On February 27, 2022, just three days after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, president Vladimir Putin, in a public gesture of defiance, the first of its kind since the end of the Cold War, put Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces on “special duty" (alert). In a 2017 interview to journalist Bob Woodward, president Donald Trump admitted that, under his administration, the United States built a nuclear weapons system so advanced, that it has no rival at the global level. China, a country that in 2023 had a nuclear arsenal comprising approximately 500 warheads, manufactures around 100 such warheads annually. By 2035, their number is estimated to rise to 1,500. It’s becoming increasingly clear we have entered a new nuclear arms race, after decades of (relative) peace that erased from the collective mind the fear of total annihilation, a feeling which, in the second half of the last century, has been inherently associated with nuclear warfare.
Russia's nuclear rhetoric in the war in Ukraine: was Moscow ever close to using a nuclear weapon?
In early September 2024, CIA Director William Burns stated that, two years earlier, he had believed that Russia was on the verge of using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. The period he was referring to, the autumn of 2022, was extremely inopportune for the Russian military. After being pushed back to Kyiv in spring, the Ukrainians had succeeded in taking Russia by surprise with a lightning counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region, and launched a second counteroffensive in the Kherson region. The gravity of Burns's statement is also compounded by the context in which he made it. Standing next to him was his British counterpart, Richard Moore. It was the first time in history that the heads of the CIA and MI6 were making joint public statements.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly hinted at its nuclear arsenal and its willingness to use it. The Russian Federation organized several exercises involving its strategic forces. Vladimir Putin even mentioned Russia’s nuclear arsenal when he invaded the neighboring country in February 2022, warning others not to interfere. Dmitry Kiselyov, one of the main mouthpieces of pro-Putin propaganda, referred to a new nuclear-powered torpedo that could wipe London off the face of the Earth. In turn, former president Dmitry Medvedev, one of the regime's most vehement voices in recent years, has also threatened Russia would use nuclear weapons. Recently, the Kremlin disclosed its plans to alter its nuclear doctrine, which essentially states that Russia can only resort to its strategic arsenal when attacked or when it faces an existential threat.
Such decisions and statements have been labeled by most Western pundits and decision-makers as mere intimidation attempts. Logic dictates that no one would press the nuclear button first, as that would be the first step towards mutual annihilation. However, Burns's statement shows there are certain individuals in Russian power circles who are willing to play with fire and escalate things by using a tactical nuclear weapon. Such people believe the West will not respond, precisely to avoid a nuclear apocalypse. It should be noted, on the other hand, that Burns also said the West should not be intimidated by Russia and its threats, and should support Ukraine more. We can speculate the CIA chief based his reasoning on Russia’s reaction when warned against using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
One thing is clear, even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine: the era of nuclear disarmament, begun in the last years of the Cold War and carried over in the Yeltsin era, is over.
Russia and the USA, pitted against each other in the new nuclear arms race
The coming to power of Vladimir Putin gave fresh impetus to Russia’s military nuclear program. Lacking the financial resources required to conventionally challenge the US military, the Kremlin leader is resorting to the rhetoric of nuclear war as a means of (possibly) intimidating his adversaries. He thus invested significant amounts of money in weapons systems and programs inherited from the Soviet Union era, such as the RT-2PM “Topol” mobile launch system, which (starting on September 1, 2023) is complemented in service by the modern RS-28 “Sarmat” system. Also, a significant part of the defense budget of the Russian Federation is directed to highly technologically advanced projects, such as the “Avangard” hypersonic glide vehicle (which reached a speed of 32,202 km/h or Mach 27), the “Burevestnik” nuclear-powered cruise missile 9M730 or the “Poseidon” 2M39 nuclear-powered torpedo. It should also be mentioned that, at present, Russia has about 5,580 nuclear warheads, the largest number of such weapons in the world.
On the other side of the fence, the United States, which currently has the world's second-largest nuclear arsenal totaling some 5,044 warheads, spent the ʾ90s and the early 2000s helping a number of countries renounce their nuclear war capabilities. Caught up in the “war on terror”, the United States was late and relatively slow in its response (according to public information) to the process of modernization and expansion of Russian nuclear forces. However, the launch of armed aggression against Ukraine in 2014 was a brutal wake-up call in the West. The decision-makers of the Obama presidency, followed by those of the Trump and Biden administrations, launched and financed a nuclear (re)armament program that is broadly composed of three elements: making reserve warheads operational, the modernization of delivery routes and the development of new systems. In that respect, it should be stated that the main weapon in the US nuclear arsenal, the LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile , with approximately 400 units in service, will be replaced, starting in 2029, by the LGM-35A “Sentinel” system, which the manufacturer says will be very difficult, if not impossible, to intercept.
And this is all just public information, as the United States may very well be working on a secret nuclear program. In 2020, a statement that Donald Trump made to the famous American investigative journalist Bob Woodward, while he was working on his book “Rage”, caused a stir: “I have built a weapon system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody — what we have is incredible”.
The nuclear bomb in the hands of totalitarian, authoritarian powers and theocracies
Along with the two previously mentioned powers, there are also a number of states that have developed the so-called nuclear triad, a term implying they possess land-based (nuclear missiles stored in underground silos or on various mobile transport and launch systems), naval (missiles with nuclear payloads mounted on submarines or surface vessels) and air (bombs or missiles carrying nuclear payloads) nuclear capabilities. At the moment, the nuclear triad has been achieved only by China, India and, according to some sources, Israel, Great Britain and France giving up their ballistic missiles stored on the ground.
Of these, the People's Republic of China has the biggest arsenal. The communist dictatorship in Beijing can rely on about 500 nuclear warheads, the vast majority of them mounted on intercontinental or medium-range ballistic missiles, of which the latest system, called the DF-41, has a maximum range of 15,000 of kilometers. China also has a hypersonic missile system (DF-ZF), which, according to available information, can travel about 2,500 kilometers, being very difficult to intercept by current anti-aircraft systems (including the latest version of “Patriot”). China's nuclear arsenal is going through a fast-tracked development phase, with around 100 new warheads being produced annually. According to experts in the field, by 2030, the People's Republic of China will end up possessing no less than 1,000 nuclear warheads.
Despite its totalitarian regime, China may be considered a (relatively) predictable power on the international political stage, but the same cannot be said of two other states with nuclear ambitions, a communist autocracy and an Islamist theocracy.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, ruled since its foundation by the Kim family, tested its first nuclear bomb on October 6, 2006. Since then, North Korea has developed a nuclear arsenal comprising between 40 and 50 warheads. As for the means of delivery, the DPRK has begun testing a new class of intercontinental and medium-range ballistic missiles of its so-called homegrown design. Of these, the Hwasong-18 has a theoretical range of approximately 18,000 kilometers, capable of reaching the continental United States.
In terms of future development possibilities, North Korea is believed to possess enough weapons-grade material to manufacture approximately 70 to 90 nuclear warheads.
Unlike North Korea, the Islamic Republic of Iran has not yet succeeded in manufacturing a viable nuclear weapon. However, that doesn’t mean Iran isn’t going to great lengths to get there. According to a July 2024 statement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Iran’s breakout time, namely the amount of time required to produce enough weapons-grade material to manufacture a warhead, is now down to one or two weeks. The country already has the means (the vectors) to remotely transport such a weapon. In its improved version, Iran’s Shahab-3 ballistic missile has a range of over 2,100 kilometers, allowing it to reach the entire region of Dobrogea.
A new era of nuclear weapons?
Although first developed in the last century, nuclear weapons appear to a short distance away from reaching their maximum destructive at one point during this century, if current technological trends are anything to go by. Adding artificial intelligence and supercomputers to the obliterating power of the uranium atom will turn these weapons into genuine “apocalypse machines”.
The February 5, 2026 deadline on the treaty for the “new strategic arms reduction treaty”, entitled “New START” and signed by the United States of America and the Russian Federation, risks pushing the whole world to the brink of a new stage of uncontrolled and accelerated development and storage of nuclear arsenals, amidst growing tensions on the Ukrainian frontlines. In that regard, the lessons of the Cold War are quite clear: human or machine error can set off a chain reaction that will lead to the demise of human civilization as we know it.
