This really is an eye-opener. According to The New York Times, US President Joe Biden approved a classified document in March called the “Nuclear Employment Guidance”. Sources familiar with the situation say that the strategy laid out in the document emphasises the need for US forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.

My first question is this: where is a China-Russia-North Korea alliance, let alone nuclear alliance? China-Russia relations are close, but Beijing not having provided any direct military assistance to Moscow in its invasion of Ukraine suggests their relationship is not an alliance.

Meanwhile, in spite of a decades-old treaty between Beijing and Pyongyang that calls for mutual military assistance in time of war, China’s military interactions nowadays with North Korea are perhaps fewer than its interactions with most African countries. So how could the three countries coordinate these nuclear strategies or operations against the United States?

The US has no clear advantage in terms of nuclear weapons over Russia, which has more warheads, and it won’t in the future. Precisely because its conventional forces have drastically declined since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia now relies more than ever on nuclear weapons.

This explains why Moscow has made several thinly veiled threats of using nuclear weapons during its war in Ukraine and will continue to play with nuclear ambiguity in the decades to come.

China’s nuclear capabilities, including the number of nuclear warheads, are considered state secrets. Therefore, it is unlikely that anyone in China will publicly confirm the accuracy of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s estimates. The think tank released a report in June indicating China’s nuclear arsenal had increased from 410 warheads in January 2023 to 500 this January and that for the first time China could be deploying a small number of warheads on missiles during peacetime.

In a 2019 defence white paper, China said it would “keep its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security”. Evidently this “minimum level” cannot be quantified because national security needs vary in different times and environments.

Even if China’s nuclear arsenal has grown to 500 warheads and could grow as large as 1,500 by 2035, according to Pentagon estimates, Beijing can still argue that it is still much smaller than Russia’s roughly 6,000 warheads and the 5,400 of the US. At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had more than 40,000 nuclear warheads while the US had more than 23,000 – enough to destroy the whole planet. Why would China choose to become involved in such madness?

In my understanding, “minimum level” refers to a threshold that no other nuclear power would dare to cross with a pre-emptive nuclear strike on China, even if China maintains a policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons. Precisely because of this policy, China has to build adequate strength for deterrence. It requires China to have sufficient nuclear warheads to resist an enemy’s first strike and ensure China has second-strike capability.

With such nuclear capabilities, China’s military could have a better chance of emerging victorious over the US in the event of a conventional war, such as one in the Taiwan Strait. Given that the gap between the conventional military forces of China and the US is already closing, China having a large enough nuclear arsenal would force the US to give up any ideas of using nuclear weapons first.

China call for a “no first use” policy might look to some people like wishful thinking at a time when nuclear weapons seem to be growing in importance amid the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, but it isn’t. Nuclear weapons are not an omnipotent force, and having them is no guarantee of success in a conflict. If China, the US, Russia, Britain and France can all agree that a nuclear war cannot be won and therefore should never be fought, then why can’t they commit to their own “no first use” policy?

Much has been written about whether the world has entered a new cold war. If the US really is poised to resume conducting nuclear tests, as some reports suggest, this would be tantamount to an official announcement of a new cold war.

The sight of renewed US nuclear testing would almost certainly usher in tests by other nuclear powers, spelling doom for nuclear non-proliferation efforts. This would likely swell the number of states with nuclear weapons beyond the current nine, resulting in a considerable reduction in the conventional force superiority of the US and its allies.

Furthermore, if all the world’s nuclear powers increase the readiness of their nuclear forces, it could increase the chances of false alarms, like those seen during the Cold War. During the early days of long-range radar, even a rising moon could be misinterpreted as a missile attack. One can easily conclude that with more nuclear weapons states on high alert, there could be more false alarms or significant incidents.

The Biden administration’s nuclear strategy is a shame, not least because the president spent so much of his political career advocating for nuclear non-proliferation. We have had no significant wars between global powers for some 80 years since World War II.

If this is a solace, it is also disturbing to think we might enter into another cold war some 30 years after the first. I can only concur with these words attributed to Isaac Newton: “I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.”

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