first strike. It made one already, in Hiroshima. And a recent piece here — by the same author — suggested (or its headline did) that a new US missile is intended for a first strike.
Behind those tree super problematic countries, India is adding arround 10 nuclear bombs per year and this can increase if Chinese build up does not slow. Pakistan at the moment is expanding and stocking fisile material too – they will increase too as a consequenc. Basically NPT is dead, EU, Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, Iran… they are potentially in line to start their own nuclear programs for defense in the future.
everyone will turn into curry powder
The world will be safer if every country has its own nuclear weapon, because even a moron who is afraid of being dead
Some morons like Netanyahu are already dead. They just act as if they are still alive.
to complete your moron list: Donut Trumpet, Vlampir Poo-tin, Xhit Cheatpig, Nare Moth-di, fat Kim and Shehbaz Sharif.
The problem with China’s nuclear buildup is NOT its desire to replace the US as the sole superpower, but to become Da Zhonghua (Great China). The US and the West foolishly helped China modernize when the dwarf Deng asked for help after Mao wanting in reducing Chinese culture to nothing through revolution. It took China ~2,000 years to “unify” all the other states in East Asia (warring states). It might take nuclear China ~200 years to unify the earth into one radioactive Great China. LOL.
Another Trump’s student LOL
New 50-cent stooge?
You do not want to admit it and its OK, we understand. Western corporations followed the bottom line – you know that thing you call “Capitalism”. That is why they came to China. Its not like there was a giant conspiracy to empower China. It was pure economics. But then you never were good at economics.
LOL. A disorder brain talks about economics.
Russia helped China with its nuclear program. Do not be fooled – the Russian, Chinese, North Korean and soon to be Iranian nuclear umbrellas will work in unison to protect Eurasia from the Anglo Zionist virus
LOL. Vlampir Poo-tin should listens to Aleksej Kušč. In the Asianews of 20.1.2025: “The contestation of the Asian territories of Siberia between Russia and China is an issue that has been dragging on for at least a couple of centuries…to the current expansion of Xi Jinping’s China, at the expense of Putin’s Russia totally engaged by the war in Ukraine. However, the Chinese “reconquest” of these lands is also highly emphasized”
No amount of gas-lighting will change the solid China-Russia relations. The world should be thankful for these 2 adults in the room. The orange fella is a buffoon.
Amen. A Chinkese has spoken.
Then you must be a M***Fu*ker that got paid 49 cents each time
Are you talking about you yourself and your mom? LOL
Somehow China catching upto Russia & the US in atomic bombs is bad, and a recipe for nuclear proliferation while the zionaz! state of Israel possessing nuclear bombs in contravention of all international & UN laws, isn’t an issue. Goes on to show the depravity and the double standards of the Western doublespeak. Hypocrisy is a very light word for it. It is something else, more sinister, more evil and reeks of neocolonialist mindset.
You loudly complain about the Israeli nuke and remain silent about fat Kim’s nuke. Without the US, South Korea could be invaded by fat Kim, as his grandfather did in the past. And boom, the world is suddenly in the middle of World War III.
North Korea is a threat to nobody except Western colonialists
LOL. Against stupidity is God Himself powerless.
And you very conveniently try to sidestep the fact that it’s because of the US pseudosense of exceptionalism and neocolonialist behaviour that the world is seeing so many wars. Just accept the fact that like the empires of the past, the US empire ruled by power, and when the inevitable decline comes, it should brace for the kind of treatment from the world as it has been meting out to the world.
I wish the same for the Western world that it has done to the world during its period of dominance, and for the same reasons too that it is using to justify what it has done and is doing.
No. It’s you who polemicizes here. Every empire is always built on power. In the past, like the Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Soviet Union, China, and now the USA. Today, China could replace the USA, but that doesn’t mean the world would be a happier place. The fact is that over 6,000 years of Chinese history, China expanded at the expense of overrun nations and grew to its current size. No empire has managed to maintain its expansive size—except China.
yes Mao and Deng CPC in ruling North America and they Cultural Genocide the native American Indian too. Yeppiii
The hungry ghosts during the Great Leap Forward and the Chinese flattened by tanks, as well as the genocide in Xinjiang and Tibet, sing the praises of fat Mao and dwarf Deng in paradise. LOL
loudly, we only heard about North Korean illegal nuke plus on going Sanction. did UN sanction Israel nuke or it’s just being veto by USA, go back school
South Korea in 1950 was the US-controlled remnants of Japanese imperialism. Kim Il Sung was a de facto ally against Japan. When Japan was defeated, the US scraped together the remnants in Korea and created a “South Korea”, launching a reign of terror against those allies, just like in Europe and via France in Indochina.
Israelis will be fleeing to Egypt before Palestinians will be by the look of it. The Zionist “experiment” is looking shaky.
Wishful thinking, I’m afraid. Israel’s a gangster state that lives off of violence.