The Nuclear Arms Race: Strategic Stability under Question and the Shifting Balance of Power

Abstract

Today it is no longer possible to perceive nuclear weapons as a background issue in international security. After a long period in which arms reductions and relatively stable deterrence frameworks shaped nuclear relations, major powers are again placing nuclear forces at the core of their strategic planning. Nuclear weapons are not viewed simply as a last-resort safeguard, but as tools that actively influence signaling, bargaining, and military balance. This shift is closely tied to the deterioration of relations among the United States, Russia, and China, the steady erosion of arms control agreements, and the growing influence of new military technologies that complicate deterrence and escalation dynamics. This policy brief examines how the contemporary nuclear arms race is unfolding by tracing the way in which the three major nuclear powers are adjusting their strategies. Additionally, it considers the destabilizing influence of smaller but strategically important cases, especially North Korea and Iran. This analysis focuses on the rapid expansion of the Chinese strategic arsenal and the increasingly fragile state of U.S.–Russia arms control under the START framework, as those developments have a major impact on strategic stability. The current nuclear arms race is not the repetition of the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and Russia because today’s strategic environment is less regulated, harder to predict, and more tightly connected to a broader great power competition, which increases the risk that crises could escalate through misperception (Kristensen & Korda, 2024).