KIMBERLY PEH AND MICHAEL ALBERTSON
After the end of the Cold War, the United States took a leadership role in reducing nuclear dangers by limiting the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy, implementing dramatic reductions in U.S. nuclear forces, and promoting global efforts to advance nonproliferation, arms control, and nuclear security. However, all these pillars of cooperative security face significant challenges today. Over the past decade, geopolitical rivalry has intensified, and nuclear dangers have dramatically increased. Russia, China, and North Korea are all expanding and diversifying their nuclear arsenals, while arms control mechanisms have crumbled, and there is little hope that they will be replaced. U.S. adversaries have openly expressed their desire to undermine the rulesbased international order and remake the global balance of power in their favor.1 In light of these developments, there is a growing number of analysts that talk about a new nuclear arms race.2 Our understanding of a nuclear arms race is largely informed by the Cold War experience. In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in an intense nuclear arms race that had many distinct characteristics. In this paper, I compare these characteristics with the main trends in the current security environment and argue that what we see today is not a new nuclear arms race, but an intensifying technology competition with 21st century characteristics.
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