Reports

Jan 8, 2026

Hudson Institute

Lighting the Path Ahead: Scenario-Based Planning in the Tripolar Nuclear Age

Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr.

Senior Fellow

Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr.

Reports

An Air Force Global Strike Command unarmed Minuteman III ICBM launches during an operation test on February 23, 2021, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. (US Space Force)

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Executive Summary

This study employs scenario-based planning to assess new and important challenges that may confront the United States nuclear forces in the 2035–45 time frame, referred to as the planning horizon. In so doing, it provides a way of gauging these forces’ prospective effectiveness.

Why Scenarios?

The United States today confronts the challenge of assessing and, if necessary, revising its nuclear strategy and force posture in response to recent and prospective disruptive changes in the strategic forces military competition in general, and the balance of nuclear forces in particular. These changes, both geopolitical and military-technical, strongly suggest that the current modernization plan, which the Department of Defense (DoD) laid down during a far more benign period in the competitive environment, is both outdated and inadequate. Thus there is a significant risk that, even if US forces execute their triad modernization program as planned, it will prove ill-suited for achieving vital and key secondary national security objectives.

An extended length of time is necessary to field new capabilities—or even to expand the production of existing types. So poor decisions that the Pentagon might make today could prove difficult, if not impossible, to redress quickly enough without placing key US security interests at risk.

Given today’s uncertain environment, senior policymakers cannot afford to await events. Decisions they are making today are shaping, and limiting, the US nuclear posture of the mid- to late 2030s and early 2040s. Put simply, US senior policymakers’ ability to make significant changes to the 2035–45 US nuclear force posture will decline over time. Thus it behooves them to develop as clear an understanding as possible of potential important changes in the nuclear competitive environment over the next decade or two, and to account for those changes as best they can while their freedom of action is at its greatest.

Well-crafted scenarios offer one proven way of aiding senior US military policymakers and planners in adjusting the current nuclear strategy and force posture to minimize risk and account for uncertainty. Scenarios present plausible paths into markedly different future competitive environments. Key variables (or drivers) that can greatly influence the competition’s character and have a significant probability of occurring over the planning horizon inform and shape these paths. By identifying plausible futures that will stress the US nuclear force posture, scenarios that are well researched and insightfully crafted greatly enhance policymakers’ ability to make better decisions in an uncertain world. If the futures that the scenarios describe reveal serious potential flaws in the plans for US nuclear forces, planners can pursue efforts to offset or mitigate their effects. Similarly, scenario-based planning can reveal unexpected opportunities, allowing policymakers to look for paths toward the envisioned future that exploit them.

The Scenarios

This study employs two key assumptions:

A tripolar nuclear system comprising China, Russia, and the United States will emerge.
The US government’s fiscal posture will decline substantially.

The scenarios branch off from these base assumptions. The branches are developed, in part, by identifying and introducing key geopolitical, military-technical, social, and economic trends, or drivers, that may alter the future competitive environment in strategically significant ways. In so doing, they enable policymakers to develop a superior grasp of the competition’s character.

This assessment comprises a bridge scenario (“A World of Low Numbers”) that covers the period from 2025 to the planning horizon (2025–45), and six additional scenarios, as follows:

“The Missiles of April” (April 2038). During a nuclear showdown between the United States and China, the local (theater) nuclear force balance is clearly in China’s favor.
“India-Pakistan: The Long Road to War” (February 2041). A crisis between India and Pakistan triggers a Pakistani nuclear force mobilization.
“The Fear of Being a Poor Second” (February 2041). As part of an extension of scenario 2, India executes a successful preemptive nuclear strike on Pakistan, ending the long tradition of non-nuclear use.
“Mobilization Race” (February 2041). As part of an extension of scenario 2, India mobilizes its nuclear forces in response to Pakistan’s mobilization; this triggers a mobilization race among the tripolar powers (the US, China, and Russia) with major implications for crisis stability.
“Crossing the Firebreak” (May 2039). Reflecting the increased “blurring” of the nuclear-conventional firebreak, China attempts to seize Taiwan by force, to include employing several dozen very-low-yield nuclear and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons.
“Breakout: A World of Large Numbers” (November 2036). China decides to continue expanding its nuclear arsenal far beyond New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) levels to Cold War–era numbers.

Selected Findings and Insights

A World of Low Numbers. New START limitations will likely endure, either de facto or in treaty form, until the mid-2030s.

A World of Large Numbers. China (in particular) and Russia will have strong incentives to break out of the world of low numbers once Beijing achieves nuclear parity with Russia and the United States.

Theater Nuclear Forces (TNF). Both China (especially) and Russia may realize significant advantages in undertaking a “soft breakout” of nuclear forces by fielding TNF to avoid breaching New START (now Strategic Forces Reduction, or STRATFORE) arms control limits.

The Erosion of Extended Deterrence. Several scenarios find the US nuclear umbrella becoming increasingly—and perhaps fatally—compromised during the 2025–35 bridge period and over the 2035–45 planning horizon.

Increased Chinese and Russian Freedom of Action. As China reaches US nuclear force levels, and to the extent Beijing and Moscow feel they have to account for only the American arsenal and not each other’s, their overall freedom of action will likely increase since the nuclear balance of power will have shifted significantly in their favor.

The Tripolar Conventional Forces Balance and the Western Pacific. The United States seems likely to forfeit any conventional forces advantage it has over China in the next decade. This and the loss of the US nuclear trump card over China will, all other factors being equal, find Beijing enjoying considerably greater freedom of action, especially in the Western Pacific. Put simply, China’s achievement of nuclear parity with the United States will heighten the importance of the Western Pacific conventional forces military balance.

A Tripolar System Mobilization Race. A race among three major nuclear powers with roughly similar sized forces—but whose structure contains significant asymmetries—to mobilize their forces from their day-to-day alert status to high alert could cause significant shifts in the nuclear balance, decrease crisis stability, and create a sense among policymakers that they are not guiding events but vice versa. A mobilization race among the tripolar nuclear powers (and perhaps others) may not immediately trigger a general nuclear exchange even though it would erode crisis stability. In a protracted crisis, or even in a war that remains below the nuclear threshold, the nuclear forces could find themselves having to sustain a generated high alert posture for weeks or even months. If so, over time the tripolar powers could transition from a mobilization “race” to a mobilization “marathon.”

The Crumbling Barriers to Nuclear Use. Two scenarios highlight the risks of blurring the once-bright conventional-nuclear firebreak. The availability of nuclear weapons with very low yields or special designs (such as EMP weapons) may allow militaries to wage strategic warfare more effectively than they could with either conventional or cyber weapons. They can also employ nuclear weapons in ways that avoid creating the widespread devastation often popularly associated with nuclear weapons use.

A Case of “The Slows”

As the pace and scale of its nuclear triad modernization program reflect, the United States is suffering from a case of “the slows” in reacting to the trends and drivers in this study’s scenarios and their implications. The US established the current nuclear force modernization program of record during a time when Washington confronted a relatively stable and favorable competitive environment that no longer exists today, and has not for at least half a decade.

It is not possible to overstate the importance of resetting US strategy and capabilities to account for a fundamentally new and more demanding situation, given the unique importance of nuclear weapons in particular, and strategic forces in general, to US security. Moreover, US senior policymakers confront this situation from a rapidly eroding fiscal posture that finds defense funding in real decline, even as the threats to national security continue growing at an alarming rate. Hence the need for a well-crafted strategy and associated force posture that wrings the most out of increasingly scarce resources.

Like strategy and force development planning, scenario planning effort is not a sometime thing—it’s an all-the-time thing. This is especially true in today’s highly dynamic and competitive environment, where the probability of disruptive change is great. Briefly stated, crafting scenarios should be a persistent, enduring enterprise, just like the overall strategic planning effort it supports. Planners should expect the scenario set to change with regularity, introducing new scenarios while scrapping others.

At a minimum, it is my hope that readers will come away from this study having benefited in two ways. First, I hope they will have a better understanding of the very different challenges senior US policymakers may confront 10–20 years hence with respect to the country’s nuclear forces. Second, I hope readers will have a greater appreciation for how scenario-based strategic planning can enable policymakers, by taking them step-by-step to a very plausible and very different future, to make better decisions as they work to enhance US national security.

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1. Introduction

It is my third work in a series on the US strategic forces, with primary emphasis on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. The initial study, Modernizing the Nuclear Triad: Decline or Renewal?¹ assessed the United States’ plans for modernizing the land, sea, and airborne legs of its strategic nuclear triad. It concluded that current circumstances strongly support triad modernization. Moreover, key trends in the strategic forces’ competition, both geopolitical and military-technical, serve only to increase the need for modernization. Regarding the former, the apparent decision by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to undertake a large-scale expansion of its nuclear arsenal appears increasingly likely to shift the long-standing Russo-American bipolar nuclear system to one comprising three powers—a tripolar system—with significant negative implications for US security.² With respect to the latter, we have witnessed the emergence of nonnuclear strategic strike (NNSS) and cyber weapons capable of promptly and effectively neutralizing at least some strategic targets. Formerly, strategists believed this was possible only through the use of nuclear weapons.

The second study, Beyond the Nuclear Balance: A Strategic Forces Net Assessment,³ examined the current balance of forces between the United States and its two great nuclear power rivals, Russia and China. Further, it explored how current trends and potential developments could shift the balance over the next decade or so. It concluded that while the current strategic balance is satisfactory, current and prospective trends are almost entirely unfavorable from a US perspective. Absent countervailing action by the United States, the strategic balance will likely shift significantly in its principal rivals’ favor over the next decade—especially with respect to China.

This third monograph builds on the work of the previous two by using a strategic planning methodology employing scenarios. As will be elaborated upon presently, scenario-based planning can play an important role in supporting senior policymakers’ efforts to identify and pursue effective strategies.⁴

Why Scenarios?
The Need for Speed

A nuclear attack on the United States
A nuclear attack on US allies (extended deterrence)
Enemy escalation to nuclear use in the event of war with a nuclear power
Further escalation in the event of war involving limited nuclear use

In addition, the United States needs to achieve these objectives:

Avoid an unfavorable shift in the strategic nuclear balance due to attrition of dual-use conventional/nuclear delivery systems (the “entanglement” phenomenon) in the event of war with a nuclear power
Contribute to favorable outcomes of political-military crises
Minimize damage to the United States in case of a limited attack by a minor nuclear power, or in case of an accidental launch of a limited number of weapons against the United States
Extend the “nuclear taboo” (against the use of nuclear weapons)
Enhance US negotiating and bargaining power in arms control negotiations

Some policymakers, surveying the world’s uncertainties, would argue that the best course of action is simply to await events and adjust to threats as they arise—to adopt a wait-and-see or muddle-through approach. These approaches implicitly avoid dealing with uncertainty by assuming that, however much tomorrow differs from today, the current course of action will address future problems successfully, or that DoD can adapt quickly enough if necessary. In particular, a wait-and-see approach assumes tomorrow’s world will be little more than a slightly different version of today’s, even in the face of increasingly strong evidence to the contrary. Yet this approach fails just when the greatest need arises—when disruptive shifts in the competitive environment are occurring—when tomorrow turns out to be very different from today.

Given today’s uncertain environment, senior policymakers cannot afford to await events. Decisions they are making today are shaping, and limiting, the US nuclear posture of the mid- to late 2030s and early 2040s. Put simply, US senior policymakers’ ability to make significant changes to the 2035–45 US nuclear force posture will decline over time. Thus it behooves them to develop as clear an understanding as possible of potential important changes in the nuclear competitive environment over the next decade or two, and to account for those changes as best they can while their freedom of action is at its greatest.

The key to minimizing the chances of being unpleasantly surprised and suffering the consequences of compromised security interests and wasted investments is not to try to eliminate uncertainty. Rather, it lies in taking uncertainty into account and employing planning tools, like scenarios, to narrow the range of uncertainty while also identifying areas of potential risk.⁵Once policymakers have reduced uncertainty where possible and identified areas of major risk, they can develop and emplace hedges or options to enable relatively rapid course adjustments. These will be vital should the US strategic forces posture confront a competitive environment that is substantially different from the one that informed its design.

Scenario-based planning can help senior defense decision-makers confront difficult questions such as these:

What are the most pressing challenges (or opportunities) that will characterize a tripolar nuclear system?
Is it possible to deflect (or encourage) these challenges? To shape them in ways that make them less dangerous (or, in the case of potential opportunities, more likely)? To confront them successfully if they are unavoidable?
What do these challenges tell us about the kind of nuclear strategy and force posture the United States should adopt? Is it similar to the one that the current nuclear forces modernization plan projects, or very different?

Avoiding Unpleasant Surprises

The insights that those charged with setting the United States’ nuclear strategy can derive from well-developed scenarios are indispensable. In no small measure, this has to do with the strategist’s enduring need to identify new sources of competitive advantage and exploit them. As a leading private sector expert on strategy notes:

As a strategist you try to identify, create, or exploit some kind of an edge. So how do you find that advantage? Well, it’s not always staring you in the face. And you look at asymmetries. You look at asymmetries and you try to create them. . . . When you are trying to create or exploit the advantage . . . the first thing you need is an asymmetry.⁸

Crafting strategy is a kind of race between US policymakers and their rivals to identify and exploit existing and prospective asymmetric advantages. The competition also includes efforts to gain insight into sources of advantage that rivals seek to create and exploit—and taking steps to block or offset them where possible, assuming there is still time to do so.

As Carl von Clausewitz observed, the surprise that a new source of advantage often makes possible, especially a source that a rival does not anticipate, lies “at the foundation of all undertakings,” providing “the means to gain superiority.” And thus “surprise lies at the root of all operations without exception.”⁹ Clausewitz’s Eastern counterpart, Sun Tzu, concurred, noting that “all warfare is based on deception.”¹⁰

By identifying plausible futures that stress the US nuclear force posture or identify potential sources of advantage, scenarios can help US policymakers to avoid unnecessarily compromising the nation’s security and wasting limited resources. That being said, identifying key factors or drivers that may move the US into a significantly altered competitive environment requires considerable research and thought. As Kees Van der Heijden warns, “You must spend time hunting for surprises . . . [otherwise] it is difficult not to come up with the obvious.”¹¹ President Dwight Eisenhower understood the logic behind the need to devote continuous effort to identifying these insights. His strong belief was that “plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”¹²

Summary

By changing policymakers’ mental models, scenario-based strategic planning alerts them to alternative plausible competitive environments they should account for when crafting strategy.

Note that scenarios do not attempt to predict the future. Rather, their purpose is to enhance senior leaders’ thinking about the future. Well-crafted scenarios do so by identifying and employing key factors, or drivers, that may alter the future competitive environment in strategically significant ways. In so doing, they enable policymakers to develop a superior grasp of the competition’s character. Put another way, scenarios help policymakers avoid the tendency to stare at their shoelaces—to view the future based on what they see today—by helping them to lift their gaze and focus on potential futures stretching across the planning horizon.

It’s important to note that scenarios’ principal contribution is diagnostic, not prescriptive. The intention behind their use is not to recommend specific defense capabilities, programs, or force postures. Rather, scenarios provide insights that are essential to the process of making well-informed decisions about strategy. As Andrew Marshall observed, scenarios provide something of strategic significance to “think about.” For the purpose of this study, they aid policymakers in identifying nuclear force attributes that will prove robust under a wide range of prospective futures.¹³

Put simply, well-crafted scenarios provide senior policymakers with the following:

An understanding of how the competitive environment might change in strategically significant ways
An ability to recognize when the competitive environment is changing
An understanding of how to respond effectively to those changes

Therefore, scenarios help strategic planners and policymakers make better strategic decisions under conditions of risk and uncertainty.

Which Scenarios?

What scenarios should analysts present to aid US policymakers in their assessment of the country’s nuclear forces? It is possible to develop dozens of scenariosthat present plausible future competitive environments. Senior decision-makers, however, lack the time to focus detailed attention on clusters of scenarios. Practically speaking, a manageable number of scenarios is somewhere between three and six. The key is to pick a set of scenarios that capture the effects of the drivers most likely to significantly alter the competitive environment confronting US nuclear forces.

Does this mean US policymakers won’t still find themselves surprised or unprepared by developments five or ten years hence? No, for the simple reason that no planning process can eliminate all risk and uncertainty. That being said, a well-designed set of scenarios can greatly reduce the chance that such changes catch US national security leaders unawares. Moreover, even if the future does not closely resemble a particular set of scenarios, it will likely be generally near to one of them. As a result, US policymakers will be in a better situation than if they followed the advice of one former national security advisor, who declared that he preferred to “worry about today today and tomorrow tomorrow,”¹⁴ or another who argued that crafting a strategy is a fruitless exercise as “it would have been overtaken by events two weeks later.¹⁵ Rather, as President Eisenhower put it, it is essential to engage in continuous planning so that when a disruptive shift in the security environment occurs, you are relatively prepared while “everyone else is going nuts.”¹⁶

How This Study Is Organized

This study is structured into 11 chapters. This introductory chapter is followed by a brief summary of key developments and trends relating to the nuclear era, from 1945 to the present. Chapter 3 presents the drivers informing the five scenarios in the study as well as two key assumptions. Chapters 4–10 present the scenarios themselves, one per chapter (see figure 1.1). Chapter 4, “A World of Low Numbers: 2025–35,” presents a bridge scenario linking the world of today to the planning horizon of 2035–45. Chapter 5, “The Missiles of April,” focuses on the US-China nuclear rivalry, while chapter 6, “India-Pakistan: The Long Road to War,” presents a base scenario leading to branch scenarios in the following two chapters. In chapter 7, “The Fear of Being a Poor Second,” crisis stability between India and Pakistan may be compromised owing to the second- and third-order effects of China’s nuclear force expansion. Chapter 8, “Mobilization Race,” presents a second branch scenario. It highlights the challenges to crisis stability that could result should the tripolar powers engage in a race to generate their nuclear forces from a day-to-day alert posture to their highest state of readiness.

Chapter 9, “Crossing the Firebreak,” finds us returning to the Sino-American nuclear rivalry where the increasingly blurred conventional-nuclear firebreak is put to the test.

The final scenario, Chapter 10’s “Breakout: A World of High Numbers,” presents the dynamics behind a decision by China to greatly expand its nuclear arsenal well beyond the current New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) level. Chapter 11 presents selected insights from the scenarios, suggests topics for further scenario development, and provides some brief concluding thoughts.

2. Background on the Nuclear Forces Competition

Today the United States confronts a security environment that is characterized by increasing instability. For Americans under age 50, the situation must seem particularly unsettling. Three decades ago, as they entered adulthood, the United States stood at the center of a global unipolar system following the Cold War’s end. As then–US Secretary of State Madeline Albright proclaimed, “We are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.”¹⁷

Indeed, for several decades following the Cold War, Americans had no obvious need to be concerned about the kind of intense competition for political and economic dominance that had characterized the international system since the rise of the nation-state. Both peace among the world’s great powers and prosperity seemed the natural order of things. To be sure, there were small wars here and there, in Africa, the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East. But none posed a threat to US vital interests. Similarly, the effects of the Great Recession of 2007–09, as well as its duration, were modest in comparison with the suffering endured during the Great Depression or even the stagflation that gripped the country in the late 1970s.

Today, however, as we complete the first quarter of the twenty-first century, Americans confront an increasingly dangerous world. The traditional intense competition for power and influence among the world’s great and lesser powers has displaced the unipolar era. The United States’ two great nuclear power rivals, China and Russia, seek to overturn the 80-year US-led international system and, in the process, rewrite its rules and shift the balance of power in ways that compromise longstanding American vital interests. Washington confronts these rivals—along with lesser ones like Iran, North Korea, and a host of hostile nonstate groups—without the kind of great-power military allies that aided it during the two world wars and the Cold War that followed. Rather, today America’s major allies are all in relative decline. They are aging rapidly and shrinking in size. The combination of a rising cohort of pensioners and a declining workforce has made spending on defense and filling out the ranks of their armed forces increasingly difficult despite the many pledges to do so.¹⁸ Nor, when it comes to China, can the US boast anything close to the level of relative financial strength and industrial might it enjoyed over its rivals throughout the last century.

These changes are occurring at a time of disruptive shifts in the character of warfare, to include strategic warfare.¹⁹ This is especially true with respect to nuclear weapons. Since their introduction in the final days of World War II, the human race has lived under their persistent shadow for eight decades. For most of these fourscore years, two rivals, the United States and Soviet Union, possessed these weapons in numbers sufficient to destroy each other as functioning societies, and even humankind itself. Some analysts have described this era of strategic competition as the First Nuclear Age,²⁰ and by others as the Cold War.

The Cold War (1945–91)

The Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union lasted from the late 1940s until the latter’s collapse in 1991.²¹ The period saw both sides amass nuclear weapons numbering in the tens of thousands while coming perilously close to war on several occasions.²²

Geopolitically, the dominant feature of this period was the superpower rivalry that the two countries waged within a bipolar international system. The Cold War’s birth saw the United States enjoying a brief monopoly in nuclear weaponry, lasting barely four years. Roughly two decades followed in which America possessed a sizable numerical advantage in nuclear weapons over Russia. This period was also a time of great intellectual ferment among senior American policymakers and members of the strategic studies community. They sought to absorb the implications of nuclear weapons’ enormous destructive power for US strategy and, by extension, the number and types of nuclear weapons necessary, their delivery systems, and their ideal positioning.²³

Following the Soviet testing of an atomic bomb in August 1949, there were serious discussions in American and other circles as to whether the United States should wage a preventive atomic war against the Soviet Union before it could create a nuclear arsenal and pose an existential threat to the West.²⁴ President Eisenhower, among other senior US policymakers, rejected this course of action. Thus the strategic focus defaulted primarily to deterring a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. The challenge of crafting an effective deterrence strategy toward this end was soon shaped by several military-technical developments that greatly altered the character of the nuclear competition.

The most profound change occurred in the early 1950s with the introduction of thermonuclear weapons, or hydrogen bombs. The H-bomb was capable of yields orders of magnitude greater than the fission (A-bomb) weapons the US introduced in 1945.²⁵ With weapons such as these, most senior policymakers, military officers, and members of the strategic studies community came to accept the concept known as assured destruction. In other words, they understood that there can be no “winner” in a nuclear war as long as one side, after suffering a surprise attack, retains sufficient weapons to execute a counterattack that would destroy the attacker’s ability to function as a coherent political, economic, and social entity.

The second major development saw the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in the late 1950s. The high speed at which these missiles traveled greatly reduced both sides’ attack warning time, thereby increasing the prospect of a successful preemptive disarming attack on a rival’s nuclear forces. In so doing, these missiles complicated the challenge of establishing an effective second-strike (or retaliatory) assured destruction capability.²⁶

From 1953 to 1964, lesser powers—China, France, and Great Britain²⁷ —joined the Nuclear Club. Each established modest arsenals comprising a few hundred weapons. While hardly irrelevant, these countries’ forces were minuscule compared to the tens of thousands of weapons in the American and Russian nuclear arsenals. Simply put, for American and Soviet planners working to determine their nuclear force size and posture, the nuclear forces of these second-tier powers carried relatively little weight.

In developing a nuclear posture, the United States—partly by design, partly serendipitously, and partly the result of rivalries among the military services—fielded what has become known as a triad of nuclear delivery systems. It comprised (in order of introduction) long-range bombers, land-based ICBMs, and sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), the latter of which the US positioned on a fleet of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).²⁸ During this time the United States enjoyed an era of nuclear plenty relative to the Soviet Union. While discussing nuclear strategy, some experts and policymakers emphasized limiting attacks only to rival nuclear forces (counterforce strikes) while sparing countervalue targets (such as industry and urban centers).²⁹ However, the principal strategic focus remained on deterring a general nuclear exchange with the USSR. Thus the question of How much is enough? to establish an assured destruction capability vis-à-vis the Soviet Union remained central to discussions of nuclear force strategy and requirements.³⁰

The decade following the move toward a nuclear triad witnessed further key technological advances. Once again, the United States led the way. Ballistic missile accuracy improved significantly. This enabled the US to field smaller missiles with less throw weight,³¹ as their advantage in accuracy over their Soviet counterparts allowed employment of warheads with lower yields to achieve the same effects. Another advance saw the introduction of multiple warheads on a single missile, each of which could strike a different target. These multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) effected a dramatic change in the strategic calculus. Prior to MIRVs, a military required more than one missile to destroy another missile in its silo with high confidence. With MIRVs, a single warhead (or more likely two) could now destroy an enemy missile armed with six, eight, or even ten warheads. This new situation advantaged the offense, which, at least in theory, decreased crisis stability by increasing the incentive—and pressure—to attack first.³²

By the 1970s, Moscow had achieved a rough parity in nuclear forces with Washington. Accordingly, the United States adopted a goal of nuclear sufficiency³³ rather than superiority relative to the Soviet Union, accepting an essential equivalence³⁴ in strategic nuclear forces (SNF), as the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) I and II agreements reflected. Yet even with these “limitations,” the US and Soviet nuclear arsenals continued to dwarf those of the other nuclear powers, which comprised a few hundred weapons. (Indeed, at the Cold War’s end, Moscow and Washington each possessed over 19,000 weapons.)³⁵

Throughout the Cold War, the question of how to defend against a nuclear attack persisted. During World War II, air defenses had exacted a fearful toll on strategic bombers at times; however, the growing numbers of nuclear weapons combined with the introduction of thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles made the defender’s job challenging in the extreme. Although both the United States and Soviet Union pursued ballistic missile defenses in the 1960s, these simply were not effective against the threat they confronted. Indeed, although the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty permitted two modest ABM sites, the United States system never became operational.

Interest in missile defenses enjoyed renewed attention in the 1980s, thanks to President Ronald Reagan’s support for the Strategic Defense Initiative. At that time some argued that missile defenses might prove effective in defending some US nuclear forces (such as ICBMs) by driving up the attacker’s cost. Yet it proved difficult to argue that air and missile defenses could themselves be survivable and cost-effective at the margin. Indeed, a number of highly respected American defense intellectuals, Andrew Marshall and Herbert York among them, concluded that the massive Soviet air defense network constituted a “colossal waste of money.”³⁶ Washington also dismantled its continental air defense system in the mid-1970s.³⁷

The Unipolar Era: 1991–2020

The onset of the so-called Second Nuclear Age coincided with the Cold War’s end and a period of US economic and military dominance—a shift from the Cold War bipolar international system to America’s unipolar era. In the wake of greatly reduced tensions following the Soviet Union’s collapse, the nuclear threat diminished as Washington and Moscow signed a series of agreements. They eventually reduced their arsenals to roughly 5,000 weapons each and limited their deployed strategic weapons to 1,550 each, well below late Cold War levels but still far above those of any other nuclear power.³⁸ The minor nuclear powers—China, France, Great Britain, and Israel—either cut their nuclear forces or maintained them roughly at existing levels.

Thus the global nuclear regime remained bipolar, although the disparity in arsenals between the two principal powers and the other Nuclear Club members was still formidable but significantly smaller than during the Cold War. This period also witnessed the growing nuclearization of Asia: India³⁹ and Pakistan joined the Nuclear Club in 1998, followed by North Korea in 2006.⁴⁰ These two developments—large reductions in the superpower arsenals and a 50 percent increase in the number of nuclear powers—produced a modest shift toward nuclear multipolarity.

Military-technical developments also shifted the perception that nuclear weapons were the exclusive instruments of strategic warfare. During the Cold War, one country could inflict prompt, devastating harm on another only by employing nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons seem certain to remain the ultimate means of striking strategic targets—those that are central to a state’s material capability or will to prosecute war. However, conventional precision-guided munitions (PGMs) appear capable of promptly and effectively neutralizing or destroying at least some strategic targets, particularly counterforce targets, formerly reserved solely for nuclear weapons.⁴¹

This development did not come entirely as a surprise. During the latter stages of the Cold War, Russian military theorists had written on the potential of precision-guided weaponry combined with modern sensors and communications systems to form a “reconnaissance-strike complex” that would usher in a “military-technical revolution” or “revolution in military affairs.”⁴² This Precision Warfare Revolution arrived in the form of US military operations during the First Gulf War in 1991.⁴³

For roughly two decades following the Cold War, the US military possessed a near monopoly in precision warfare, leading to efforts by rival powers to offset the US advantage. One such effort found minor powers like Iran and North Korea looking to acquire nuclear weapons. Another approach, which Russia adopted, calls for an increased willingness to use nuclear weapons in the event of conventional war with the United States.⁴⁴ Arguably the most ambitious counter focuses on acquiring NNSS capabilities to reduce or even eliminate the US advantage in this area. HereChina is leading the way.⁴⁵

This period also witnessed the internet’s expansion from a small network used primarily by the US scientific community to a global network with billions of users. With its growth came the rise of a cyber economy involving, among other things, online financial transactions, widespread automated regulation of key system controls, an explosion in the sharing and storing of information (including highly sensitive information), and the emergence of new forms of electronic communication, such as email and social media. Unsurprisingly, the cyber domain has also proven no stranger to crime and conflict. Storage of sensitive information on networks gave birth to cyber espionage against governments and cyber economic warfare against businesses. Given advances in cyber weaponry and societies’ increasing reliance on information systems and access to the internet, modern states’ critical infrastructure is growing progressively more vulnerable to strategic cyberattack.⁴⁶

The world’s militaries have also exploited the rise of the internet and associated information technology tools to enhance their effectiveness in areas such as scouting (comprising intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance [ISR] operations); command, control, communications, and computers (C4); and logistics. To disrupt, degrade, and destroy the hardware and software associated with these capabilities—and to protect their own—militaries are also developing malware capable of undertaking strategic cyber-strike operations. Not only have cyberweapons provided a potential new way of attacking strategic targets, but changes in the target base may also enhance their effectiveness as advanced economies and their militaries rely ever more on information systems, increasing their susceptibility to cyber strikes. Put simply, cyber weapons appear to have significant potential to effect the prompt disruption or destruction of a range of strategic counterforce and countervalue targets. Moreover, cyber weapons may be able to conduct strategic strikes in ways that make it difficult to identify their source, or at least to do so quickly. This way they can compromise the target’s ability to identify—and respond promptly and effectively to—an attack.

In summary, the introduction of long-range NNSS delivery systems armed with PGMs and cyber weapons may herald a form of combined arms strategic strike operations in which each weapon system has distinct advantages and limitations relative to the others. In any event, the post–Cold War era witnessed strategic warfare becoming multidimensional, if only modestly so.⁴⁷

3. Key Trends Influencing the Competition

We now turn to the key drivers that inform the development of the scenarios in this study, again focusing on the 2035–45 planning horizon. While not necessarily high-probability events—or done deals—their odds of occurring are sufficiently high, and the implications should they occur sufficiently strong, that they cannot be ignored in developing the scenario set. Also presented here are the two key assumptions that apply to each of the five scenarios.

Key Assumptions

The study’s two key assumptions are as follows:

A tripolar nuclear system comprising China, Russia, and the United States is emerging.
The US government’s fiscal posture will decline substantially.

The scenarios branch off from these base assumptions. The branches are the result of introducing one or more additional drivers that affect the competitive environment in significantly different ways.

A Tripolar Nuclear System

One foundational assumption of this effort is that over the next decade, a tripolar system that includes China will supplant the bipolar nuclear system that Russia and the United States have dominated for nearly 70 years. This assumption is present for each scenario.

The post–Cold War US unipolar era is over. Today’s international system has returned to the multipolar great power competition that has generally characterized the international system since the emergence of the nation-state nearly four centuries ago.⁴⁸ In a similar vein, the bipolar nuclear system that defined the last threescore years or so is now transitioning to a tripolar system. The primary driver of this shift is China’s apparent decision to ascend to great nuclear power status, with an arsenal comparable to those of the United States and Russia (table 3.1 shows the size of nuclear forces in 2025 and how China is rapidly increasing its arsenal). Current projections find the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on track to match the Russian and US deployed SNF by the mid-2030s.

Assuming China realizes its ambitions, a tripolar nuclear rivalry will emerge with potentially profound implications for deterrence, crisis stability, extended deterrence, intra-war deterrence,⁴⁹ and consequently US strategy and nuclear force posture.⁵⁰ Other developments could further complicate the situation, to include the prospective effects of China’s buildup on the “lesser” nuclear tripolar balance between China, India, and Pakistan (see figure 3.1);⁵¹ growth in minor nuclear power arsenals; nuclear proliferation; the resilience (or lack thereof) of US extended deterrence guarantees; and the emergence of a market in fissile materials.

A Sino-Russo-American tripolar nuclear system will find several touchstone bipolar system methods of measuring the effectiveness of strategic nuclear forces—and hence requirements for their size, structure, and posture—in doubt. Consider parity, or essential equivalence, in nuclear arsenal size. For both the United States and Russia, parity in nuclear forces has been a staple of arms control agreements going back to SALT I.⁵² Yet it’s impossible for China, Russia, and the US to each have parity with their two major nuclear rivals. Similarly, the requirements of maintaining an assured destruction capability against two comparably armed rivals rather than one are more challenging and prospectively destabilizing.⁵³

The tripolar nuclear competition will complicate US policymakers’ efforts in still other ways. For example, during the Cold War, Central Europe was the focal point of the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the West. Washington enjoyed a modest advantage in theater nuclear forces (TNF) in that two of its European allies, France and Great Britain, possessed significant nuclear arsenals. More importantly, thanks to its network of European and Asian allies, the United States could also position relatively short-range nuclear delivery systems forward, within striking distance of strategic targets in the Soviet Union.

Today, however, the Western Pacific has arguably supplanted Europe as the international system’s principal hotspot, with a very loose US-led coalition of the region’s democracies confronting a powerful revisionist China. In a confrontation with the United States, Beijing may be able to count on several nuclear powers for support—North Korea and (perhaps) Pakistan and Russia. In any event, US policymakers could scarcely discount their forces. Washington, on the other hand, might at best be able to enlist a traditionally aloof India, whose current nuclear arsenal roughly balances Pakistan’s. As China’s deployed nuclear forces approach those of the United States, the nuclear balance will have shifted dramatically in Beijing’s favor from what it was two decades ago.

When their combined nuclear strength comes to exceed that of the United States by a substantial margin, Beijing (especially) and Moscow would likely experience a substantial increase in their freedom of action, both locally and globally. For the United States, the loss of parity with its nuclear rivals could also erode its allies’ confidence in extended deterrence. If so, these allies could become more vulnerable to Chinese or Russian coercion. Facing this situation, some of them may have a significantly greater incentive to become nuclear powers themselves or to adopt policies more accommodating to Beijing and Moscow.

Complicating matters still further, there is uncertainty over how Beijing’s buildup will affect the competition among a lesser tripolar system of South Asian nuclear powers: China, India, and Pakistan.

The US Government’s Accelerating Fiscal Decline

The most recent ten-year projection out to 2035 by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finds the US government’s fiscal standing declining substantially. Based on the US gross domestic product (GDP), it projects the federal government’s spending over the next decade will be 20 percent higher than in the previous four decades, increasing to 24.4 percent of GDP. The CBO projects revenue, however, to stand at 18.3 percent of GDP, increasing the annual deficit from the current $1.9 trillion to $2.7 trillion. As a percentage of GDP, only the temporary World War II deficits exceed these levels.⁵⁴

Correspondingly, the cost of servicing the government’s debt will more than double, from $881 billion to an estimated $1.78 trillion. This will crowd out discretionary spending on domestic programs, which the CBO projects to decline from 3.3 percent of GDP to 2.9 percent.

According to the CBO, the US government’s fiscal standing will also incur even greater stress as the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, which subsidize current benefits to recipients, become exhausted by 2035. Unless the government obtains substantial funding to offset these funds’ exhaustion, it may have to cut Social Security benefits by over 20 percent⁵⁵ and Medicare Hospital Insurance payments by 11 percent.⁵⁶ If Congress decides to hike taxes to continue paying for these funds, voters may become less inclined to accept further tax increases to pay for other federal priorities, like the military.

The CBO projects a 20 percent reduction in the defense budget share of GDP (from 3.0 percent of GDP to 2.4 percent).⁵⁷ With respect to defense funding, the 2035 projection represents a decrease of roughly 60 percent from the Cold War era, in which spending on defense averaged over 6 percent of GDP. Meanwhile, the US confronts China—a country whose GDP relative to the United States is twice what the Soviet Union’s was during the Cold War—and, of course, Russia and other lesser threats as well.

Given these circumstances, and absent a major shift in the American public’s policy priorities,⁵⁸ the US military will arguably face the greatest gap between the threats it confronts and the means to address them since the nineteenth century. Put another way, in the span of 25 years, the United States finds itself transitioning from the sole superpower in a unipolar international system to a major power compelled to make very tough choices to protect itself in an increasingly hostile world.

Drivers

The following drivers have a significant probability of effecting a major shift in the competitive environment in ways that would stress US nuclear forces. This assumes the Pentagon will pursue the current modernization program and associated force posture as currently designed.

Theater Nuclear Forces

The emerging tripolar system may produce a rough parity in strategic delivery systems at relatively modest (e.g., New START) levels—a world of low numbers. If so, then China and Russia may have strong incentives to field theater nuclear systems to offset the arsenals of lesser rivals, such as India and the two North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) nuclear powers in Europe, and perhaps each other’s theater systems as well. China already has a large inventory of theater ballistic missiles but lacks the fissile material necessary to arm them with substantial numbers of nuclear warheads while simultaneously building up its nuclear strategic forces. Russia—now free from Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty constraints—seems poised to get back into the TNF business. Should either Beijing or Moscow exercise its TNF option, and if Washington failed to respond in kind, the United States could be at a serious disadvantage, especially with respect to fulfilling its extended deterrence commitments to its Asian and European allies.

Arms Control and a World of Low Numbers

For over a century, extending back to the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, many Americans have expressed faith in the ability of arms control agreements to enhance US security. Indeed, the United States is the only tripolar power with a strong arms control lobby. Aside from arms control’s purported security benefits, reducing existing armaments or avoiding large increases in nuclear forces can significantly benefit the great powers’ budgets.

This latter prospective benefit is likely to resonate especially strongly with American voters, who, unlike Chinese and Russian citizens, can directly influence their government’s policies. Today in America there is strong popular support for expanding spending on social welfare programs, enacting tax cuts, or both. As noted above, there is far less enthusiasm for boosting the nation’s defenses. These factors, along with rapidly rising US federal debt (and associated interest payments), will almost certainly increase the pressure on America’s political leaders to reach accommodations with China and Russia to avoid increased funding for defense in general, and for strategic forces in particular. For these reasons, when it comes to arms negotiations, especially with respect to China, the United States may be playing a weak hand. It is also likely to be highly receptive to agreements that limit nuclear forces to relatively low numbers, such as those in the New START agreement.

Breakout to a World of High Numbers

American policymakers and military planners must also hedge against a possible nuclear force breakout that could affect a disruptive shift in the nuclear balance, especially one that decreases crisis stability and weakens deterrence, to include extended deterrence. For a breakout to occur, a nuclear power requires a warm production base actively producing strategic delivery systems, or an existing surplus of such systems, and a stock of fissile material sufficient to fabricate a substantial number of additional nuclear weapons within a relatively short time.

Regarding the former, both Russia and China have modernized their nuclear forces. Both have relatively warm industrial bases actively producing strategic and/or theater delivery systems. China currently also has a sizeable inventory of medium- and intermediate-range land-based ballistic missiles (MRBMs and IRBMs, respectively).⁵⁹

Were additional stocks of fissile material to become available, the PLA would not necessarily need to surge delivery system production to augment its nuclear forces quickly and substantially. The United States and Russia could, however, greatly mitigate the threat of a Chinese breakout by maintaining their significant surpluses of nuclear warheads and the ability to upload them on existing or new delivery systems.⁶⁰ This assumes, of course, that these two powers have the financial means and, especially with respect to the United States, the political will to counter a Chinese attempt at breakout.

The United States, on the other hand, is much earlier in its strategic delivery system modernization effort, with full-scale production of ICBMs and fleet ballistic missile submarines still years away. Moreover, its Sentinel ICBM and Colombia-class SSBNs are experiencing production delays and cost overruns.⁶¹ These problems, combined with current pessimistic projections of future defense budget levels, cause analysts to worry that the United States will be unable to execute these programs as designed.

Fissile material is not a problem for Russia or the United States; both have large stocks of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium. As noted above, it is a problem for China. Beijing’s disadvantage here could be significantly reduced, or perhaps even eliminated, if a market for fissile materials emerges or if the PRC can expand indigenous production more rapidly than anticipated.⁶²

Force Asymmetries

There are significant asymmetries between American, Chinese, and Russian nuclear forces that could have strategic implications. In particular, both China and Russia place far more emphasis on land-based ballistic missiles than does the United States. The asymmetry extends even further: A significant portion of Chinese and Russian ICBMs are mobile and MIRVed, while US ICBMs are not. Nor do current US nuclear modernization plans envision uploading additional warheads on its ICBMs (although it can do so) or deploying any of them in a mobile mode.

By comparison, the US has weighted its nuclear forces more heavily toward long-range bombers and (especially) fleet ballistic missile submarines than China and Russia have. Indeed, the US arms control community and a significant element of America’s strategic studies community advocate eliminating the land-based missile leg of the triad entirely, thereby reducing the nuclear triad to a dyad.⁶³ Those in the United States who promote moving to a dyad strongly support placing even greater emphasis on SSBNs. Others, however, express concerns that advances in military-related technologies are, on balance, making antisubmarine warfare (ASW) easier.⁶⁴

The Lesser Tripolar System

When India and Pakistan joined the Nuclear Club in 1998, a local tripolar nuclear rivalry emerged between these two countries and, in India’s case, with China. Whereas Pakistan views India as the principal threat to its security, India’s primary focus is on China and its large-scale nuclear force expansion. Thus, somewhat similar to the United States, India finds itself confronting two comparable rival nuclear powers.

Thus far, China’s nuclear buildup has not triggered an arms race with India. Until recently the two powers, and Pakistan as well, viewed their nuclear weapons primarily as political instruments.Correspondingly, all three adopted a minimum deterrent nuclear posture. This meant maintaining the lowest number of nuclear weapons capable of inflicting unacceptable damage to their adversaries’ key cities, even after absorbing a full-scale nuclear attack.

China’s decision to expand its nuclear forces far beyond their traditional levels has upended the Lesser Tripolar System. This could trigger a dramatic expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal and perhaps Pakistan’s. The shifting competitive dynamics could have a significant effect on the Global Tripolar System, especially if India feels compelled to expand its arsenal substantially to offset, if only partially, China’s nuclear buildup.

The Nuclear Taboo and the Eroding Firebreak

The Nuclear Taboo

The so-called nuclear taboo against the use of nuclear weapons has lasted over fourscore years. Yet while there are enormous incentives for belligerents to avoid nuclear weapons use, there are also situations in which a rational decision-maker may conclude their use is warranted. Nor can one discount the possibility that a country may employ nuclear weapons as a result of accident, systemic failure, misperception, or irrational act.

While avoiding nuclear Armageddon is understandably the top priority for states, as noted in chapter 1, this is not the only objective of the tripolar nuclear powers’ strategies. Moreover, they must consider other nuclear powers whose arsenals are relatively small. This limits the potential for an Armageddon-like exchange against a nuclear power like China, India, Russia, or the United States.

As will be elaborated upon presently, even between major nuclear powers, nuclear weapons use might not produce the apocalyptic damage that would have characterized a full-scale US-Soviet Cold War exchange. Indeed, as described in two scenarios in this study, in some instances a nuclear attack could cause unexpectedly light damage compared to the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nor would the United States necessarily be involved in such an exchange, suggesting that its nuclear forces may have little, if any, role in preventing nuclear use by another power.

Moreover, the leaders of the relatively new nuclear powers have worldviews, values, aims, and decision processes that are unfamiliar or obscure to US decision-makers. They may also have very different levels of risk tolerance—think of how the world’s Neville Chamberlains and Adolf Hitlers differed in their willingness to take risks. Under what circumstances would risk lovers choose to employ nuclear weapons, assuming they have them?

Some leaders see nuclear weapon use as an essential counter to the conventional superiority of a rival; indeed, this has been Russia’s view regarding the United States, and Pakistan’s relative to India. Others may consider nuclear weapons not simply as deterrents but as instruments to coerce an adversary, as in Chinese views of deterrence.⁶⁵ This could find Chinese leaders willing to risk at least some forms of nuclear use to compel a target state to take actions it would otherwise reject.

Some small countries whose ability to sustain the effects of even a few nuclear weapons used against it may feel compelled to adopt a preemptive strike posture. Israel, for example, has been described as having a “Samson Option,” a willingness to employ nuclear weapons against its enemies if it feels its existence is at stake.⁶⁶

Put simply, the nuclear competition’s characteristics have changed significantly since the US-Soviet bipolar rivalry that dominated the Cold War. The probability of nuclear weapons use has increased, if for no other reason than that the international system has come under greater stress in recent years while the number of fingers on nuclear triggers has expanded.

To complicate matters, the gradual blurring of the once-clear firebreak between conventional and nuclear weapons use threatens to further reduce the odds of nuclear weapons use in anger. It is to this driver that we now turn our attention.

The Nuclear-Conventional Firebreak

Two developments challenge Herman Kahn’s observation in the 1980s that “there are very large and very clear ‘firebreaks’ between nuclear and conventional war.”⁶⁷ The first is the emergence of NNSS and cyber weapons that in some instances may offer effective substitutes for nuclear weapons use. This has blurred the firebreak’s clarity considerably.Multiple developments—such as cyber weapons becoming more advanced and more nuclear powers being geographically close to each other—risk compromising early warning and command-and-control systems, increasing pressures to employ nuclear weapons preemptively in a crisis.⁶⁸

The growing multidimensional character of strategic warfare has raised concerns regarding the entanglement that dual-use nuclear and NNSS delivery systems create when militaries can arm them with either nuclear or conventional weapons. For example, a defender confronting an attack by dual-use delivery systems such as bombers and ballistic missiles cannot be certain whether its attacker has armed these systems (or some portion of them) with nuclear weapons. Given the high stakes—especially if a defender believed such attacks targeted its nuclear forces (i.e., a counterforce strike)—it might prove unwilling to endure the onslaught. Rather, launching a portion, or even all, of its nuclear forces upon warning that such an attack was underway might seem less risky.

The second development is the rise of precision nuclear warfare. This refers to the potential use of very-low-yield (VLY) nuclear weapons—which have a yield of 1 kiloton or so as well as precision accuracy—and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons. These devices can effectively destroy targets without producing hellscapes of flattened, burning cities. Indeed, both Chinese and Russian defense analysts have noted the increasingly multidimensional character of strategic warfare and its effects on the firebreak.⁶⁹

Summary

A number of factors are shifting the character of nuclear competition, with China’s move to become a nuclear power on par with Russia and the United States being the primary development. Most, if not all, of these driving forces are geopolitical and military-technical in nature. They also appear likely to create far more problems than opportunities for US policymakers.

Senior US policymakers want to know how these changes might affect America’s nuclear force and whether it can still meet its objectives. The issue is all the more pressing as the current US nuclear force modernization plan was set to address a relatively benign threat environment that no longer exists, and the one that does exist is becoming more challenging.

By presenting plausible future competition worlds that differ in significant ways from the world of today, scenarios can help policymakers make better decisions with respect to the US nuclear force posture. This study uses a scenario-based planning methodology that both public- and private-sector strategic planners have employed to great benefit. Its purpose is to aid in assessing the prospective effectiveness of the US nuclear forces modernization program and its associated force posture.⁷⁰

4. A World of Low Numbers, 2025–35

The scenario presented in this chapter forms a common baseline, or point of departure, for the five scenarios that follow. It forms a bridge from today’s world to the planning horizon, which encompasses the period 2035–45.

The Treaty

On the afternoon of July 20, 2032, the leaders of China, Russia, and the United States met in Beijing to sign the Strategic Forces Reduction (STRATFORE) Treaty, the first strategic arms control agreement to go into effect since New START formally elapsed in February 2026.⁷¹ The treaty was the product of US-led efforts to restart arms control negotiations beginning in early 2029, following the end of the Russo-Ukrainian War.⁷² The talks originally centered on formally reinstating the New START agreement between Moscow and Washington as well as opening up a second-track set of negotiations that included China.

The second track soon became the only track, as the Chinese agreed to join the talks in May 2030. Their participation, and the willingness of all three powers to use the New START agreement as the basis for negotiations, led to rapid progress toward an agreement.

The STRATFORE Treaty limits the three nuclear powers to no more than 1,200 deployed strategic nuclear weapons. It is to remain in force for 10 years, with an option to renew for an additional 10 years. The agreement is especially notable for reducing the number of deployed weapons that New START permitted by over 20 percent.⁷³ As in New START, the STRATFORE agreement counts bombers as having one nuclear weapon.⁷⁴ It also requires the United States and Russia to reduce their stored weapons to 800 each and eliminate their retired weapon inventories no later than July 31, 2037. It similarly permits China to maintain 800 weapons in storage.

The three powers agreed to enter into negotiations on resurrecting the INF Treaty. The negotiations began in November 2032, but they failed to arrive at an agreement for several reasons. First, both Beijing and Moscow argued that, unlike the United States, they confronted other rival nuclear powers (India in China’s case; Britain and France with respect to Russia) whose capabilities they had to take into account. Second, both Beijing and Moscow held a belief they did not state: TNF could serve as a hedge if their “no limits” partnership dissolved.⁷⁵ Thus both Chinese and Russian policymakers envisioned continuing to use their SNF to counterbalance America’s, while their theater forces served to deter each other.Finally, both the Chinese and the Russians believed their US rivals could confront a major barrier to deploying TNF, as it would require political will on Washington’s part as well as agreement by their Asian and European allies to host them.

Washington

In the United States, arms control groups hailed the agreement as a way of “bringing China under the [disarmament] tent” and hoped it heralded a new era of agreements to reduce nuclear weapons and, with them, the threat of war. As Damian DeLuggo, head of the US Peace Congress, declared while in Beijing to celebrate the treaty’s signing, “Arms control has been in retreat over the last three decades, with the ABM, INF, and New START agreements all discarded. The world has been no safer for it. The so-called experts said that reaching an agreement with both China and Russia was for dreamers. We dared to dream.”

President Katherine Dougherty, who was seeking reelection at the time, echoed these sentiments. She hailed the agreement as “a major breakthrough,” declaring, “Thanks to this administration’s persistent diplomacy, hundreds of billions of dollars that would have gone into the instruments of war can now be invested in improving the lives of the American people and placing our social safety net programs—Social Security and Medicare—on a firm foundation.”

Washington’s cascading fiscal woes also drove its willingness to enter into an agreement. Since the United States last enjoyed a budget surplus in 2001, a combination of tax cuts and federal government spending increases has led to mounting debt. In fiscal year 2032, it required over $1.7 trillion simply to service the interest on the country’s debt—an amount 70 percent greater than the entire defense budget⁷⁶ Congress had yet to address the Social Security trust fund’s pending insolvency, which the CBO had projected to occur in 2033. Nor had it decided how to deal with Medicare’s projected insolvency.⁷⁷

This unprecedented fiscal mismanagement has exacted a heavy toll on the US defense budget, which now accounts for 2.4 percent of the country’s GDP, a 20 percent reduction from 2024. This is especially striking when one realizes that during the Cold War, when the United States confronted one great power rival—not two—it devoted, on average, over 6 percent of its GDP to defense.

Despite the president’s strong support for the agreement, critics argue that it failed to address key strategic issues. These include the United States losing parity with its principal rivals and the uncertainty regarding its ability to retain an assured destruction capability against two comparably armed nuclear powers. With respect to parity, they argue that the combined forces of America’s two rivals now outnumber US strategic forces two to one. Some strategic studies analysts point out that to maintain an assured destruction capability against both China and Russia, the US will have to increase its nuclear forces, not reduce them as called for by the treaty.

Treaty opponents also warn that it will likely move the nuclear competition into new and more destabilizing areas. For one, it incentivizes the three major nuclear powers, each of which faces two principal competitors, to support the lesser nuclear powers with whom they share a common adversary to increase the threat to their rivals. America’s nuclear allies could also draw the US into a competition to help them expand their arsenals, or to assist other allies, such as Japan and South Korea, in becoming nuclear powers. This development would reverse a longstanding US objective of preventing nuclear proliferation and minimizing nuclear arsenals. Treaty skeptics see China encouraging (and even aiding) North Korea and Pakistan to expand their arsenals, and Russia offering to assist India to do the same, while the United States sits on its hands.

Second, as noted above, by capping growth in SNF, Beijing and Moscow—both of whom have nuclear rivals in close proximity to them—could seek advantage by ramping up their theater nuclear forces, which lie outside STRATFORE constraints. Indeed, critics point out that China, whose limited stocks of fissile material were a key limiting factor in its nuclear buildup, had “taken us to the cleaners.” As former US Defense Secretary William Imbriale put it, “By bringing our nuclear force levels down to their level, and freezing them there for 10 years, the Chinese can now use fissile material production to arm their theater nuclear missiles—IRBMs and MRBMs—to threaten our allies in the Indo-Pacific. If the president has a plan to address this threat, I would be most anxious to hear it.”

It will not be long before circumstances validate these critics’ concerns.

Moscow

Russia lacks an arms control lobby but found the STRATFORE agreement in its interest. Russian President Alexi Kirilenski was under pressure at the time to restore his country’s economy, which had been severely damaged as a consequence of its war with Ukraine. The conflict ended in a Korean War–like truce⁷⁸ in 2028, several months following President Vladimir Putin’s death.

Moreover, Russia’s military chiefs have prioritized restoring their heavily depleted conventional forces, placing greater pressure on their nuclear forces budget accounts. As Marshall Victor Mikan is said to have remarked to one of his senior commanders, “Our economy is the size of Canada’s. We need this treaty.”

Beijing

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership was delighted with the STRATFORE agreement. As former Defense Secretary Imbriale observed, at the time of the treaty’s signing China’s strategic nuclear force buildup was just approaching the 1,200 threshold. Limiting new deployed SNF levels to this number required the Americans and Russians to reduce their New START–level forces by over 20 percent, while the Chinese incurred no cuts. And as other American critics of the treaty argue, fissile material was now available for Beijing to create a formidable TNF.

After signing STRATFORE, the CCP’s Central Military Commission (CMC)⁷⁹ set about implementing the follow-on phase of its nuclear force expansion. The commission also called for increasing the number of NNSS delivery systems, to include long-range bombers and ballistic missiles armed with PGMs. These systems are designed to be dual-use, meaning that they can be armed with nuclear as well as conventional weapons and can be rapidly switched from one type of payload to another. As China’s fissile material stocks expand, the CCP will have the option of converting its NNSS forces to nuclear systems relatively rapidly.

New Delhi

The STRATFORE agreement triggered a spirited debate among India’s national security leaders, including Prime Minister Jagadish Chandra Ramanujan, who began holding weekly meetings with his senior national security advisors to address the treaty’s implications for their country. They discussed whether India should expand its arsenal to STRATFORE’s relatively low ceiling, or if China might help Pakistan expand its nuclear arsenal. The policymakers also considered the likelihood of Beijing expanding its theater nuclear forces.

In autumn 2032, India decided to put out feelers to Moscow and Washington to determine what kind of assistance they might offer. Two items stood out on New Delhi’s wish list. One was bomb design. India conducted only five tests of its nuclear weapons when it openly became a nuclear power in 1998.⁸⁰ These tests were insufficient to provide high confidence that the weapons would perform as designed. Indeed, India’s most reliable nuclear weapon had a yield of 12 kilotons, a small fraction of the yield of American, Chinese, and Russian strategic weapons. Some Chinese weapons possessed yields 100 times greater.

Prime Minister Ramanujan found a receptive ear in Moscow. The Russians, while anxious to preserve their no-limits partnership with China, were also looking for opportunities to improve their position under the STRATFORE Treaty. In particular, President Kirilenski was looking for insurance in case China’s intentions toward Russia become hostile. Should that occur, Moscow would not only have to balance against the US, British, and French arsenals but also China’s (including its TNF). Aiding India with bomb design appeared to be a low-cost way of offsetting China’s arsenal without openly offending Beijing.

New Delhi’s other priority was the submarine arm of its emerging triad of delivery systems. India had long experienced trouble in constructing nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Specifically, it had yet to overcome problems with its naval nuclear reactor designs, especially with respect to their safety features. One potentially attractive (and low-cost) solution was for India to join the trilateral security pact that includes Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, known as AUKUS. A key part of AUKUS called for Great Britain and the United States to assist Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

Could AUKUS expand to include India? Would the Americans share their nuclear reactor designs with New Delhi? The Indian government soon discovered that the price for this kind of support would be steep. In simple terms, India, which has historically kept the United States at arm’s length, would have to abandon its long-standing nonaligned strategic autonomy and firmly close ranks with Washington. This cost proved too great, and negotiations never progressed beyond the exploratory phase.

What puzzled the Indian national security leadership most was China’s apparent failure to consider the second-order consequences of its nuclear force expansion. As Prime Minister Ramanujan remarked to one of his aides following one weekly meeting, “I wonder, I truly wonder, if those people in Beijing have really thought through the consequences of their actions. They have secured a prominent place for China as one of the world’s two leading great powers. And yet they remain unsatisfied, willing to risk everything with their nuclear adventurism.”

Russia’s Reset

With Putin’s passing and the ceasefire with Ukraine, Russia’s special relationship—its friendship with no limits—with China began to show strains.

The end of the war brought Russia back into the global trading system, enabling Moscow to reduce its heavy economic reliance on China, if only marginally. Like Putin, President Kirilenski increasingly resented Russia’s role as the junior partner to the Chinese in world affairs.⁸¹ There were several reports from highly credible intelligence sources that Kirilenski, on multiple occasions, remarked that “Brezhnev should have taken care of the problem in 1969.”⁸² Moscow was also concerned over Beijing’s increased military presence along their roughly 2,500-mile-long common border⁸³ and growing calls within the Chinese media to declare major parts of Siberia a core interest—a phrase that China used to describe other so-called lost territories, particularly Taiwan but also the South China Sea.⁸⁴

Kirilenski also lacked Putin’s visceral hatred of the West. To demonstrate Russia’s ability to do more than play second fiddle to Beijing, the Russian president sent out diplomatic feelers to Europe and the United States, looking for opportunities to reduce tensions. The Europeans proved surprisingly responsive even though many believed the ceasefire agreement ending Russia’s war with Ukraine weighed heavily in Moscow’s favor. Their anger, however, fell primarily on the United States, which they saw as having “sold Kyiv down the river.” Moreover, the Europeans, beset with an aging population, a generous social welfare system, and a dearth of military-aged manpower, lacked the political will to oppose Moscow militarily. All the more reason for the Europeans’ general receptiveness to Russia’s diplomatic initiatives.

The United States also proved willing to hit the reset button in its relations with Russia. Viewing China as by far the greatest threat to America’s security, and with growing economic problems at home, Washington was searching to minimize its enemies as opposed to settling scores. That being said, senior US policymakers remained wary of Russia’s military capabilities in general and its nuclear forces in particular. As then-US Defense Secretary Richard Kinder observed, “We welcome the Russian leadership’s expression of peaceful intentions. But intentions can change overnight. We must continue planning against their capabilities.”

5. The Missiles of April

The events of this chapter follow the baseline events described in chapter 4.

China’s Gambit: 2034

With STRATFORE placing a cap on the tripolar powers’ SNF, Beijing moved to implement the second phase of its nuclear strategy: building up its TNF. The expansion had two principal objectives.

First, as China must account for both Russia and the United States (and perhaps India as well), TNF provide it with insurance against Moscow and New Delhi’s theater forces by freeing China’s strategic forces to counterbalance those of the United States. By maintaining parity with the US nuclear arsenal, the CCP leadership believes it will enhance China’s freedom of action, especially in the Western Pacific. Put simply, Chinese leaders dream of realizing a “two-power standard”⁸⁵ in which China’s strategic forces give it parity with the United States while its theater forces offset Russia’s strategic forces.

The risk, of course, is that the Americans, the Russians, or both may field their own sizeable theater nuclear arsenals. Indeed, the Russians began moving in this direction, albeit modestly, in the mid-2020s. By 2035, however, analysts estimated Russia had 100–150 nuclear warheads on nonstrategic ballistic and cruise missile delivery systems—that is, TNF—with an additional 300–400 from its STRATFORE reserve weapons available for upload on short notice, if need be. Moscow has long argued that these theater nuclear forces are necessary to offset NATO’s superiority in conventional military forces.⁸⁶

Responding to China’s sixfold expansion of its nuclear forces, in 2033 India decided to augment its nuclear arsenal, setting a target of deploying 600–700 weapons by 2038. In response, the Chinese provided aid to Pakistan, both financial and technological, to expand its nuclear arsenal.

Regarding the United States, the CCP leadership looked to create a theater forces gap between China and the United States. If it could accomplish this, it could create a window of opportunity to make major geopolitical gains in the Western Pacific (see map 5.1). By stealing a march on the United States in deploying theater nuclear forces, Beijing could exert greater coercive pressure on Taiwan and perhaps the Philippines while securing its grip on the South China Sea.

The following minutes from a CMC meeting on August 14, 2034, record the statement of the CCP chairman, President Liu Xian:

Our conventional forces in the Western Pacific are now superior to those the Americans can bring to bear on short notice. Moreover, in the early 2020s they held a nuclear sword at our throat, some 5,000 weapons to our 200. The risk that they would threaten us—or even strike preemptively to eviscerate our nuclear forces—offset the gains we were making locally with our nonnuclear forces.

This has changed. By the early 2030s, our strategic arsenal was approaching their deployed strategic forces in size. In 2032, the STRATFORE agreement eliminated the US nuclear advantage.

We need only a few years’ advantage over the Americans, a brief window, with our theater nuclear forces. Once we have fielded these, they will provide us with a numerical advantage beyond the Second Island Chain. We will have eliminated the Americans’ so-called nuclear trump card, and this will free us to bring our conventional force advantage into play with far less risk of a nuclear escalation. To maximize our theater nuclear advantage—and to gain maximum psychological effect—we must accomplish this expansion with the greatest secrecy. Fortunately, we have long enjoyed an advantage in theater ballistic missiles. What we have lacked are the [nuclear] warheads with which to arm them. They should be available in quantity⁸⁷ by late 2039 or early 2040, in addition to the 800 “reserve” weapons we have under STRATFORE.

Our position is that agreements limiting strategic forces do not constrain theater nuclear forces. During their Cold War, neither the Americans nor the Russians limited their TNF based on their SALT agreements. It should take only a matter of weeks to upload our TNF on DF-21s and DF-26s. This should be sufficient to establish a clear advantage over any US nuclear-capable aircraft based along and within the Second Island Chain.

Of course, there are rumors that we are engaged in such an undertaking. We, of course, have denied them, blaming the US hardliners for looking to destroy the “Spirit of STRATFORE” that their arms control groups are promoting. For now the Americans have yet to act. Thus we must also express a willingness to negotiate reductions in TNF systems to give ammunition to those American factions looking for ways to avoid creating their own theater missile forces. In any event, we must be ready to move quickly when the window opens [emphasis in the original].

The minutes continue and reveal the ultimate goal of the theater forces’ gambit:

Once we have secured Taiwan and the Nine-Dash Line, the entire balance of power in the region will shift decisively in our favor. The Southeast Asian countries will see America’s security guarantees as hollow. They will fall in line. Even India will have to adjust. Japan will remain a problem, but much less so once we have revealed its American patron as impotent. We can accomplish this by 2049. Indeed, if we succeed here, there may even be an opportunity to address our unequal treaties⁸⁸

Years later in 2037, US intelligence reveals that China has, for at least two years, been covertly expanding its nuclear weapons inventory. Many in Washington worry that if the US and China cannot reach an INF II agreement, Beijing will be able to mate the warheads to its IRBMs and MRBMs while remaining within the limits of the STRATFORE agreement. When US diplomats confront Beijing with these findings, CCP leaders angrily reply that they are simply building the 800 reserve nuclear warheads that the agreement permits, and which both the US and Russia already possess. Chinese negotiators threaten to walk out of the INF II talks. Moscow supports Beijing, and Washington backs down.

By 2038, six years after signing the STRATFORE agreement, China has created its reserve of 800 nuclear warheads. Production then begins on China’s prospective surplus, or TNF, weapons. Training exercises reveal that China can complete the warhead swap—conventional for nuclear—in a matter of weeks once it has decided to do so.

America Sleeps

Upon returning home from the STRATFORE Treaty signing ceremony in July 2032, President Katherine Dougherty tells the American people that the treaty has eliminated the need for a major US military buildup. The end of the Russo-Ukrainian War and President Kirilenski’s willingness to enter a “new era” of improved relations with the West have also contributed to this shift. Addressing a joint session of Congress, Dougherty declares:

SPACE Because of this administration’s courageous efforts, we have dramatically reduced tensions in a way the last administration could never have done. The STRATFORE Treaty has stopped talk of a new nuclear arms race. Quite the opposite: the treaty limits China’s nuclear weapons and substantially cuts Russia’s arsenal. So now we can find similar savings. We can also reset our relations with Russia, something experts said was impossible only a few short years ago after the war in Ukraine ended. This will let us avoid an arms race, which will let us shift hundreds of billions of dollars to meet the needs of the American people.

The Dougherty administration’s senior national security officials claim that the country’s military, which has not fought even a minor conflict since the Second Gulf War over 30 years ago, is still far and away the world’s best. Nevertheless, the administration has continued modernizing the triad of US nuclear delivery systems in line with the STRATFORE limits. The effort, however, remains based on force requirements that reflect the bipolar nuclear military balance that existed over two decades ago, before China embarked on its nuclear arms buildup. When observers question the logic of hewing to a nuclear force posture reflecting a threat environment that has changed dramatically, and for the worse, administration spokespersons respond that the STRATFORE agreement has greatly reduced the threat. One asserts, “We’ve finally halted the Chinese buildup. The last thing we need to do in the middle of INF II negotiations with China and Russia is to expand our nuclear forces. Besides, we will still have 800 warheads in storage.”

America Blinks, Again

In March 2038, new US intelligence sources suggest that China has accumulated 400–500 “undeclared” nuclear warheads⁸⁹ in excess of the 800 reserve weapons that STRATFORE permits. When US leaders present these intelligence findings, Beijing argues it is complying with the letter of the law, noting that it has not violated the treaty. China’s foreign minister declares:

For many years prior to STRATFORE, both America and Russia maintained large numbers of non-deployed warheads. We have no excess warheads. We do maintain, as they do, nuclear weapons for our bomber aircraft. These aircraft count as one deployed weapon under STRATFORE. Furthermore, we must also account for local nuclear rivals—India in particular. The United States is not threatened by local [theater] nuclear forces. China is. And still we have not acted to increase our modest theater nuclear forces, which are fewer than 40, while working toward an INF II agreement.

The American secretary of state responds that the US has no theater ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, while China does. This gives China the potential to break out—to upload hundreds of nuclear weapons on its IRBMs and MRBMs. Once again, the Chinese threaten to scupper the INF II talks. Once again, Washington backs down.

Japan and South Korea, two key American allies, express concerns over the strength of US extended deterrence guarantees. However, they opt to put their faith in the INF II negotiations. Still, both countries’ governments are increasingly anxious over Beijing’s force of IRBM and MRBM missiles and the growing talk of a possible PLA warhead surplus. There are also rumors that both Tokyo and Seoul have taken significant steps toward fielding nuclear capabilities of their own.

Beijing’s Window of Opportunity—and Necessity

While the conventional military balance in the Western Pacific continued shifting in China’s favor, the approaching fortieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre found the CCP leadership increasingly concerned over internal security.

For much of the first three decades of the twenty-first century, the Chinese people seemed satisfied to defer political freedom as long as the nation’s strong economic growth improved their living standard. In recent years, however, economic growth has lagged. The country’s growing economic woes are manifold, and none are amenable to easy resolution. The demographic shift set in motion with the one-child policy that the CCP established during the 1980s proved difficult to reverse as China’s population began aging rapidly in the mid-2010s. Pensioners represent the fastest growing segment of the country’s population, and the number of Chinese of working age is in decline, creating a drag on economic growth. The 2030s also find the CCP unable to put off addressing China’s growing environmental damage, the result of decades of ignoring the problem to boost near-term economic growth. Problems ranging from water pollution to lingering air quality levels along much of the country’s coastal areas crimp economic growth and create a public health crisis in the most affected areas.⁹⁰ The party was progressing in its two-decade-old effort to wean the country off its dependence on carbon fuel sources by emphasizing renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, and nuclear power, but not quickly enough.

Finally, China’s expanding middle class posed a growing challenge to the CCP’s legitimacy. As several hundred million Chinese emerged as second-generation members of that cohort, they were proving far less willing than the preceding generations to trade their personal freedom for marginal economic gains. The fact that the country’s economic growth has slowed to a small fraction of what it was in the century’s first two decades makes the trade-off even less appealing.

Taiwan Takedown

As US diplomats began accusing China of preparing for a nuclear forces breakout, intelligence reports conclude that Japan and South Korea may be moving toward creating their own nuclear capability. As a result, Beijing decides to act. On March 30, 2038, the CMC directs the PLA to begin installing 464 nuclear warheads on theater ballistic missile systems. Having rehearsed the process for months in underground tunnels, the PLA accomplishes its theater nuclear force breakout in less than three weeks. To confuse foreign intelligence agencies, it uploads the weapons at facilities that it normally uses for missile maintenance.

On April 12, the PLA begins the exercise Red Banner. At first, the movement of Chinese forces attracts little attention, as it mimics many exercises the PLA has conducted in recent years. It finds PLA Navy (PLAN) surface ships and submarines maneuvering in the waters around Taiwan and in the South China Sea (see map 5.2). PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) theater ballistic missile units deploy from their garrisons to wartime positions, while PLA Ground Forces assemble at ports of embarkation and the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) begins generating air sorties on China’s side of the Taiwan Strait. In a departure from previous exercises, US and allied (Australian, Japanese, and South Korean) intelligence agencies detect an unusually high level of PRC cyber activity directed toward Taiwan. These exercises rarely last more than two weeks and typically begin winding down after 10–12 days. On this occasion, however, PLA forces remain at high readiness.

On the evening of April 22 (early morning Washington time), Chairman Liu addresses the Chinese people:

It has become increasingly evident that despite many years of effort on our part to reach a reconciliation with our countrymen in the province of Taiwan, its arrogant separatist leaders have spurned the hand of friendship. Several hostile states have encouraged their refusal to return home to China. Some of them—such as Japan and the United States—have delighted in dishonoring the Chinese people, from the period of unequal treaties through the century of humiliation.

Even as the party has restored China to its proper place among nations, the ruling class in Taipei and their American and Japanese supporters have scorned our repeated attempts at peaceful reconciliation over many decades. Our patience during this time has been great, but it is not infinite. Indeed, it has been exhausted.

Consequently, and with great reluctance, the party has concluded it is time to take firmer steps to restore Taiwan’s natural relationship with China. Toward this end, the PLA is now imposing an air-sea-space-information quarantine⁹¹ on our wayward province of Taiwan. PLA forces will intercept any aircraft or vessel entering Taiwan’s airspace or territorial waters—which is to say, China’s air and maritime spaces—and either seize them or direct them to depart the area. This quarantine will remain in effect until the renegade government in Taipei agrees to the terms the party presented at the most recent round of discussions on unification. We again offer the generous terms we presented at that time: one country, two governing and economic systems.⁹²

It is not our intention to initiate hostilities with either the people of Taiwan or any state. Our forces have not fired a single shot. But we will defend our right to exercise sovereignty over our territory, which includes Taiwan. If any country attempts to use force against PLA forces operating in China’s sovereign territory—or allows its territory to be used for such purposes—we will consider it at war with the Chinese people [emphasis in the original].⁹³

Should others choose the path of war, they should know that the PLA is fully prepared to defend China against any and all aggressors. Its capabilities in all warfighting domains are second to none. Our aim has been to discourage any state or grouping of states from attacking China, which has compelled us to arm over 300 theater ballistic missiles with one or more nuclear warheads. While these missiles can strike targets out to the Second Island Chain, we remain in full compliance with the STRATFORE treaty and are committed to the goal of eliminating all theater nuclear weapons through the INF II dialogue.

In closing, let me reassure the Chinese people that the party and the state are fully prepared to defend China’s sovereignty and its honor. We look forward to resolving Taiwan’s status peacefully if possible, but with force if necessary. I bid you good evening.

The Chinese president’s speech sets off alarm bells around the world. They ring especially loud in Washington. Less than three hours after Liu’s announcement, the US National Security Council (NSC) meets. At the direction of President William “Bill” Howard (who succeeded President Dougherty in January 2037), Secretary of Defense Dan Ryan and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) General Richard Kinder provide an overview of the situation. Following brief remarks, Ryan turns the floor over to General Kinder.

The following are key excerpts from the general’s presentation:

The local [Western Pacific] conventional forces balance favors China. We’ve known this for some time now. Once, we could rely on our advantage in nuclear forces to discourage Beijing’s adventurism. This may have worked 20 years ago, but it ended with STRATFORE, if not by 2030. Now the Chinese have flipped the script on us.

Today the nuclear balance favors China. True, their strategic forces equal our own. But they have a big advantage in theater nuclear forces. We have no intermediate-range nuclear ballistic missiles, let alone any deployed. With their breakout, they have hundreds. We do have nuclear-capable aircraft positioned at a few key bases in WestPac [the Western Pacific], but we have positioned no nuclear weapons with them.⁹⁴ And we have some [nuclear weapons] on our carriers. . . .

Another important advantage the PLA has is that their missiles are mobile, while our aircraft are located at a few major bases and on the two carriers we have in WestPac. The air bases are obviously fixed targets, and they [the Chinese] have subs as well as undersea drones shadowing the carriers. Put simply, they would have a much easier time taking out our air bases and carriers than we would in locating and destroying their mobile missiles. And while they have armed only around half of their INF missiles with nuclear weapons, we don’t know which half. Finally, stating the obvious, we would have to attack China itself should we attempt to take out those missiles.

President Howard asks General Kinder to lay out the US military options. The general responds:

We can begin to flow forces into WestPac. To have anything like a chance of defending Taiwan successfully, it will likely require months—probably between three and five—to get them into the theater. Even here we have problems.

First, we’d have to assume the Chinese will not sit and wait for us—and hopefully our allies—to build up our forces and start to shift the balance in our favor. These guys [the Chinese] are not Saddam Hussein.⁹⁵

Second, we estimate that the Taiwanese can hold out for some weeks, maybe six to eight, assuming they ration food and fuel. But we have little confidence they can hold out much longer. So we may have to begin operations to break the PLA blockade while the military balance is very much in their favor.

Third, the Chinese “quarantine” puts us in the position of striking first, as they are “simply” regulating commerce in what they claim to be their territorial waters around Taiwan. Are our allies comfortable with us initiating combat operations? Are the American people? Will our allies commit their forces to wage war? Allow us to use their bases?

Then there’s the longer term.

If we fail to defend Taiwan successfully, we can still decide to fight on, as we did despite our heavy reversals in the early months in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor. And if, by some stroke of good fortune, we do prevent the Chinese from taking the island, they can still fight on. Either way, we would face a long, hard war with an uncertain outcome. Our prospects for success in a long war—assuming it does not escalate to a general nuclear exchange—will depend on our ability to mobilize and sustain the support of the American people, and of our allies. If the American people see no possibility of winning a protracted war, or if they believe the costs and risks associated with such a course of action outweigh the prospective benefits, I do not see how we could prevail. [emphasis in the original]

And per Secretary Ryan’s introductory comments, yes, we could counterblockade China, but it’s not clear that the Chinese could not get adequate supplies through land routes across Asia and into Europe. Our intelligence analysis strongly indicates that the Chinese have stockpiled months or perhaps several years of food, oil, and other strategic resources. In brief, they can clearly weather a blockade far longer than the Taiwanese.

President Howard turns to Secretary of State John C. “J.C.” Harvey for his assessment of the geopolitical situation. Excerpts from his remarks follow:

Mr. President, we’ve all heard what Chairman Liu’s speech has done to global markets. As I arrived at the White House, S&P futures were down over 2.5 percent in premarket trading. I will, however, focus my assessment on geostrategic factors and leave the economic issues for [Treasury Secretary] Jim [Wilson].

The Japanese and South Koreans are reluctant to become involved. They are greatly concerned regarding the Chinese nuclear threat. Both countries’ ambassadors confided to me that, if it comes to war, the Chinese might test us by firing a small number of theater weapons to generate local EMP effects over Taiwan and, if they [the Koreans and Japanese] were active belligerents, over parts of their countries as well. Put simply, the Chinese would dare us to respond in kind—we’d have to employ tactical weapons from our 800-weapon reserve or from our strategic nuclear arsenal—or cede some escalation advantage to them.

Japanese and South Korean assessments of the conventional forces balance in the region are, if anything, more pessimistic than General Kinder’s. The same is true of other states in the region, including the Australians and Filipinos.

At the risk of stating the obvious, given the shift in the nuclear balance over the last 15 years, Seoul and Tokyo have little faith in US extended deterrence. They note that, unlike previous crises of this magnitude, such as with Cuba back in 1962 and the Yom Kippur War a decade later, we have refrained from placing our strategic nuclear forces on alert. And, of course, we have no theater nuclear missiles to place on alert, in any event. Their conclusion from these observations is that the Chinese have the conventional and nuclear force advantage in the Western Pacific.

Based on conversations with Tokyo and Seoul, as well as our allies in Australia and the Philippines, permit me to sum up the political situation as I see it: With the possible exception of the Australian government, our allies and the Taiwanese favor negotiating a resolution to the crisis. Their publics will not support initiating military operations against China until we have exhausted negotiations. We expect the Chinese will drag this process out until Taiwan faces starvation. My strong belief is that, even then, Manila, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo will not go to war. Nor will they permit us to operate forces from their territory. The bottom line here is that our Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese allies⁹⁶ have lost faith in our extended nuclear deterrence and see that the balance of conventional forces weighs clearly in China’s favor.

My most recent meeting this morning with the Japanese ambassador and his defense attaché reaffirmed my assessment. They noted that China has its theater nuclear forces on high alert. Neither we nor the Chinese have placed our strategic forces on alert. Their theater [nuclear] forces cannot strike us, but they are well within range of Japan. They [the Japanese] are at risk, not we Americans. The United States—according to the Japanese—has no effective defense against PLA attacks on counterforce or (especially) countervalue targets out to the Second Island Chain. Even if a war begins and China gives Japan sanctuary status, as was the case during [the] Korea[n War], if the war escalates, the Japanese believe they will likely bear the brunt of the effects, including any nuclear strikes.

The Japanese will not accept our moving [any of our reserve, or] stored nuclear weapons into their country. I’m highly confident that, with the exception of the Australians, our other allies in the region will adopt Japan’s position.

Any attempt to upload our reserve nuclear warheads on existing strategic delivery systems would violate the STRATFORE agreement, which caps our deployed weapons at 1,200. At the risk of repeating myself, neither our strategic forces nor those of China or Russia are on heightened alert. China’s theater nuclear forces, however, are on high alert. If we generate a high alert of our strategic forces, they will likely follow, along with the Russians and very likely India as well. I respectfully submit we do not want to go down that road.

And, yes, it’s possible—even likely—that the Chinese are bluffing with regard to their veiled threats to employ nuclear weapons. But they clearly hold the stronger hand. And our allies, especially along the First Island Chain, do not want to go to the brink of war and test Beijing’s resolve. Again, apologies for my restatement of the issue.

At this point, I believe our best path forward is to engage the Chinese in negotiations. It will buy us time to hopefully bring international pressure to bear on them and, if you choose, to begin flowing our forces and moving our tactical nuclear warheads to WestPac, at least at sea.

President Howard sums up the discussion. Noting that the conventional and nuclear force balance in the region is heavily in China’s favor, and that key allies whose assistance the US needs for large-scale operations against China firmly oppose this course of action, he opts to pursue negotiations with Beijing with an eye toward getting the best terms possible for Taiwan.

The president closes the meeting with the following statement:

Let’s be clear. While I expect the American people and global markets will celebrate resolving this crisis without war, we in this room—and governments around the globe—know better. This is an unmitigated disaster for our position in the world. There is no way to sugarcoat it. It’s almost our Munich, almost exactly 100 years later. We may hear the cheers that Chamberlain did immediately afterward, but the bill for our willful ignorance of the true situation will soon come due. In the months ahead, we can expect the Chinese to expand their coercion efforts all along the First Island Chain, and perhaps far beyond.

Dan [Ryan], I want to know how quickly we can develop a theater nuclear missile force capability. We also need an option to base TNF missiles on ships, [and] subs, if our allies will not host them on their territory.

J.C. [Harvey], give the bad news to our friends in Taipei and then accept the Chinese offer to discuss how best to diffuse the crisis along the lines they propose. Prepare to reach out to our allies in the region as to whether we might base these [TNF] missiles on their territory. Get with the Japanese and see whether they are likely to create their own nuclear capability. The South Koreans, too. I suspect they [each] can do so within months if they decide to move forward.

Lou [Press Secretary Lou Donnatin], get the speechwriters in here ASAP. I’m going to have to address the nation, perhaps as soon as this evening. The political blowback from our friends on the other side of the aisle is going to be seismic. What did Kennedy say during Cuba [The Cuban Missile Crisis]? That he would have been impeached had he not acted forcefully? Well, we’re not acting “forcefully.” We are not in 1962. More like 1938. At least for the moment, it appears we’re looking at “peace in our time”—on China’s terms.

6. India-Pakistan: The Long Road to War

The scenario presented in this chapter forms a common baseline, or point of departure, for the two scenarios that follow. Both of those branch scenarios find India struggling with the issue of nuclear use and Pakistan with the need to prevent radical groups from acquiring nuclear weapons while preserving a deterrent capable of inflicting assured destruction on its South Asian rival. The first branch scenario, “The Fear of Being a Poor Second” (chapter 7), finds India contemplating a preemptive strike against Pakistan. The second, “Mobilization Race” (chapter 8), focuses primarily on whether the tripolar nuclear powers will generate their forces to a high alert status and, from a US perspective, the implications of mobilization for crisis stability.

The Long Road to War

Pakistan’s slow descent into chaotic disorder has been decades in the making. Many can claim credit, if credit is the proper term, for the progressive decline of the Muslim World’s only nuclear state. A series of corrupt and ineffective civilian and military governments bears much of the responsibility. A succession of Pakistani regimes squandered enormous resources on pursuing a long-term military rivalry with their country’s powerful neighbor, India, whose GDP exceeds Pakistan’s by an order of magnitude and whose population is roughly six times greater.

The principal source of the animosity between the two rivals is Kashmir, the mountainous northern region of the Indian subcontinent (see maps 6.1 and 6.2). Both India and Pakistan claim it; the former controls roughly 45 percent of the area, and the latter the remainder. Given Kashmir’s predominantly Muslim population, Pakistan has long felt the entire region should fall under its control. At present, the 450-mile Line of Control divides Kashmir between the two countries. And each nation has stationed hundreds of thousands of troops along the line, one of the world’s principal hotspots.

The dispute over Kashmir’s fate has triggered three wars between the two countries. The first occurred in 1948, shortly after India and Pakistan achieved independence from the United Kingdom. When the war ended a year later, they established a ceasefire line in Kashmir. This became the Line of Control in the 1972 Simla Agreement. Despite the passage of time, Muslim Kashmiri separatist groups have continued to resist India’s control over its portion of the region, at times violently and often with Pakistan’s assistance.

For over half a century, these radical Islamist organizations have proved useful to Pakistan’s government. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, for example, Islamabad, along with Washington, supported the mujahideen resistance. Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington lost interest in the country, thereby indirectly enabling radical Islamist resistance forces to seize power in Kabul. This served Pakistan’s interests, not least by blocking Indian efforts to gain influence in Afghanistan.⁹⁷

With the Kashmir issue remaining unresolved, tensions between India and Pakistan have grown in recent decades. In the early 1990s, the Islamic resistance against India in Kashmir coalesced into an insurgency, which led New Delhi to impose higher levels of control and even repression to maintain order. In 1999 this escalated to a border conflict—the so-called Kargil War (May–July 1999)—which resulted in hundreds of casualties on each side.

Following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the deposed Taliban regime’s radical Islamist fighters took refuge in Pakistan’s rugged, mountainous northwest provinces, which have long enjoyed near autonomy from the central government. From that sanctuary, the Taliban began rebuilding its strength with support from its Pakistani patrons.

In the years that followed, Pakistan’s madrassas—religious schools—became increasingly influential, largely due to the failure of the country’s public school system. A significant portion of madrassas became effective recruiting and indoctrination centers for the Taliban and other radical Islamist groups. Each year, thousands of young men (and some women) departed these schools to join radical Islamist forces fighting to undermine the fledgling regime in Afghanistan.

During this period, tensions in Kashmir continued to simmer. This changed 20 years after the Kargil War, in February 2019, when a militant separatist group supported a terrorist attack that killed 40 members of India’s Central Reserve Police Force. It was the deadliest attack on the country’s security forces in three decades. India responded by conducting air strikes against suspected militant Islamist camps inside Pakistan, suffering the loss of two aircraft in the event.

Pakistan’s leaders became increasingly concerned that the radical Islamists, whose strength and independence continued to grow, might draw the country into an all-out war with India. The number of madrassas had grown from the few dozen in 1947 to an estimated 30,000. Following the 2019 attack, the government began requiring them to register with the country’s Ministry of Education. Pakistan’s military, which feared the schools were undermining its counterterrorism efforts, firmly backed the policy; however, the country’s Islamist political parties quickly offered strong resistance.⁹⁸

Radical Islamists’ success in driving the United States and its coalition partners out of Afghanistan in 2021 emboldened them to demand a reversal of the government’s policy. In October 2024, the largest of those parties, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, secured a deal with the government to end the registration requirement. Under the agreement, madrassas returned to the registration process they used before 2019, when a colonial-era law governed charitable, scientific, and educational groups. That law provides little oversight of curricula, activities, or funding.

Perhaps encouraged by a string of successes, radical Islamists attacked the town of Pahalgam in the south of Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22, 2025, and killed 26 civilians, many of whom were tourists. It was one of the worst attacks on Indian civilians in decades.⁹⁹Afterward, during the late 2020s, radical Islamists continued expanding the madrassas. The schools proved highly effective at establishing common ground with the growing number of Pakistanis who had become disillusioned with regimes that, to them, were too focused on strengthening the military against India. These regimes had made no progress on the Kashmir front, while the country’s infrastructure, education system, and economic growth rate fell ever further behind their increasingly powerful neighbor.

A Nuclear Buildup

India

Estimating the size of China’s nuclear forces, as well as those of India and Pakistan, has traditionally proven challenging. These countries have not provided any data on the size of their nuclear stockpiles. Yet there was no doubt by the early 2020s that China was engaging in a large-scale nuclear forces buildup¹⁰⁰ that continued unabated through the latter half of the 2020s and into the 2030s.

Given its longstanding rivalry with China, India felt compelled to respond. New Delhi was further influenced by Beijing’s decision to place a significant portion of its land-based nuclear forces on increased alert status, enabling these forces to adopt a launch on warning (LOW) posture should the CCP choose to do so.¹⁰¹ India’s political and military leaders believed Beijing made this change to create a preemptive strike option against India’s nuclear forces, which heretofore had been positioned in secure storage sites, as had China’s.¹⁰²

Since fielding a nuclear force following its 1998 atomic tests, India had for many years stored its nuclear warheads separately from their delivery systems, be they aircraft or ballistic missiles. There were reports that India had positioned some of its nuclear weapons in underground bunkers at locations close to their associated aircraft to facilitate rapid mating if necessary. New Delhi might be moving toward pre-mating some warheads with ballistic missiles, the reports claimed.¹⁰³

By 2030 there were significant indications that, in the process of countering China’s heightened alert forces, India was adopting a nuclear posture with a de facto option to conduct a preemptive counterforce strike against Pakistan.¹⁰⁴ As MIT professor Vipin Narang pointed out years before, New Delhi had been gradually walking away from its no-first-use (NFU) nuclear doctrine for years. His prescient remarks are worth quoting at length:

There is increasing evidence that India will not allow Pakistan to go first. And that India’s opening salvo may not be conventional strikes trying to pick off just Nasr batteries¹⁰⁵ in the theater, but a full “comprehensive counterforce strike” . . . to completely disarm Pakistan of its nuclear weapons so that India does not . . . expose its own cities to nuclear destruction. This thinking surfaces . . . from no less than a former Strategic Forces Command C-in-C [commander-in-chief] Lieutenant General B.S. Nagal and, perhaps more importantly and authoritatively, from the highly respected and influential former National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon. . . . In short, we may be witnessing what I call a “decoupling” of Indian nuclear strategy between China and Pakistan. The force requirements India needs in order to credibly threaten assured retaliation against China may allow it to pursue more aggressive strategies—such as escalation dominance or a “splendid first strike”—against Pakistan. . . . As Shivshankar Menon recently stated: “India’s nuclear doctrine has far greater flexibility than it gets credit for.”¹⁰⁶ [my emphasis]

Pakistan

On March 9, 2022, India accidentally launched a BrahMos cruise missile over 70 miles into Pakistan. Itlanded seven minutes later near the town of Mian Channu. India reported that its troops triggered the incident by failing to follow standard operating procedures during a routine maintenance and inspection exercise, and relieved the three Indian Air Force officers responsible. Pakistan rejected India’s explanation of what it called a “highly irresponsible incident.”¹⁰⁷

Although Islamabad did not respond directly to the attack, Pakistan’s leadership was clearly unnerved by its armed forces’ failure to promptly detect and effectively track the missile.¹⁰⁸ This led to concerns that the Nasr missiles would indeed be vulnerable to preemption in an Indian Cold Start attack. Perhaps Pakistan would even be at risk of a broad counterforce disarming strike against its nuclear forces. Skeptics (or perhaps those whistling past the graveyard)—Pakistan’s prime minister among them—pointed out that the country’s wide range of nuclear delivery systems would make an Indian preemptive attack an exceedingly high-risk proposition. Citing the country’s “full-spectrum deterrence” posture, he pointed out:

That Pakistan possesses the full spectrum of nuclear weapons in three categories: strategic, operational and tactical, with full range coverage of the large Indian land mass and its outlying territories; there is no place for India’s strategic weapons to hide.
That Pakistan possesses an entire range of weapons yield coverage in terms of kilotons (KT), and the numbers strongly secured, to deter the adversary’s declared policy of massive retaliation; Pakistan’s “counter-massive retaliation” can therefore be as severe if not more.
That Pakistan retains the liberty of choosing from a full spectrum of targets in a “target-rich India,” notwithstanding the indigenous Indian BMD [ballistic missile defenses] or the Russian S-400 [air defense system], to include counter value, counter force and battlefield targets.¹⁰⁹

In the mid-2030s, Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division (SPD) presented a pessimistic counterargument. According to the division, the time the military would take to prepare and launch a major nuclear strike creates a weak link in the full-spectrum deterrence doctrine. As one senior Pakistani official noted, Pakistan’s nuclear weapon assembly takes considerable time, using components stored in as many as four different locations.¹¹⁰ Were India to place a significant portion of its nuclear forces on heightened alert, a preemptive strike on Pakistan’s nuclear forces would be far more attractive than it had been prior to the late 2020s. Pakistan’s strategic dilemma is that, in order to make its nuclear forces capable of responding to an Indian pre-emptive strike, it must enable a significant portion of its nuclear forces to launch on warning once an Indian attack is underway. Adopting such a posture, however, increases the risk of losing positive control over one or some weapons to radical Islamist elements, to include even possible sleeper cells within the Pakistani military.

Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Ismat Nasim described this possibility in the mid-2030s:

Our alert posture is a function of three key factors. The first involves ensuring that radical elements in our society, including a rogue military element, cannot gain control over nuclear weapons. This explains our low readiness posture, in which we store weapon components at multiple locations.

Second, we have Nasr missile systems that can fire tactical nuclear weapons. This offsets India’s Cold Start operation while hopefully keeping the risk of losing positive weapon control at an appropriate level.

Third, we must ensure that we can inflict unacceptable damage on India’s society and economy, should the need arise. This we can accomplish as long as their nuclear posture is roughly similar to ours—with forces on low alert and weapons unable to be launched on short notice. India’s nuclear posture, however, has changed. Its arsenal has more than doubled in size over the last decade. Some of its forces are now on high alert. We are told their purpose is to match, even if only partially, China’s nuclear alert forces. But India can launch these missiles on short notice against us as well. As this transformation of India’s nuclear forces has played out, the threat of a preemptive attack has increased dramatically.

To be sure, even after such a preemptive attack, we could retain sufficient residual nuclear forces to destroy perhaps a half dozen or more of India’s cities, but only at the cost of having India execute a counterstrike against us with a far larger force. Such a strike would destroy our country’s ability to function as a political, economic, and social entity.¹¹¹

2038: China, India, Pakistan

An observer, looking back in 2038 over the previous two decades, would find that China’s nuclear buildup had produced a broad, cascading effect not only in Russia and the United States but also in India and, by extension, Pakistan. As estimates of China’s nuclear arsenal reached some 1,200 under the STRATFORE agreement, New Delhi decided to expand its nuclear forces to 600–700, a level it achieves in 2038. Moreover, it places a significant part of the force, around 15 percent, in a LOW posture, matching the Chinese nuclear force alert posture ratio.

India’s actions in reaction to China stimulate responses from its two principal rivals. Beijing feels it has to counter New Delhi’s moves, both to reassure Pakistan and to avoid dilution of its own deterrent force against the United States. As one senior Chinese general officer reportedly remarks, “We are trying to match America’s nuclear forces, not theirs and India’s as well.” [emphasis in the original] Toward that end, Beijing expands its theater nuclear missile forces to offset India’s buildup.

In Islamabad the view is one of increasing alarm. India’s moves have realized Shivshankar Menon’s warning that a prompt assured destruction capability against China would also provide New Delhiwith a disarming first-strike counterforce (FSC) capability against Pakistan. Yet even with Beijing’s financial assistance, the best Pakistan can do is modestly increase its nuclear arsenal to 250 weapons by 2040.

Escalating Tensions

By the early 2030s, Pakistan’s radical Islamist parties began advancing a more ambitious agenda of their own to make New Delhi “feel real pain” over its “occupation” of Kashmir. These actions stood in stark contrast to the efforts of several Pakistani governments to reduce tensions between the two states. They also raised questions concerning the government’s ability to control the actions of the country’s radical elements.

In early 2034, following revelations of New Delhi’s nuclear force expansion, and looking to exploit the Pakistani people’s growing frustration with the country’s political and military elites, armed Islamic radical groups initiated a violent terrorist campaign against civil and military targets in India. The group’s objectives were simple. If their “war” against India produced some successes, their standing among the Pakistani people would rise, perhaps to the point where political parties advocating a tougher line on Kashmir might gain power through the vote. Alternatively, should India retaliate strongly, it could weaken the government’s hold on power and provide the radicals with an opportunity to seize power through violent revolution.

Initially, the radical Islamists’ attacks were mere pinpricks, and New Delhi limited its response to diplomatic protests, demanding that Islamabad take forceful steps to rein in the radicals. Frustrated by their lack of success, the radical Islamists adjusted their strategy, shifting from conducting a persistent string of small attacks in favor of a few, far larger strikes. Following a lull in attacks on India stretching from the fall of 2039 through the summer of 2040, the radicals are ready to execute their “major offensive.” On October 16, the Islamist radicals detonate nearly two dozen car and train bombs in Bangalore, Mumbai, and New Delhi, killing over 400 Indians and wounding nearly 3,000, including women and children. The following day, four suicide bombers blow themselves up outside the country’s Parliament House in New Delhi, killing India’s interior minister and his bodyguards.

Claiming responsibility for the attack, the radical Islamists declare that the campaign of violence will continue until India returns Kashmir to Pakistan. Pakistan’s government quickly condemns the attacks in the strongest terms and arrests scores of suspected radicals. However, when India puts its armed forces on heightened alert, Islamabad feels compelled to divert troops from internal security operations to its border to deter New Delhi from conducting a Cold Start campaign into Pakistan. While both countries seek to avoid escalating the low-level fighting into something far more dangerous, Indian Prime Minister Ramanujan wonders, How many times can we go to the brink without tumbling in?

This series of events only serves to further weaken the Pakistani government. For years Pakistanis have watched their country decline economically relative to India, and have witnessed India’s global prestige grow. Now many of them celebrate the radicals’ attacks. In contrast, Islamabad’s apparent knuckling under to New Delhi’s demands to suppress the radical Islamist forces puts off an increasing number of Pakistanis. Meanwhile, the shift of Pakistani troops to the Indo-Pakistani border enables radical insurgent groups to expand their influence in northwestern Pakistan.

In the months following the October 2040 attacks, the government in Islamabad comes under growing internal pressure to defend the country’s honor by standing up to India’s “threats.” Likewise, Pakistan’s leaders cannot ignore the external pressure in the form of Indian forces deploying along the Indo-Pakistani border. Support for the terrorist attacks from their fellow Pakistanis buoys the radical Islamist elements, who declare that if the government does not take a tougher stand against New Delhi, more attacks will follow.

Major powers make several attempts to diffuse the growing crisis, including through discussions at the United Nations Security Council. They accomplish nothing, however. China opposes any effort to call Pakistan to account, and India (with Russia’s support) refuses to accept a UN observation force to take up positions along its long border with Pakistan.

Matters reach a boiling point on February 4, 2041, when radical Pakistani Islamists launch another (albeit smaller) set of attacks against India. While producing less than half the casualties of the October incidents, the Islamists conduct the attack in a more spectacular manner: They fly a hijacked Pakistani airliner departing Lahore into an Indian army barracks complex while setting off several bombs on trains in Mumbai during rush hour. Radical Islamist operatives record both events on their cell phones and post the videos on social media. Major global news networks also play the footage. The graphic scenes of their dying and suffering countrymen inflame the Indian public, especially as they witness public celebrations of the attacks in Pakistan and parts of the Arab World.

Thanks to a Chinese veto, the UN Security Council once again fails to condemn Pakistan for the attacks, let alone take any concrete action to defuse the crisis. With the Indian public demanding that its government retaliate forcefully, Prime Minister Ramanujan declares that he is prepared to take “any and all necessary actions” to prevent future terrorist attacks. He orders the Indian armed forces to fully mobilize and deploy to their wartime positions. He also declares that India is suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, which supplies Pakistan with vital water, “until such time as Pakistan credibly and irrevocably ends support for cross-border terrorism.”¹¹²

The Pakistani government seeks to mollify both India and its radical Islamist elements. Thus, while denouncing the attacks as counter to its efforts to resolve differences with India peacefully, Prime Minister Mohammad Mehdi declares that New Delhi must bear the responsibility for them as a consequence of its unyielding position over Kashmir. In an address to the Pakistani people, Mehdi declares, “If India moves forward to halt our country’s water supply, it should be prepared for war. Our nuclear weapons are not toys for display at parades. No one knows where we have placed our nuclear weapons across our country and at sea. I say to Mr. Ramanujan: Our missiles, they are all targeted on you.”¹¹³

China, Russia, and the United States agree on a Security Council resolution urging restraint on both sides, to little effect. Ominously, public order within Pakistan is gradually breaking down.

Moreover, American intelligence reports indicate that militants sympathetic to the Islamic radicals’ agenda have penetrated Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence¹¹⁴ (ISI) senior leadership as well as parts of its staff. British intelligence and, perhaps most importantly, Indian sources confirm these reports. In a secure telephone call between newly elected US President John Clauson and Indian Prime Minister Ramanujan on February 7, India informs the United States that it cannot risk the collapse of Pakistan into total anarchy or the rise of a militant Islamic regime. Both outcomes would carry an unacceptable risk that radical Islamists would gain access to nuclear weapons, or that a radical Pakistani government itself would use nuclear weapons or provide them to militant Muslim groups.

During their conversation, President Clauson attempts to reassure his Indian counterpart, declaring that it would be “an act of total insanity” for any Pakistani government to attack India with nuclear weapons. Ramanujan cuts him short, declaring that for two generations India has experienced firsthand the indifference Pakistanis “of all stripes” haveshown for the consequences of their actions. Their continued feud with India has produced humiliating defeats for Pakistan in several wars, the loss of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), internal instability, and widespread suffering among the Pakistani people. “These are not rational people,” he tells the president. “Especially the radical elements, which are now growing in power and influence. They do not think as you and I do. They will use these horrible weapons and damn the consequences!”

As if to vindicate the prime minister’s point, radical Islamists detonate a bomb outside an Indian army base in Kashmir, resulting in minor damage to the base and less than a dozen casualties. While the international community widely condemns the attack, the Security Council remains deadlocked on taking any action to defuse the crisis, other than to urge “both parties to exercise restraint.” Islamabad again disavows responsibility for the attack, but the government immediately begins arresting large numbers of suspected radical Islamic militants. In a rebuke to their government, thousands of Pakistanis take to the streets to applaud this “act of strength” against India and condemn the arrests. Within a few days, what began as a demonstration of support for the attack on India evolves into widespread demonstrations calling for the overthrow of the Pakistani government.

A Meeting

On February 9, with the crisis between Pakistan and India worsening, Indian intelligence reports that Pakistan’s nuclear forces have received orders to move to a heightened alert status. This would have them assembling nuclear weapons and positioning them with their assigned delivery systems. Indian Prime Minister Ramanujan informs the American president of Islamabad’s decision, which US intelligence has confirmed on its own. President Clauson strongly urges the prime minister to refrain from taking any “provocative actions” that would only increase the risk of a war neither side wants. He pledges to reach out to Prime Minister Mehdi with an offer to mediate a resolution to the crisis.

The Indian prime minister concludes the conversation by wishing the president success in getting the Pakistanis to “listen to reason.” Regarding Clauson’s request to avoid any provocative actions, Ramanujan simply notes that “time is now our enemy, not our ally,” and that his first and foremost obligation is to “ensure the safety of the Indian people.”

Armed with this intelligence, Ramanujan calls an emergency meeting of his senior national security leadership. The session runs from mid-afternoon into the early evening hours of February 9 and includes several briefings and a spirited—at times heated—discussion. Shortly after midnight, Ramanujan stands to speak.

The reader should proceed to the two scenario branches that extend from this base scenario: chapter 7, “The Fear of Being a Poor Second,” and chapter 8, “Mobilization Race.”

7. The Fear of Being a Poor Second

This chapter is a branch extension from the base scenario presented in chapter 6, “India-Pakistan: The Long Road to War.” To understand the context for the events presented in chapter 7, read chapter 6 first.

The Decision

Shortly after midnight on February 10, 2041, during an emergency national security meeting, Indian Prime Minister Ramanujan stands to speak. Holding forth without notes, he summarizes the situation:

India faces the choice of awaiting events or striking preemptively. If we choose the latter course, we must act with great dispatch, before Pakistan’s nuclear alert can take effect. Any dithering on our part only increases the number of Pakistani nuclear weapons available to strike our cities and industry, from a handful to a hundred or more.

Of course, we can place our nuclear forces on high alert. But this will in no way diminish the growing number of Pakistani weapons available to strike our homeland. Note that theirs is not the action of a country with a so-called minimum deterrent.

We have hours, perhaps as much as a day, to attack their storage sites and delivery systems before they begin to move the components and assemble the weapons. We can accomplish this with a small fraction of our nuclear forces. Our military chief of defence staff, General Malik Singh, assures me that we can do so with less than 10 percent of our nuclear forces [58 weapons out of a total of 644]. The strike would utilize a portion of our land-based missiles currently on alert. They offer speed of attack and high accuracy.

A preemptive counterforce attack offers the following advantages: First, it is highly likely to eliminate the great majority of Pakistan’s nuclear forces and their associated delivery systems. General Singh believes the strike would leave Pakistan with perhaps a dozen weapons, two dozen at most. Most of these weapons will likely be the nuclear-armed cruise missiles aboard two submarines now deployed at sea.

Second, given that we would retain some 600 weapons and the Pakistanis only a handful, they would have little incentive to attempt a counterforce attack against us. Such an attack would eliminate even their residual assured destruction capability. Were they to attempt a countervalue strike against our cities, they would find our air and missile defenses forces on full alert. That said, they could subject one or even several of our cities to nuclear attack; however, for the Pakistanis, launching such an attack would mean the end of their country.

Third, our initial attacks will be “humane,” designed to spare Pakistani cities and their economic base while keeping them as hostages. I am reliably informed that our preemptive counterforce attacks will produce little damage to Pakistan’s industry and incur modest civilian casualties, likely less than 40,000 killed and wounded. A substantial portion of these will be Pakistani military.

Fourth, a number of you have mentioned the Nasr batteries. They do appear to have several dozen nuclear weapons co-located with them. Yet even if they survive our preemptive strikes, their short-range missiles cannot mount a serious countervalue attack campaign against our cities and major industrial centers.

Fifth, we will coordinate the nuclear attacks with a Cold Start campaign that will push any surviving Nasr batteries back, providing us with a buffer zone and 100,000 square kilometers of Pakistani territory as an additional bargaining chip in peace negotiations.

Sixth, importantly, India will retain an assured destruction capability against China. Under the most demanding circumstances, we will still retain over 500 weapons in our arsenal, and a significant fraction—20–25 percent—will remain on high alert status through the crisis. This will check any attempt by the Chinese to engage in nuclear blackmail against us.

Seventh, I don’t need to remind you of the growing risk that an already unstable Pakistani regime may collapse. Should this occur and we fail to act, we risk [Pakistani] military factions—some of them radicalized—as well as independent Islamist groups gaining access to dozens—let me repeat—dozens of nuclear weapons. [emphasis in the original]

This course of action is not without its risks. We can expect most of the world, especially the Chinese but also the Western democracies, to condemn our actions, just as they did following our peaceful nuclear test in 1974 and our ascension to a nuclear power in 1998. But with time the Western powers muted their criticism. Importantly, their arms control lobbies will have no destroyed cities to point to. The greater risk may lie in the success of our attack, which I believe we will achieve. Were our attacks to fail, it would reinforce the nuclear taboo. But our effective use of nuclear weapons will greatly reduce the barriers to their use by others. We can also expect a wave of nuclear proliferation.

Again, time is not on our side. We confront nothing but bad choices. But they are not all equally bad. I believe that if we fail to execute a preemptive attack as I have outlined, while there is time, we will forfeit important advantages while gaining little in return. True, there are major risks associated with preemption. But I judge the risks of inaction to be far greater.

To Ramanujan’s surprise, his advisors unanimously support his proposed course of action.

The Attack

India executes its preemptive nuclear strike at 2:43 a.m., New Delhi time, on February 10. American, Chinese, and Russian early warning satellites detect the launch of India’s missiles. For a brief moment, there is high tension in the PLARF’s early warning center until it confirms the missile trajectories are toward Pakistan and not China.

The attack exceeds the expectations of India’s high command. It destroys all but an estimated 25–30 Pakistani nuclear weapons, and most of the surviving weapons are on two submarines on patrol. Estimated Pakistani casualties are less than feared, 15,000–20,000, and less than 4,000 dead. Most of the casualties are Pakistani military personnel. India’s military leaders attribute the attack’s success to their missiles’ precision accuracy¹¹⁵ (which enables strikes with relatively low-yield weapons), the prime minister’s “courageous decision,” and (among themselves) “pure luck.”

Despite efforts to avoid fracturing it, Pakistan’s nuclear command-and-control system incurs significant damage. The Pakistani government, however, can maintain positive control over the country’s remaining nuclear weapons, including the handful it assigned to surviving Nasr missile units.

India’s nuclear strike also marks the beginning of its Cold Start campaign while the Pakistani military struggles to recover its balance.

The Aftermath

India and Pakistan

While addressing the nation at 6:00 a.m. following the strikes, Prime Minister Ramanujan informs India’s people of the attack and of ongoing operations. He emphasizes the care that Indian forces took to minimize Pakistani civilian casualties, contrasting his country’s actions with those of the Islamic radicals, who he notes have emphasized intentionally targeting innocent civilians. The prime minister warns Islamabad to refrain from responding with a nuclear strike of its own. Noting that India’s armed forces have avoided targeting Pakistani civilian population centers and industrial sites, he warns that India will return any nuclear attack on its cities or economic centers “tenfold, resulting in the destruction of Pakistan as a functioning entity. We have no desire to pursue such a course of action and urge the Pakistani government to join us in negotiating an end to this war.”

Pakistan’s senior national security policymakers begin gathering only moments after the attack against their country. They call the meeting into session shortly after 4:00 a.m. and pause their deliberations briefly to watch Ramanujan’s address, which only adds to their feelings of anger and shame. Prime Minister Mohammad Mehdi considers approving face-saving conventional cruise missile strikes on India. But Pakistan’s national security advisor, Ismat Nasim, argues strongly against it:

Much as it saddens me to say this, the enemy holds all the trump cards at the moment. They could interpret a conventional cruise missile attack on our part as an attempted nuclear strike. It would likely do little damage in any event but could trigger their threatened all-out atomic attack on our people and economy. What we need is an immediate ceasefire before their Cold Start attacks seize a sizeable part of our land, giving them yet another key bargaining chip to use against us. We need to get our friends in Beijing to weigh in heavily on India and demand a ceasefire. We should get the Americans and Russians involved, too.

Mehdi agrees, reluctantly. He notes that Nasim’s course of action is in the country’s best interest. Pursuing it, however, will likely enrage the Pakistani people over this humiliating defeat. He doubts his government will survive the month.

China is shocked as India effectively disarms its quasi-ally, Pakistan. At mid-day, uncertain about India’s intentions, Chinese President Chein Hsu places his country’s nuclear forces on an advanced state of alert,¹¹⁶ but he refrains from moving them to their highest alert status out of fear that this will lead Russia and the United States to do so as well. Beijing condemns India’s “threat to peace” and its “breaking of the long-standing international tradition of refraining from the use of atomic weapons.” Responding to the Pakistani government’s request, China demands that both countries accept a ceasefire in place, followed by the withdrawal of all Indian forces from Pakistani territory. Beijing also warns India against attacking Pakistan’s nuclear reactors, including those engaged in the production of fissile materials.

Russia and the United States soon second China’s demands. They, too, condemn India’s use of nuclear weapons, although in less strident terms. Privately, both Moscow and Washington are happy to see Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal all but eliminated, and to see the Sino-Indian nuclear balance shift, even if only slightly and indirectly, in New Delhi’s favor.

Prime Minister Ramanujan takes the win and agrees to the tripolar powers’ demands. Pakistan does so as well, after securing promises of major humanitarian assistance and generous financial support for remediation and reconstruction activities. Negotiations between Islamabad and New Delhi lead to the withdrawal of Indian troops from areas they have occupied in Pakistan, and to the introduction of a UN peacekeeping force to patrol a demilitarized zone extending 10 kilometers from the Indo-Pakistani border of Kashmir into Pakistan.

In the months ahead, India’s prime minister is careful not to publicly declare that his country has won a great victory. Privately, however, he and his government are jubilant over the success of their military operations. From India’s perspective, it has, at the cost of negligible enemy military and civilian casualties, all but disarmed Pakistan of its nuclear arsenal. Estimates from India’s intelligence community conclude that it will take a decade or more for the Pakistanis to restore their nuclear forces to their prewar levels.

In Pakistan, Prime Minister Mehdi’s fears prove prophetic. On February 15, less than a week following India’s attack, a military coup deposes the civilian government. The coup’s leadersdeclare that they will rule until the country’s Election Commission can schedule new elections, which it then sets for September 2041.

What deeply concerns all three tripolar powers is India’s use of nuclear weapons. Not only does it break the tradition of non-use, but it is also the first time a nuclear power has used such weapons against a nuclear rival. Moreover, India’s employment of nuclear weapons succeeded: at modest cost, it greatly enhanced New Delhi’s security.

World Reaction

The tripolar powers, along with the rest of the world, begin to absorb and debate the implications of the broken nucleartaboo. The immediate general reaction is that India’s use of nuclear weapons has produced a profound shift in the South Asian military balance in New Delhi’s favor, at negligible cost to Indian life or property.

Some security experts, however, believe that over the long term, India will face a Pakistan that has a rebuilt nuclear capability and is bent on revenge. The Pakistanis, they argue, have not abandoned the return of Kashmir irredenta. Following the Mehdi government’s overthrow, they also argue that India may have to confront Pakistani terrorist groups with active support from the new regime in Islamabad.

A much broader and arguably more consequential debate is also occurring in the capitals of the world’s great powers: Is the world now “safe” for nuclear warfare?

A US Assessment

In the aftermath of India’s attack, President Clauson devotes nearly all his energies to getting a ceasefire into place between the two belligerents. However, he instructs his national security advisor, Rebecca Bash, to direct the NSC staff and relevant interagency officials to prepare an assessment of the situation going forward. On the Saturday following President’s Day, Clauson and the NSC principals meet at the White House to receive the assessment’s findings.

According to a summary of Bash’s presentation, she said:

Had the opportunity existed for us to intervene in the recent crisis in South Asia, the US military would have been unable to engage in effective preventive action. Even if we had deployed our missile and air defenses in the region to the area prior to India’s nuclear attack on Pakistan, they would not likely have been sufficient to tip the balance decisively.

Furthermore, any of our forces in close proximity to India or Pakistan would have run a significant risk of being viewed as a threat by one or both belligerents. This could have drawn us directly into the conflict.

Looking at the current situation, there is a significant chance that Pakistan descends into civil war or anarchy. We have little confidence that our military could, if need be, quickly disarm Pakistan of its remaining nuclear weapons. A major problem, however, is that we believe most, and perhaps all, of Pakistan’s remaining nuclear weapons are based on submarines at sea. Any attempt to disarm these submarines would likely rely heavily on our ASW forces to compel nuclear Pakistani boats to return to port or risk being sunk if they refuse. Should the situation in Pakistan further destabilize and the military lose positive control over its residual nuclear force, in whole or in part, we judge our ability to detect, identify, tag, and track these “loose” nuclear weapons as very low.

As we look at the situation from a broader, long-term perspective, we find the following: First, this attack has greatly reduced the threshold for nuclear weapons use. Both the Chinese and the Russians now believe the so-called nuclear taboo has been breached and cannot be reestablished at its former level anytime soon, if ever. This is especially true with respect to counterforce strikes employing highly accurate delivery systems with low-yield nuclear weapons. Here they—the Russians in particular—appear to believe that very-low-yield nuclear weapons, including enhanced radiation weapons (neutron bombs)¹¹⁷ and EMP shots, are now on the table. There was a debate on this issue back in the early 1960s, and we rejected the concept of counterforce nuclear warfare. But times are different, capabilities are different, and we have rival leaders who appear very much attracted to the idea.

What remains off the table, it seems, are countervalue nuclear strikes. Put simply, as India succeeded in doing, Beijing and Moscow will want to keep their rivals’ people and economy as hostages.

Our allies, by the way, especially the Japanese and South Koreans, are very unsettled by what’s happened. They rely on us for extended deterrence. Just yesterday the Japanese ambassador and his defense attaché called on me for the third time over the past month to state what our response would be if the Chinese conducted a similar precision nuclear counterforce attack against Japan. While I reassured them that we would not leave such an attack unanswered, they wanted details, and I could not provide them. My sense is that we need a thorough rethinking of what today’s nuclear escalation ladder looks like, and how well we have positioned ourselves to discourage any upward escalation by our rivals.

President Clauson informs the NSC members that he has directed a full-scale review of the nation’s nuclear strategy and force posture. The review will address the issues that National Security Advisor Bash and others have raised. The president expects it will lead to major changes in US nuclear forces and related capabilities, to include air and missile defenses, NNSS capabilities, cyber weapons, and disaster relief capabilities. The cost of implementing these changes, the president notes, is likely to be considerable. As such, he has directed the Cabinet members, with oversight from the Office of Management and Budget, to identify cuts to their budget estimates. The Cabinet must submit these not later than the first week of March.

8. Mobilization Race

The Decision

Shortly after midnight on February 10, 2041, during an emergency national security meeting, Indian Prime Minister Ramanujan stands to speak. Without notes, he summarizes the situation:

India faces the choice of awaiting events or striking preemptively. If we choose the latter course, we must act with great dispatch, before Pakistan’s nuclear alert begins to gain momentum. Any dithering on our part only increases the number of Pakistani nuclear weapons available to strike our cities and industry, from a handful to a hundred or more.

Alternatively, we can place our nuclear forces on high alert. This will in no way diminish the growing number of Pakistani weapons available to strike our homeland. I believe Prime Minister Mehdi understands that any use of nuclear weapons against our country would risk the survival of his own. I also believe he is placing his nuclear forces on heightened alert out of fear that we will take them out preemptively.

But in doing so, he puts us on the spot. We have, I believe, a common interest with him: to avoid any of his [nuclear] weapons falling into the hands of radical forces—including some within his own military. This is, in my estimation, the greatest risk to us.

In reviewing our latest intelligence on the situation, and in speaking to our senior military commanders, I conclude that there are significant risks in following either course of action. Striking preemptively offers a high probability of success—if we do so within the next few hours. We are confident that we can destroy all but a handful—a dozen or two—of their weapons. We’ll get nearly all of them except those on their two submarines on deployment. We believe we can accomplish this with minimal casualties, less than 50,000 killed and wounded, a large percentage of them military. There will be almost no significant damage to their vital infrastructure—including industry and such. We keep the hostages [Pakistan’s population and economic infrastructure] alive.

Should we choose the path of preemption, however, we also encounter great risks. Using nuclear weapons, no matter how discriminately, for the first time in nearly a century will likely trigger widespread condemnation, not only from our enemies but also from our closest friends. We will have, in many eyes, made the world safe for the use of nuclear weapons. I worry here, especially about the Chinese [using them]. And if our preemptive attack were successful, it would only lower the barriers to nuclear use down the road. We can also expect greater efforts by nonnuclear states to acquire nuclear weapons, including a number of Muslim states within easy missile range of our homeland.

Put simply, I suspect preemption would provide short-term benefits but present us with great problems over the long term.

Consequently, I have given orders to place our armed forces, including our nuclear forces, on high alert. Our intelligence people, as well as Foreign Minister [Aravind] Seth and General Singh, inform me that China will almost certainly follow us quickly and generate its nuclear forces to a high—likely their highest—alert status. If so, the Russians and Americans will likely follow suit. We see no threat from the latter two tripolar powers, but the Chinese do concern me greatly. Our nuclear alert should encourage Beijing to keep its powder dry, as the British say. Perhaps most importantly, it should encourage the Chinese to work with the US and Russia to pressure the Pakistanis to stand down their nuclear alert. We would be happy to stand down as well if this condition were to obtain. We have informed each of the tripolar powers of our willingness to do so.

The meeting adjourns just after midnight, New Delhi time (shortly after 1:30 p.m. Washington time).

A Phone Call

Within minutes after the meeting breaks up, Prime Minister Ramanujan calls President Clauson to notify the president of his decision to place India’s nuclear forces on their highest alert state in response to Pakistan’s decision to mobilize its nuclear arsenal. Ramanujan further informs the president that China will almost certainly mobilize in response to India. If that occurs, Russia will likely, at a minimum, increase its nuclear alert status, but perhaps not to its highest level unless the United States increases its alert posture.

Ramanujan senses that the news overwhelms President Clauson, who assumed the presidency less than a month earlier.¹¹⁸ The prime minister informs the president that India is willing to stand down its nuclear forces if Pakistan does the same. But the United States needs to take the lead in defusing the crisis by engaging the other tripolar powers to apply pressure. India, Ramanujan says, is “an open door.” It will stand down if the Pakistanis do. But the Chinese must pressure them into doing so.

Clauson concurs with the prime minister and pledges to work with Beijing and Moscow to unwind the crisis before it threatens to spin out of control. The conversation comes to a close.

The secretary of state and other senior national security officials were present in the Oval Office for the conversation with Ramanujan. The president immediately instructs them to engage with his Chinese and Russian counterparts, and then with the Pakistanis, on ways to defuse the crisis. The instructions have barely passed Clauson’s lips when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Lew Spencer informs him that intelligence sources report China is generating its nuclear forces from their “day-to-day” alert posture to what may be their highest alert status short of war—“the equivalent of our DEFCON 2.”

Given Clauson’s quizzical expression at the phrase DEFCON 2,¹¹⁹ Spencer states, “Mr. President, this means we will very soon find China and likely Russia with a greatly expanded ability to launch nuclear strikes against us on very short notice.”

The president directs his national security advisor to call an immediate meeting of the council to discuss the situation. He instructs Secretary of State John Harvey and Secretary of Defense Tom Baugher to have their staffs prepare briefs on the situation and possible courses of action.

The National Security Council

President Clauson calls only the third meeting of his new administration’s NSC to order at 4:48 p.m. on February 9. He offers a few brief remarks summarizing his talk with the Indian prime minister and the mobilization of nuclear forces by China, India, Pakistan, and Russia:

It is unprecedented for a president and his team, this early in its administration, to be confronted with a crisis of this magnitude. In all candidness, I have little experience with nuclear matters, although I’ve been in the process of getting up to speed. Like my immediate predecessors, I have placed great faith in both the enormous power of America’s nuclear forces to deter an attack and the STRATFORE agreement to provide stability, even in crises such as the one in which we now find ourselves. It is becoming increasingly apparent that I may have misplaced this faith—and many others may have as well.

There are two issues before us today. One we are already working on: asking the Chinese and Russians to get the Pakistanis and Indians to reverse their nuclear mobilization. The Chinese won’t reverse unless the Indians do, and they [the Indians] won’t unless the Paks do.

The more pressing issue, if I understand it correctly, concerns the nuclear force generation—mobilization—by the two South Asian powers, but more importantly, our tripolar rivals. It appears the decision before me, as your commander-in-chief, is whether to raise our nuclear alert to the highest level since the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly 80 years ago. With that in mind, our deliberations today will require the very best intellectual effort—wisdom, insights—from each of you.

As time is of the essence, let’s start by hearing Secretary Harvey’s views.

An Unmarked Path

Secretary of State Harvey begins by framing the discussion:

Given the threat of mutual annihilation, we have rightly assessed that it is highly implausible for a state’s political leadership to risk its survival as a functioning entity by conducting a bolt-from-the-blue nuclear attack on a comparably armed nuclear state. In the course of two nuclear rivals’ day-to-day existence, these “scorpions in the bottle,” as Robert Oppenheimer famously described them, have considerable incentive to give each other plenty of leeway. This arguably holds true in a tripolar system as well. We are one of the three scorpions, if you will, along with the Chinese and Russians.

But does this hold when nuclear states find themselves in a crisis situation with their vital interests at stake, as we do today? It worked during the Cold War. Barely. The classic example is the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we and the Russians approached the precipice and then drew back. To some who were directly involved in the crisis, however, its peaceful resolution was hardly a foregone conclusion. As Robert McNamara, the US secretary of defense at the time, concluded, “It is the overwhelming lesson of the Cuban missile crisis. ‘Managing’ crises is the wrong term. You don’t ‘manage’ them because you can’t ‘manage’ them.”¹²⁰

As McNamara found, and as research in the cognitive sciences and historical experience shows, even when the stakes for a country’s security are at their highest, policymakers do not always act rationally.¹²¹ Furthermore, those at the top may believe they have total control over their forces, but experience suggests otherwise. As President Kennedy despaired during the crisis when one of our U-2 aircraft violated Russian airspace, “There’s always some sonofabitch who doesn’t get the word.”¹²² The world came uncomfortably close to nuclear Armageddon then, even though the United States had a profound advantage in nuclear weapons, had only one rival to worry about, and did not have to concern itself with other forms of strategic warfare below the nuclear level.

Today we find ourselves in a multipolar nuclear rivalry with China and Russia. Nor can we ignore the lesser nuclear powers—North Korea in particular. There are more fingers on the nuclear trigger. More ways for accidents to happen—for “some sonofabitch” to not get the word. Again, new capabilities have emerged, ones that did not exist during the Cold War–era crises, that exert a significant effect on the nuclear [that is, strategic] balance, such as nonnuclear strategic strike forces and cyber weapons. These additional variables make it even more challenging for you, Mr. President, and your counterparts to “manage” your way through a rapidly developing crisis between great—and lesser—nuclear powers.

Simply put, the dynamics are very different today from anything we’ve experienced before. The balance of power has long since departed the path defined by the highly stable so-called US unipolar era, the Pax Americana that characterized the first few decades following the Cold War. It’s too much to say we’re operating in the blind, but today we move along a dark road no longer marked by familiar signposts.

An Unstable System

The secretary of state continues:

Included in your read-ahead for today’s NSC meeting is a brief comparison the folks at Policy Planning have been working on that I thought of in the short time we’ve had to prep for this meeting. It relates our current situation to the run-up to World War I. Let me say up front that history does not repeat itself; nor in my opinion does it “rhyme.” It does, however, offer opportunities for reflection and insight on what we face today with respect to nuclear weapons and the international system.

Two factors shaped the European system in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that are also playing an increasingly important role in crisis stability today: a multipolar international system and the growing incentive to act first militarily in a crisis out of the fear of finding oneself a poor second for failing to strike first. Put simply, the metaphor for today’s global multipolar nuclear system is increasingly less one of scorpions in a bottle and more a meeting of gunfighters confronting each other on a dusty street in the Old West. [emphasis in the original]

Our assessment is that just as those gunfighters had a strong need to draw first—to be quick on the draw—the same may be true today in a nuclear force mobilization race between China, Russia, and us. There is reason to believe that, like the great European powers in the years immediately leading up to World War I, we may have unintentionally created a doomsday machine of sorts, only with far more dire consequences.

To give you a sense of how we are attempting to think through the implications of a tripolar nuclear power mobilization race, permit me to turn the floor over to your head of Policy Planning at State, Paul Rosenwasser.

Rosenwasser stands and offers a historical perspective on the diplomatic crisis:

Mr. President, members of the NSC, what lessons, what insights, does Europe’s early twentieth-century doomsday mobilization race have to offer us in our current situation?

The decades leading up to the Great War saw the end of the Pax Britannica, a period of relative peace that began with the European Coalition’s victory over Napoleonic France in 1815 and extended to the late nineteenth century.¹²³ Although Great Britain was the predominant power during this period, the European security system was characterized by a cluster of great powers who adjusted their relationships to preserve an overall balance of power—no one country could achieve hegemony over the others. As the leading power of that era, the British saw their role as placing their rather large thumb on the scales in favor of whatever country or coalition seemed threatened by a prospective hegemon. The balancing act worked for almost exactly a century. It was undone, along with the peace, owing to shifts in the European geopolitical system and major changes in the character of warfare that, when combined, made defusing crises increasingly difficult once they erupted.

Looking back over time, political scientists have noted that the balance of power works best if at least one of the following three conditions exists. First, each nation must feel free to align with any other state, depending on the circumstances of the moment. Through much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, states maintained the balance by constantly shifting their alignments.

Today’s alignment of nuclear powers, however, is relatively rigid. The revisionist powers—China, Pakistan, North Korea, and Russia—are in general alignment against the status quo powers—France, Great Britain, India, and the United States. There appears to be little likelihood that the revisionist powers will readily abandon their goals, that the status quo powers will be inclined to appease them, or that if they did, appeasement would satisfy their appetites. Thus there is little likelihood the Russians will detach themselves from the Chinese. This means we must account for both their nuclear arsenals in our planning.

Second, it is possible to preserve the balance of power when there are fixed alliances, if a non-aligned power serves as the balancer to ensure that no alliance accrues sufficient power to overturn the balance. This situation existed after the Franco-Russian alliance was formed in 1894, when Great Britain served as the balancing power between these two states and those of the Triple Alliance (Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy). In our current system, no one nuclear power appears capable of playing the balancer role of Britain during its period of “splendid isolation.” Again, we are consigned to facing two comparable nuclear powers, with no fourth power balancer on our side to create a balanced quadpolar system.

Indeed, while the United States came to assume the role of balancing power in the two world wars—but only after the wars had begun—today our situation is much more like Germany’s prior to World War I. Like Germany, we confront two major rivals, China and Russia, with no comparable great nuclear power allies. I may be stretching a bit here, but our British and French allies today might represent what Austria-Hungary was to Germany—members of a latter-day polyglot entity (the European Union) in accelerating decline. So long as China and Russia constitute a latter-day version of the Franco-Russian alliance, from our perspective, there is no balancer that offsets their advantage in nuclear forces, which, per STRATFORE, is at least twice our own. [emphasis in the original]

Third, states might still maintain the balance when rigid alliances form and no balancer exists. But when alliance cohesion is relatively weak, there are opportunities for changes in alignment¹²⁴

This appears to be closest to what we’re experiencing today. The Beijing-Moscow axis has existed for over two decades, but after Putin it is no longer a friendship with “no limits.” That said, the Russians remain heavily dependent on China economically and cannot easily afford to abandon the CCP in a crisis¹²⁵ Despite [Russian President] Kirilenski’s talk of improved relations, his feet are still firmly planted in the revisionist powers’ camp.

Then there’s India. Like Italy before World War I, it’s a wild card. Remember, the Italians were part of the Triple Alliance but ended up fighting alongside the Entente Powers (Britain, France, and Russia). New Delhi is highly unlikely to throw its lot in with China in a crisis. But that doesn’t mean it will align itself with us. For the moment, at least, it has principally devoted its nuclear arsenal to addressing the threat from Pakistan.

While we cannot imagine the British or French abandoning our alliance to back the Chinese or Russians, it seems as likely as not that they will try to steer clear of any confrontation we might have with the other two great nuclear powers. If there is a “sick continent” of the world, it’s Europe.

One advantage the Europeans had back then, or at least for much of the nineteenth century when the so-called Concert of Europe existed, was the congresses that were convened from time to time to ensure that things never got too far out of hand and that the balance of power was preserved.¹²⁶ Unfortunately, while the United Nations provides a contemporary forum for such negotiations, there is no corresponding rule-based Concert of Europe to which all the relevant powers subscribe.

To sum up, unlike the multipolar international system that kept the peace in Europe for the better part of a century, no balancing mechanism exists today among the nuclear powers to ensure that crises are resolved peacefully. Thus, were we to confront China in a crisis—say, if the Chinese were to attack Taiwan—it is unlikely that Russia or India would pledge to support the victim, irrespective of which state is the aggressor. Relative to the bipolar era that preceded it, the multipolar balance of nuclear powers appears far less stable—and, from a US perspective, far less favorable.

This raises the question of whether, in a crisis, when the nuclear powers are mobilizing their forces, there is a rise in crisis instability, and one or more nuclear states experience a growing incentive to strike a rival preemptively. This scenario is generally similar to the situation among Europe’s great military powers during the summer of 1914.

This finds us moving into the area of military operations. Again, we are deeply concerned that there may be important similarities between the mobilization race that stemmed from the doomsday machine that Europe’s great power militaries constructed in the years leading up to World War I, and the tripolar-plus nuclear mobilization race that appears to be on the cusp of occurring as we speak.

At this point I’d like to turn over the presentation to the under secretary of defense for policy, Fred Robinson.

A Nuclear Doomsday Machine?

Under Secretary Robinson then analyzes the situation from a military perspective:

As Paul stated, the military situation today with respect to nuclear weapons echoes that of the European militaries prior to World War I, even if it doesn’t “rhyme.” We may find ourselves in a crisis where what crosses the line from peace to war is not who fires the first shot, but who begins to mobilize their forces—in this case, nuclear forces—first.¹²⁷ [emphasis in the original]

What do I mean by this? In the case of Europe in the period leading up to the Great War, the bulk of the great power military forces—and hence their combat power—were in reserve, just as the great majority of our nuclear forces and those of our principal rivals are not on high alert but in a far lower standby status. Thus only a small percentage, 15 or 20 percent, are ready to launch on short notice.

Similarly, in the early summer of 1914, only a relatively small percentage of a European army was on active duty. To generate full combat potential, an army had to mobilize. Thanks to relatively recent advances in technology at that time—such as the telegraph, radio communications, and railroad networks—an army could mobilize far more rapidly than was the case only a few decades earlier. Thus while “active” army forces could be in balance, a military could change the balance very rapidly—and in its favor—if it could steal a march over its rival in mobilizing its “reserve” forces.

Given these conditions, a military that procrastinated in mobilization increased its risk of defeat. In a situation where alliances had formed, the need for all allies to mobilize in lockstep became urgent. Moreover, once the mobilization process was underway, it became irreversible as a state could not stop it midstream in a way that its rivals could quickly and confidently confirm. And if one military stopped while its rival continued, the balance of power would continue shifting against it. Finally, once mobilization had commenced, it became crucial for the side that had gained the advantage to exploit it by going to war before its enemy’s mobilization offset it.

In brief, the combination of an international system that could not readily adjust to preserve a balance of power and a hair-trigger military posture made preserving the peace in moments of crisis increasingly difficult. As Henry Kissinger observed, “It was only a matter of time before a general war would break out, for it required only one mobilization by a major power to start the doomsday machine for all of them.”¹²⁸

Mr. President, members of the NSC, given the disturbing events that have developed into a rapidly escalating crisis between India and Pakistan, it becomes imperative to address the following questions:

First, if any current major nuclear power decided to mobilize its nuclear forces—that is, if it ordered them to move from a normal alert posture to a generated, or high, alert posture—would it trigger a cascade of mobilization by other nuclear powers? The answer to this question, based on what our intelligence sources are reporting, is yes.

Pakistan’s mobilization finds India mobilizing in response, and China is mobilizing to address the threat India poses. Russia seems intent on undertaking at least a partial mobilization. If it does, it’s unclear what the British and French will do.

Second, could such a mobilization increase one of the tripolar powers’ incentive to strike first—to execute a disarming counterforce attack—against its rival to avoid finding itself at a major disadvantage should it fail to do so? The example that most often comes to mind is two gunfighters in a showdown in the Old West.

With this in mind, let’s look at the current situation with respect to the nuclear powers. Please understand that [the] Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff combined planning team has had only three days to prepare the following assessment, although it does draw on earlier analysis of the bipolar situation between us and the Russians during the Cold War and up to the 2020s.

Arsenals of US Allies, Rivals, and Other Powers

Robinson continues as he passes around copies of a document with facts and figures:

Since Russia signed the STRATFORE agreement, which reduced its deployed forces from New START by over 20 percent, our nuclear allies, France and Great Britain, have seen little reason to grow their modest arsenals. At 300 and 210, respectively, these have not changed significantly in decades.

Similarly, despite the concerns of many experts, there has been no nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and thus Israel has seen no need to boost its arsenal.

The first figure in the sheet I just passed around [table 8.1] shows our current force levels as well as those of China and Russia under STRATFORE.

Table 8.1. The Tripolar Nuclear Power Forces Under STRATFORE

Country	Bombers/ Weapons	ICBMs/RVs		SSBNs/SLBMs/RVs	Total Weapons
United States	120/1	376/376	11/176/704		1,200
Russia	24/1	236/984	6/96/192		1,200
China	44/1	300/900	8/128/256		1,200

Note: Each state retains 800 additional warheads in reserve. Each bomber counts as one weapon, regardless of how many weapons it carries.

The major change in nuclear arsenals over the past two decades has centered on three Asian nuclear powers. China maintains its STRATFORE-limited strategic arsenal of 1,200 deployed weapons.

China’s sixfold increase in its nuclear forces over the past two decades convinced India that it must expand its arsenal, albeit not as ambitiously. From less than 200 weapons in the mid-2020s, India now has a nuclear arsenal that we estimate at 600–650 weapons.

Owing primarily to economic problems, Pakistan, which sees its nuclear forces as offsetting India’s advantage in conventional forces, has struggled to match India’s expansion. Islamabad’s force expansion has leveled off at roughly 300 weapons, or less than half of India’s. Still, Pakistan takes some solace in the knowledge that its longstanding security partner, China, poses a threat to India as well.

North Korea, the so-called hermit kingdom, appears to desire a bigger arsenal than its 80–100 weapons. But its enduring economic difficulties—and corresponding fear of internal unrest—have found it diverting its newly generated fissile material to China. In return, it gets financial assistance from Beijing to underwrite its latest effort at economic reform in support of its Juche ideology.¹²⁹

Although each tripolar power is limited to 1,200 deployed strategic weapons, there are significant differences, or asymmetries, in how they structure their forces. These asymmetries can have significant implications for crisis stability.

As shown in the paper before you [table 8.1], the Chinese and Russians have fewer ICBMs than the United States—300 for the Chinese and 236 for the Russians against 376 of our own. Yet the Chinese have an estimated 900 warheads on their missiles, and the Russians have 984 against our 400. In brief, the Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons are highly concentrated in their ICBM force, relative to our own. The reason is that we’ve armed each of our ICBMs with one warhead, while theirs are MIRVed. [emphasis in the original]

As you can see, much more of our nuclear forces reside in our SSBN force, which has more than double China’s number of weapons and over three times as many as the Russians. Put simply, we have more SLBM warheads than the Chinese and Russians combined. [emphasis in the original]

Regarding the bomber leg of the triad, our 120 B-21s comprise 10 percent of our nuclear force posture, nearly triple that of the PLAAF and five times the size of the Russian bomber force.

Gunfighters or Scorpions?

Robinson concludes his presentation by assessing the effectiveness of striking first:

Let’s turn now to whether in a crisis, such as the one that appears to be emerging, nuclear force mobilization can be destabilizing. Can it undermine crisis stability by increasing the incentive to strike first?

Based on analysis provided by your Planning Board, Mr. President, the incentive to strike first is increasing due to the following developments.

First is the shift from a bipolar nuclear competition to a multipolar competitive environment, a world very different from that which characterized our long-term rivalry with the Russians. As I will elaborate upon later in my presentation, the loss of parity and the additional requirements for us to maintain an assured destruction capability against two comparable rivals find us at a much greater disadvantage now than under the bipolar US-USSR system.¹³⁰

Second, the way in which we and our principal rivals, China and Russia, structure our forces tends to incentivize striking first rather than accepting the first blow. In military terms, it leads to a highly favorable exchange rate for the attacker—one or a few of an attacker’s nuclear weapons can take out far greater numbers of the defender’s weapons. This incentive holds despite the faith some place in the deterrent effect of possessing an assured destruction capability against an adversary.

Third, the day-to-day readiness postures in periods of relative calm are such that one of the three principal nuclear powers could theoretically gain a substantial advantage by mobilizing first, and by attacking its rival prior to mobilizing. The second figure in the document before you [table 8.2] shows the tripolar powers’ pre-crisis readiness rates. They have remained relatively stable for the past decade or so, and have characterized our posture, and Russia’s, since the early 2000s.¹³¹

Table 8.2. Tripolar Power Nuclear Force Alert Rates

Country	Total Weapons	% on High Alert[132]	Weapons on High Alert
US	2,000	18%	360
Russia	2,000	20%	400
China	2,000	18%	360

Note: Total weapons are the combination of those STRATFORE permits to be deployed (1,200) and those it permits to be retained in reserve (800). See Hans M. Kristensen and Matthew McKinzie, Reducing Nuclear Alert Rates (United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2012), 2.

The decision to execute a counterforce first strike would be influenced by the decision-maker’s perception of cost, benefit, and risk: the price of approving the attack; the benefits of attacking; and the risk that they are not properly anticipating the consequences of the attack. A key factor in assessing the value of an FSC is the expected exchange ratio. Put simply, all other things equal, the higher an attacker’s anticipated exchange ratio, the greater the incentive to go first.

A simple example serves to make the point. Assume the Chinese have armed their DF-41 silo-based ICBMs up to their full payload of 10 MIRVs. Our Sentinel ICBM warheads have a 0.8 (or 80 percent) probability of kill against this type of target. Thus two Sentinel warheads have a 96 percent probability of destroying a DF-41 missile in its silo.

Now assume we attack 10 DF-41s, each armed with 10 warheads, with 20 of our Sentinel weapons, targeting two apiece on each DF-41. The projected result is we destroy 9.6 of the 10 DF-41s, along with an estimated 96 Chinese nuclear weapons, all at a cost of 20 Sentinel weapons. The exchange ratio in this case is roughly 5:1 in our favor: for every one of our weapons we take out five (actually an estimated 4.8) of theirs.

Interestingly, a mirror-image FSC Chinese attack on us yields a very different outcome—in our [the defender’s] favor. This time let’s assume we have the Chinese targeting 10 of our Sentinel single-warhead ICBMs with their DF-41s. As in the first example, we’ll assume each DF-41 warhead has a 0.8 (80 percent) probability of kill. Again, just as in the previous example, 20 DF-41 warheads (two against each of the 10 Sentinel missiles) will take out 96 percent of their targets (9.6 of the 10 Sentinels). In terms of the exchange ratio, however, the attack is a failure, as it required 20 Chinese nuclear weapons to take out not quite 10 of ours. Instead of the favorable 5:1 exchange ratio we achieved with our FSC attack, the Chinese find themselves on the short end of a roughly 1:2 weapons-destroyed-to-weapons-employed ratio.

This takes us to my next point: Although STRATFORE limits us, the Chinese, and the Russians to 1,200 deployed strategic weapons, each of us has structured our forces differently. These differences—asymmetries—influence, to a greater or lesser degree, the incentive to strike first. Generally speaking, the more nuclear weapon eggs concentrated in a delivery system basket, and the easier those baskets are to target, the greater the anticipated exchange ratio, and the more tempting it is to attack them.

All three of us have different vulnerabilities in this regard. In the case of the Chinese, MIRVing their ICBM force places multiple eggs in each missile basket, whereas our ICBMs carry only a single warhead. Arguably, our weakness lies with our SSBNs or boomers in port being prepped for their next deployment or in overhaul. Each of these new [Columbia-class SSBN] boomers carries 16 missiles and a total of 64 warheads, or four warheads per missile, the highest concentration of nuclear eggs in a single delivery system basket among the tripolar powers. And all our SSBNs operate from only two bases, one on the Atlantic Coast and the other on the Pacific [Coast].

We have a somewhat similar problem with our nuclear-capable bombers, which are located at only five bases. In a crisis, unlike the subs, we can disperse the bombers to other bases much more quickly than we can flush the boomers in port out to sea. Another thing about the bombers: while they have the capacity to carry multiple nuclear weapons aboard, we count them as armed with only one nuclear weapon under the STRATFORE provisions.

I should also note that another important force asymmetry concerns mobile ICBMs, which are much more difficult to locate, track, and engage when they are on patrol than when they are in their garrisons being refitted and prepared for patrols. In this way, road-and-rail mobile ICBMs resemble boomers: highly vulnerable at their home base, but far less so when on patrol. Another thing: the Chinese and the Russians have mobile ICBMs. We do not.

Pulling the Trigger?

President Clauson, understanding that he needs to make a decision, speaks up:

This is all very helpful, but we may have only hours before India and then China mobilize their nuclear forces. What can you tell us regarding whether, if they mobilize, we should do so in lockstep with the Chinese, or try to mobilize more quickly than they do, or not mobilize at all? Oh, and can we partially mobilize? And, does it matter what the Russians do?

I realize time is of the essence, but it would be very useful to get some sense of how the answers to these questions influence—what is it? Oh, yes, “crisis stability.”

Secretary of State Harvey responds:

Yes, Mr. President. As we, the new members of your new administration, are working to come up to speed on these questions, we have unfortunately been unable to find much useful analysis that we can pull right off the shelf, so to speak. At least this is the feedback we are getting from our recently departed counterparts in the last administration, who, I might add, have been extremely cooperative. That being said, they also clearly placed a great deal of faith in the STRATFORE agreement’s ability to maintain deterrence, even under the stressful conditions we are confronting at this moment.

And the cupboard is not entirely bare. Some analysis along the lines of the questions you have raised has been pursued at Strategic Command—STRATCOM. Its commander, General Patricia Reilly, just arrived at the White House about 20 minutes ago from the command’s headquarters in Omaha. The general can best brief you. She knows time is at a premium. General?

The STRATCOM commander stands and answers:

Mr. President, members of the NSC, as Secretary Harvey noted, we do not have data on what a contemporary nuclear forces mobilization race would look like. We’ve never had one with China. Or Russia, for that matter. Even with the Soviets, our experience is over a half century old, during the Cold War. No NNSS or cyber forces existed then. We had one rival, not two, to account for.

I’ve been observing your discussions from the moment I arrived, and it’s important to understand one possible omission. If the Chinese executed a first-strike counterforce attack on us in ways that maximize their advantage—similar to what Under Secretary Robinson described—against our subs [SSBNs] in port and our bombers, they could reduce our deployed strategic forces by 504 weapons, or roughly 45 percent.¹³³ This would cost the Chinese a handful of weapons. We would still have 360 weapons—on our deployed boomers and our Sentinels—and could generate several hundred additional weapons to high alert within a week by uploading them on B-21s and placing them on strip alert¹³⁴ Over time we could also upload our stored weapons onto our ICBMs and SLBMs. But this would require our SSBNs to return to port. In the process of doing so, they would be making themselves easy and highly lucrative targets. Moreover, it’s highly likely that most, if not all, of the base facilities we need to do the upload would have been destroyed in the initial Chinese attack.

I should note that our old studies found such an attack under Cold War–era conditions far less risky to us than it appears today. First, we had many more bomber and sub bases than we do today. Thus an enemy would have had to launch an attack on a significantly greater scale. Second, missiles lacked the precision accuracy they have today. So the attacker would need to use weapons of much higher yield, or more weapons of equivalent yield, to achieve comparable levels of effectiveness. This combination of a larger attack with weapons of substantially higher yield suggested that casualties and damage to infrastructure would be much greater than is the case today. Simply put, there might have been little to distinguish your great-uncle’s first-strike counterforce attack from a countervalue attack. Yet even during the Cold War, there were fears of such an attack¹³⁵

Third, in today’s tripolar system, and given delivery system precision accuracy, were the Chinese to forgo conducting a first-strike counterforce attack against us, it could leave them in a pickle similar to the one I described where we are the victim of an attack. If we used the weapons on one boomer against their silo-based ICBMs, bombers, and subs in port, they would be the ones holding the short end of the stick. The stick grows even shorter when you consider that, at least in the case when we are attacked, we face not only a far larger Chinese nuclear force but also a full-up Russian arsenal. Roughly 4,000 total weapons of theirs against around 1,500 of ours still remaining.

Note that the hostages—population and economic infrastructure—are still all in place. Ours as well as those of the Chinese and Russians. We still have mutual assured destruction. In such an attack on us, however, Beijing and Moscow stand to gain three things.

First, they will worry much less about us conducting a similar strike against them, given the large disparity in nuclear forces. We’ll need to keep some 800 weapons or so as an assured destruction capability and figure out how we can recover our at-sea boomers (armed with some 320 or so weapons on board) without their being attacked in port. That’s a real head-scratcher. And then there’s the problem with refitting them, given that the port’s repair facilities would be out of action.

Second, our allies—especially those relying on our nuclear umbrella—would almost certainly rethink the value of our nuclear “guarantee.”

Third, both the Chinese and Russians would have much greater freedom of action to exploit local conventional force advantages with far less risk that we would escalate the situation to a nuclear confrontation.

The president nods and says, “Yes, general. Thank you. Very informative. But I need your thoughts on whether we should move our nuclear forces to a high DEFCON alert.”

General Reilly quickly responds:

Yes, sir. Apologies. The short answer to your question is that we simply lack enough detailed analysis to provide you with a well-informed recommendation. Aside from the factors I mentioned above, others would need to be addressed. How would the Chinese leadership view our moving to a high state of alert? Are they trigger-happy or Neville Chamberlains? How do NNSS and strategic cyber forces, factor into the equation? How reliable do the Chinese consider their nuclear missiles, including their accuracy? If we move our forces to a high alert level, will the Russians do so as well? How will Beijing view this—as supporting them, or as a potential threat?

If the Chinese do hit us first, as I described, what do they think we’ll do with our boomers at sea? [They] can’t return to port without being sitting ducks. Can’t refit there anyway—the base is destroyed. Do they think we will use ’em before we lose ’em? Launch our subs’ weapons in a counterforce attack? [emphasis in the original]

All this being said, as I pointed out earlier, the Chinese can already do a number on us with the forces they have on a day-to-day alert status. They can take out our bomber and sub bases. If they mobilize more delivery systems, they could go after our ICBMs—we estimate it would take them 600 weapons to take out roughly 300 Sentinels—and hope to maintain a sizeable force to deter the Indians and Russians.¹³⁶

I should note here that if they eliminate most of our ICBM force, we would be left with only 76 Sentinel missiles to upload reserve warheads. Simply put, the Chinese could readily add their reserve warheads to their deployed systems, giving them a residual force of over 1,500 weapons compared to 400 for us, roughly speaking.

The problem, as I see it, is that if the Chinese mobilize and we do not, their forces become progressively less vulnerable to a high-leverage [high attacker-to-defender exchange ratio] counterforce strike, while our forces remain vulnerable. Their mobile ICBMs will leave their garrisons. Their SSBNs in port will surge out to sea. Their bombers will be put on strip alert. Our ability to hold their strategic forces at risk will keep shrinking. They will prepare even those we can target with high confidence, such as their silo-based ICBMs, to launch on warning if they detect that an attack from us is underway. If we fail to mobilize with them and decide to do so at some future point, the Chinese will face the dilemma of whether to assume our mobilization is benign or, if not, whether to conduct a first-strike counterforce attack while a high percentage of our force is still at risk.

Furthermore, if we do mobilize, there are other issues we must address. How long will we need to maintain a high alert status? How does the balance of forces change the longer our mobilized forces remain on alert? I have directed my staff to assess how assuming a protracted generated or high nuclear alert—a fully mobilized nuclear force—would affect our balance with the Chinese, with the Russians, or in a tripolar sense. Assuming such a posture and maintaining it over an extended period—say, in a prolonged crisis or a war with China—could find the nuclear balance and crisis stability shifting as we rotated our ICBMs and bombers through their alert statuses, and as our SSBNs returned to port from deployments while others begin theirs.¹³⁷

Again, my apologies, Mr. President. I know I’ve laid many questions before you and provided few, if any, answers.

President Clauson concludes the meeting:

I hope somebody’s been taking damn good notes on these questions, because we’ll need answers to all of them as soon as humanly possible.

Decision time. Tom [Defense Secretary Baugher], prepare to place our nuclear forces on high alert. Do not execute until I give the word. Get someone in here to give me the difference between DEFCON 3 and DEFCON 2, and the Chinese equivalent.

I want to talk with the Chinese president ASAP. I want him to know that we intend to generate our forces only to their level. When they stand down, which I hope he and I can work out, we’ll do the same. Hopefully they will agree to work with us on getting the Pakistanis to reverse course.

J.C., let our British and French allies know what we’re doing—but only after I’ve spoken with the Chinese. Same for our key allies in the Pacific: the Aussies, Japanese, and Koreans. Then the Filipinos, the Taiwanese, and the others.

Going to have to address the nation. Bobby [Curran, the president’s chief of staff], get the Senate and House leadership over here ASAP. I don’t care that it’s past 10. And tell John [Northrop, the president’s press secretary] to prep for an address to the nation—but not to pull any triggers until I give him the word.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Now let’s get to work.

9. Crossing the Firebreak

The events of this chapter follow the baseline events described in chapter 4.

A Diversified Arsenal

Shortly after signing the STRATFORE Treaty, China and Russia expanded their inventories of VLY nuclear weapons and nuclear-generated EMP weapons. The two tripolar nuclear powers believed that they could use these weapons to deter rivals from employing similar devices, and that they could employ them under certain conditions.

Russia had also long seen low-yield nuclear weapons as a way of offsetting the US advantage in conventional forces in general and NNSS forces in particular. Moscow began increasing its emphasis on VLY tactical¹³⁸ nuclear weapons not long after the Cold War.¹³⁹

The Chinese eventually followed in the Russians’ footsteps. The early 2030s found them developing substantial numbers of nuclear weapons in the single-digit kiloton range to cover what some Chinese strategists saw as a potential gap on the strategic warfare escalation ladder.In particular, the PLA feared the United States would substantially expand its force of new B-21 bombers well beyond the minimum 100 aircraft set in its early 2020s program of record.¹⁴⁰ If so, this fleet could enable the United States to field a so-called prompt global strike force comprising bombers and missiles armed with conventional weapon payloads.¹⁴¹ Such a force could not only conduct an attack anywhere on the globe on short notice but also wage a persistent, large-scale NNSS campaign against Chinese countervalue and counterforce targets. One PRC analyst went so far as to say that “the realization of a conventional prompt global strike capability would enable the United States to have a preemptive [counterforce] strike capability without the first use of nuclear weapons.”¹⁴²In a reference to the eroding firebreak between conventional and nuclear weapons, another Chinese strategist argued:

The paradox of the interaction between nuclear and conventional weapons is that . . . to reduce the role of nuclear weapons . . . there has been an idea to actively develop conventional weapons to gradually replace [them]. . . . [But] the more [strategic] conventional weapons are developed, the greater the vulnerability of nuclear weapons [to conventional counterforce attack] and the more likely that strategic stability will be impactedinstead. [The outcome is that] the risk of nuclear war will increase significantly.¹⁴³

In this way Chinese strategic thinkers believed that the development of NNSS forces and highly accurate VLY nuclear weapons was eroding the firebreak between conventional and nuclear warfare. The ability to employ VLY nuclear weapons whose effects are relatively discrete and operationally effective makes their use no longer an unthinkable act.¹⁴⁴ In this light, it is easy to see the impetus behind China’s multidimensional nuclear forces buildup—one that includes nuclear weapons with varying yields and effects.¹⁴⁵

An Open Secret

The move by Beijing and Moscow to enhance their nuclear arsenals’ flexibility by adding VLY nuclear weapons and nuclear-generated EMP weapons did not remain hidden for long. Although India approved of Russia’s initiative, thinking it would pose problems for China, New Delhi had deep misgivings over China’s fielding of similar capabilities. Indian leaders became more concerned when intelligence revealed that China was assisting Pakistan with low-yield nuclear weapon design information to support its Nasr missile system. Beijing’s intention was to aid Islamabad’s efforts to field so-called battlefield nuclear weapons to counter India’s conventional force superiority. To counterbalance these Chinese and Pakistani initiatives, India decided to launch a covert program to add VLY nuclear weapons and EMP weapons to its arsenal. Technical assistance from Russia facilitated its efforts.

China’s work on these weapons alarmed Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. But it also attracted them to the potential utility of such “usable” weapons for “defensive” purposes, particularly in countering rivals with superior conventional forces. However, they encountered constraints, primarily for domestic political reasons. Nor did any of them want to jeopardize their security relationship with the United States by fielding an independent nuclear capability, thereby risking the loss of America’s nuclear umbrella. Finally, there was the problem of their relatively small geographic size and thus relatively limited ability to absorb damage. Were they to pursue a nuclear option, the consensus in the strategic studies community was that Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo should adopt a minimum deterrent arsenal. They could employ a secure stock of high-yield, city-busting weapons to deter China rather than fight a low-level nuclear war in which Beijing enjoyed an escalation advantage as well as a superior ability to absorb damage. When informed of this view, one Japanese strategic studies expert with close ties to his government’s defense policymakers pointed out that this represented a “false choice.” Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, he said, had the resources to pursue both paths. Moreover, he emphasized, given these countries’ declining and aging populations,¹⁴⁶ it would be less stressful economically and socially to pursue the VLY nuclear option than to attempt a major conventional forces buildup.

The Road to War

Late 2039 finds China’s CMC increasingly contemplating military action to end Taiwan’s independence. Four principal factors are driving the CCP leadership along the road to war: demographics, fears of an unfavorable shift in the Western Pacific military balance, a reinvigorated United States, and strident Chinese nationalism.

Demographic Drag

China’s demographic profile continued to worsen in the 2030s. Its elderly population grew at a far faster pace than its births, leaving progressively fewer Chinese of working age to support those who were no longer able to work.¹⁴⁷ Despite CCP efforts to institute pronatalist policies and incentives, the country’s total fertility replacement (TFR) rate declined to 0.8 during the 2030s.

Until the late 2020s, the Chinese preference for males over females compounded the problem.¹⁴⁹ Thanks to prenatal sex identification, parents aborted many female fetuses to ensure the only child in the family would be male. This led to a large surplus of young, unmarried adult Chinese males.¹⁴⁹ These men are typically on the fringes of society—both economically and intellectually. They are the family tree’s barren branches who will never bear fruit and the principal source of China’s growing crime problem. Even more important, the preference for males resulted in a significantly smaller cohort of young women than would exist had nature prevailed.

The CCP pursued several initiatives to address its demographic problems. One saw many single young men drafted into the PLA as a way of reducing crime. The result was that the military grew in size but not in effectiveness. Indeed, some Western analysts described the ground units that comprise a very high percentage of these draftees as “[Cannon] Fodder Formations.” The regime also sought ways to address its oversized elderly population, such as providing support for assisted suicide and rationing end-of-life medical care. Nevertheless, the demographic drag on China’s economy continued, reducing recent year-on-year growth rates to barely 1 percent.

The South China Sea

By the late 2030s, the military balance that had for so long been moving in China’s favor now appeared to be moving in reverse. This shift had two causes. The first was Beijing’s persistent ambiguous warfare campaign, which saw China’s PLA and Coast Guard harassing neighboring states’ vessels operating in international waters. By the mid-2030s, this was generating a strong backlash from Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. China’s unilateral economic development of the South China Sea seabed within Beijing’s self-proclaimed Nine-Dash Line only made matters worse.¹⁵⁰ To be sure, the Chinese did offer to share the profits from these ventures with the countries whose exclusive economic zones they were violating. The agreements Beijing proposed, however, were so one-sided in its favor that the neighboring countries rejected them, and many Asian political leaders described them as “unequal treaties.”

The United States

China’s behavior led many Western and South Pacific countries to take serious steps to enhance their military capabilities, with support—indeed, encouragement—from the United States. The 2036 US presidential election witnessed a new president, Thomas (“Tommy”) Nguyen, assuming office with a mandate to reverse the United States’ economic decline. His administration undertook a major—and painful but generally successful—restructuring of the country’s two major entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, following the exhaustion of the trust funds.¹⁵¹

Citing China’s increasingly aggressive behavior, President Nguyen won congressional approval for significantly increasing defense spending to support his strategy of focusing the bulk of US military power in the Western Pacific. When his party maintained control over both houses of Congress in the 2038 elections, Nguyen was able to secure additional, albeit modest, increases to America’s defense budget.

The military buildup by the United States (at least in the Western Pacific), its key allies, and Taiwan led CMC analyses to conclude that the military balance, which for decades had been shifting in China’s favor, was now being reversed. General Wong Zhu summed up the committee’s assessment when he declared, “Time is no longer our key ally; rather, it has become a formidable enemy.”

Chinese Nationalism

The CCP’s legitimacy rests on two principal pillars: economic growth and nationalism. The party cannot claim the legitimacy that free and open elections confer, nor can it promise to provide a “worker’s paradise,” a communist goal it had long abandoned. After it gave up on the communist economic model in the 1990s, China’s remarkable three decades of rapid economic growth earned the party the gratitude of the hundreds of millions of Chinese who were lifted out of poverty, and the millions more who became members of a prosperous middle class.

The end of China’s “economic miracle” has left hundreds of millions of Chinese losing hope they will ever join the middle class. Those in the middle class, many of whom have no memory of life before the country’s boom times, feel less gratitude toward the regime.

The one pillar of legitimacy the CCP has promoted successfully and relentlessly—in the country’s schools, in television and movies, through social media, and by ruthless censorship—is nationalism. It has persistently indoctrinated the Chinese people with the fiction of its “leading” role in defeating Japan in World War II. More fact than fiction, however, is its claim to have ended China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of Western powers. The party continuously reminds its subjects of its success in restoring the country’s position as a great nation on the path to becoming the world’s leading power—former President Xi Jinping’s China Dream. At the same time, the CCP warns the Chinese people that the party is the shield that prevents hostile foreign forces from reversing China’s return to greatness.¹⁵²

The Chinese people are also aware of President Xi’s declarations in 2013 and 2019 that China cannot pass the Taiwan issue down from generation to generation. Yet several generations have passed since he first spoke those words, and the issue remains outstanding.¹⁵³ They note that two other dates that were cited as possible timelines for annexing Taiwan—2027 and 2035—have come and gone. That leaves only 2049, the centennial of the CCP’s establishing the People’s Republic of China, as a target date.¹⁵⁴

Asia’s Berlin

For as long as most Chinese could remember, resolving the Taiwan issue has remained the CCP leadership’s top foreign policy priority. China’s military operations frequently find the PLA engaged in blockade exercises around the island nation, complete with provocative violations of its airspace and coastal waters. By the mid-2030s, Taipei’s continued resistance to the CCP’s coercive actions had become an inspiration to many countries, not only in the region but around the world.

Indeed, a quarter of a century earlier, Robert Kaplan had compared Taiwan to West Berlin in terms of its moral significance, even though tensions between China and the United States were still in their infancy:

Like the Cold War–era city, Taiwan represents both an outpost of freedom in comparison to mainland China, as well as a bellwether for the political and military situation throughout the Western Pacific. Were Taiwan’s de facto independence ever to be seriously compromised by China, American allies from Japan to Australia—including all the countries around the South China Sea—would quietly reassess their security postures, and might well accommodate themselves to Chinese ascendancy.¹⁵⁵

Crisis

On the night of April 28, 2039, a China Coast Guard vessel rams and sinks what it believed to be a large Taiwanese fishing trawler operating in the South China Sea, well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone. The vessel, however, was in fact a small tourist ship transiting along Japan’s Ryukyu Island chain from Okinawa to Taipei. The ship carried 214 passengers, 33 of whom were children. Most were Taiwanese. There were, however, also over 40 Japanese citizens on board, including 8 children. All perish.

Condemnation of China’s actions is nearly universal. Beijing compounds the tragedy by refusing to express any remorse for the sinking, instead blaming the ship for (allegedly) not displaying the proper running lights. The difference between the Chinese Communist regime and that of Taiwan’s democracy is highlighted by the latter’s search-and-rescue efforts, which last for nearly a week, and the absence of any such efforts by Beijing.

Tensions increase further when US Senator Don Kerr, whom many believe will seek his party’s presidential nomination in 2040, visits Taiwan in May to show “solidarity with the people of Taiwan.” In an address on May 12 to a crowd of over 50,000 during a memorial service for the victims at Taiwan’s National Stadium (Kaohsiung), the senator refers to the similarities between West Berlin during the Cold War and Taiwan’s symbol of resistance in current times. Borrowing (some would say cribbing) from President John Kennedy’s stirring speech in West Berlin in June 1963, Kerr rouses his audience to a fever pitch:

There is no country that has been besieged for over half a century—except Taiwan. And there are no people who, while withstanding the coarse winds coming out of Communist China, defiantly live with the vitality, the force, the hope, and the determination of the Taiwanese.

Many people in the world really don’t understand, or say they don’t, the great issue between the world’s democracies and Communist China. Let them come to Taiwan!¹⁵⁶

As a free American, I believe it is more than a strategic imperative—it is a moral imperative—that the United States and other democracies, not only here in the Western Pacific but around the world, support the Taiwanese people in their heroic struggle to remain free from one of the most odious regimes the world has ever seen.

Beijing harshly condemns Kerr’s speech, but Taiwan and most states in the Indo-Pacific region embrace it, especially those bordering the South China Sea. The Nguyen administration mutes its reaction, as the president does not want to worsen the United States’ already tense relations with Beijing. The president also seeks to leverage the strong support that most Americans show for Kerr’s remarks to advance his policy of augmenting US defenses in the Western Pacific.

A Closing Window?

On May 17, shortly after Senator Kerr’s Taipei speech, China’s CMC meets to discuss Taiwan and consider what action to take, if any, following the recent negative developments and the ongoing shift in the region’s balance of power away from China. In addition to the CMC’s four members, Foreign Minister Li Song is in attendance. General Zuo Yangming, the minister of national defense, tables the issue of whether China should seek to resolve the Taiwan problem “once and for all” (by force). To those present, he is clearly speaking for President Liu Xian, who is using him to gauge the reaction of CMC members.

The CMC minutes of the session find General Zuo summarizing the situation thusly:

The current winds, which for so long were at our back, have shifted and are increasingly against us. We can no longer count on shi.¹⁵⁷

Geopolitical trends find the Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese taking a harder line against our efforts to secure our core interests in Taiwan and the South China Sea. Even the Filipinos, with US backing, have stiffened their spines. The Australians, as always, stand with their American “cousins.” While Indonesia and Vietnam have maintained a posture of neutrality, they clearly see how the geopolitical winds are shifting.

And ignoring India would be a mistake. Its military advantage over Pakistan continues to widen, including in nuclear forces. The Indians cannot provide much military power near Taiwan, but they can tie down significant numbers of our forces if they mobilize and position their forces along our common border.

Russia remains our friend, but ours is, to be honest, no longer a friendship without limits as Moscow looks to improve relations with the Europeans and even the Americans. [President] Kirilenski, as he has said privately, wants to “expand his options.” Our intelligence indicates that Moscow will not oppose military action [by us] against Taiwan. Nor will the Russians take direct action to assist us, such as mobilizing against NATO to divert American political and military attention away from the Pacific. Put simply, our intelligence services see no immediate prospect that our “friends” in Moscow will do anything more than sit on their hands.

One unnamed CMC member sarcastically interjects, “They will get off their hands to applaud when we have taken Taiwan. Then they will hold their hands out to ask for more loans.” The other CMC members laugh, and General Zou continues:

These geopolitical shifts have military implications. The US allies have vowed to increase, albeit modestly, their military budgets. The Americans support them in various ways, particularly with arms sales. And the Americans are reducing their military footprint in Europe, shifting most of those forces to locations within the three island chains. In this their allies along the First Island Chain aid them, and, of course, so do the Australians. They are greatly expanding American access to bases in their countries and, in most cases, significantly increasing their so-called host nation support funding.

Given our lagging economic growth and the growing needs of our aging population, even we in the military understand that, despite the need, major increases in our budgets are simply not possible. We must make do with what we have, and perhaps with a little less in the coming years. Put simply, the military balance is unlikely to improve in our favor over the foreseeable future.

Thus, the time to resolve the Taiwan issue will never be more favorable—at least not between now and our centennial—than it is at the present.

In the discussion that follows, CMC members agree that if China is going to act, now is the time to do so. But should China risk starting the first war among great powers in nearly a century? President Liu asks General Zuo to assess the chances of success, and the minister of national defense responds:

Our best course of action is to wage a short, sharp war—to apply all the force necessary to secure a rapid victory.¹⁵⁸

There are those who say we can win a long war against the Americans—and yes, it is the Americans we must defeat. But the Americans are too unpredictable. They may not have the stomach for a long war, but that is what the Japanese thought in the Pacific War a century ago. The Japanese thought the Americans would negotiate when faced with a long, difficult struggle, but the Americans destroyed them. And remember: The longer the war goes on, the more countries are likely to come to Taiwan’s defense.

This is why I do not favor a blockade of Taiwan. Yes, it may work, but there are too many risks, too many uncertainties. One thing I am certain of, however: as we attempt to slowly squeeze the Taiwanese, the Americans and their allies will be moving forces into the region, shifting the balance in their favor. We also risk allowing them to strike first, when time and the [military] balance favor them the most.

Furthermore, the longer the war goes on, the more our people may come to see it as a failure of our armed forces, and of the party. And we cannot ignore what a US-led distant maritime blockade will do to our trade. Yes, we have stockpiled food, oil, and strategic minerals to deal with the possibility of a long war. But our export trade, so critical to our economy’s well-being, will greatly diminish. This could further stress our economy, which is currently experiencing difficulties.

Several members press the general regarding the PLA’s ability to secure Taiwan quickly—within a month and ideally a fortnight. The CMC minutes show General Zuo responding as follows:

The military balance as I speak is favorable to us. The key to a quick victory is exploiting our assassin’s mace (shashoujian) capabilities. As you recall, the term comes from our folklore, in which a weak hero employs a concealed weapon to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. Today our assassin’s mace capabilities are those in which we enjoy an asymmetric advantage over the Americans, which enable us to exploit a critical vulnerability of theirs.

I should note up front that we plan to avoid—I repeat, avoid—operations in space, at least initially. We need space assets for our own military and economic purposes. Destroying satellites also risks alienating neutral powers who rely on these systems. This does not rule out our jamming satellites or using directed energy systems to affect a mission kill against them, such as dazzling their sensors to avoid creating space debris.

We are going to use our assassin’s mace to strike at their so-called reconnaissance-strike capabilities: their terrestrial battle networks and precision-guided munitions platforms in particular.

Our assassin’s mace capabilities, those that we will rely on most to support our invasion of Taiwan, are as follows: First, our strategic cyber weapons. We believe we can employ cyber strikes to disrupt much of Taiwan’s critical infrastructure, especially the electrical grid, for at least a few weeks and possibly longer. We are also confident that we can disrupt much of their military command-and-control systems and effectively jam them. We will also conduct cyberattacks against the command-and-control and logistics networks of the US and its allies in the theater of operations and, in the US military’s case, beyond. Defeating US systems will be more challenging than defeating those of Taiwan, but we are confident that we can impose major disruptions. For how long, however, I cannot say.

Second, our fifth column. Our intelligence agencies have recruited a substantial number of Taiwanese who desire to be reunited with their homeland and are willing to take specific actions in support of our operations when we give the order. Most of these involve acts of sabotage or misinformation. Some involve neutralizing key individuals in Taiwan’s government, military, and industry. We have also managed to infiltrate into the province [that is to say, Taiwan] a number of PLA special forces sleeper cells that we will activate at the onset of operations. Their primary focus will be to secure key landing fields for our air assault forces and to act as guides for our forces coming in over the shore.

Third, mines. We have stockpiled tens of thousands of antiship mines—including smart mines, standard mines, and underwater drones—on most of the islands we have occupied in the South China Sea. They are also on our commercial ships and boats engaged in energy and economic exploration and extraction in the waters surrounding Taiwan. We will deploy these mines—many by our commercial fishing fleet but also by the PLAAF and Coast Guard—to create a thick barrier around Taiwan that, as they say, isolates the battlefield. The US Navy is not well equipped to deal with mines, especially when our air and undersea forces will contest any efforts to clear them.

Fourth, nuclear weapons. Yes, nuclear weapons. Before you interrupt with questions, hear me out. The Americans and their allies have, in recent years, reduced the anticipated shortfall in their munition stocks. This is particularly true with respect to PGMs. The US military has greatly expanded its stocks of munitions—again, especially PGMs—along the First Island Chain, particularly in Japan and the Philippines. The same is true of the Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese. They have followed the Americans’ example.

The Americans have positioned the vast majority of these munitions in hardened deep-underground bunkers. We could attempt to destroy the bunkers with our bunker-buster bombs, like what the Americans did to Iran’s nuclear program sites back in 2025. But even these weapons lack the punch to break through the facilities’ protective layers. The Americans have concluded, correctly, that we would have to drop dozens of weapons more powerful than their Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs,¹⁵⁹ one atop another, to defeat these shelters. Even then, we could not be confident of success.

Like the Americans and Russians, we have nuclear weapons capable of defeating these hardened facilities. These weapons have very low yields, roughly a kiloton or slightly greater—but the yield is over 15 times greater than that of the MOP.

Our plan is to employ fewer than 40 very-low-yield weapons to destroy these munition bunkers and to neutralize the six major air bases that host the vast majority of US strike aircraft in Japan and the Philippines along the First Island Chain. Fortunately, these bunkers and bases are not near heavily populated areas. Casualties will be minimal. There will be no burning, irradiated cities to fuel the anger of our enemies, just some sizeable but not cavernous holes in the ground. Once we have destroyed the bulk of their munitions and greatly degraded their main air bases, the US and its allies will not be able to sustain high-level operations for more than two weeks, three at the most.

These are the only attacks we will execute initially against Japan and the Philippines, aside from a demonstration of our cyber capabilities to cause problems with their critical infrastructure. Simultaneously with these attacks, our government will make presentations to Manila and Tokyo that as long as they remain neutral in the conflict, including by not permitting the Americans to use their territory, we will not consider them belligerents.

Along with our discrete use of very-low-yield nuclear weapons, we will employ a small number—less than 10—nuclear-generated EMP weapons. We will use most of them over Taiwan following our cyber strikes. We anticipate these EMP attacks will disrupt key portions of the island’s electrical systems that our cyberattacks fail to shut down. And, yes, we are taking care to avoid, to the maximum extent possible, key TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] facilities. Our goal is to secure as much of Taiwan as possible in good working order. By using cyber strikes to shut down as much of the electrical grid as possible, we hopefully preclude damaging most of the island’s electronics with the EMP strike. Again, I cannot give assurances that we will achieve these results. I am, however, confident that we will succeed in disrupting much of Taiwan’s critical infrastructure for at least two weeks.

If successful, our efforts here will serve as a strong deterrent. Those states, including the US, will likely reconsider attempting to use force to impede our objectives, lest we subject their critical infrastructure to comparable degradation.

In summary, by exploiting the advantage of surprise, we will move at a time that is most advantageous to us and employ our shashoujian. Given the current favorable balance in conventional and nuclear capabilities that has emerged over the last 20 years, we are in an excellent position to win a short, sharp war. This is our window of opportunity. We must seize it before it closes.

One CMC member notes that even if General Zuo’s plan succeeds, it will not compel the Americans to accept defeat. They did not after the Pearl Harbor attack or after Japan’s great successes that followed. General Zuo responds:

Once we have taken Taiwan, we will offer a ceasefire and negotiations. We can assure all interested parties of our commitment to the one-country, two-systems framework for Taiwan. We would withdraw our military forces almost entirely and replace them with police forces.

The Americans have their own internal economic and social problems. Our intelligence sources—and, quite frankly, what many of us sitting at this table have seen of the United States over the years—lead us to believe they will be happy to walk out of this crisis through the open door we will provide them. The alternative is for them to attempt to refight the Pacific War against a far more powerful adversary than Japan was, and to do it under a cloud of potential escalation to widespread nuclear use. It would require the American people to “eat bitterness” on a scale that none of them has ever experienced.

President Liu questions General Zuo regarding the risks of escalating to a full-blown nuclear confrontation with the Americans. Foreign Minister Li, however, requests to respond. He says:

President Liu, members of the CMC, we do not plan to place our strategic nuclear forces—those that could target the United States—on high alert. We will inform them of this at the time of the attacks. We will inform them that we will not be the first to generate our nuclear forces, but we are prepared to do so promptly if they move first.

The Americans also know that if they go to DEFCON 3 or 2, the Russians will also go on high alert to match them. Washington will thus have to account for creating a situation in which two of its rivals, both equal to it in nuclear armament, are on a so-called hair-trigger alert. Why would they create such a problem for themselves?

The CMC deliberations extend into the early hours of May 18, when a final vote is taken. It is unanimous in favor of military action. To enhance the prospects of surprise, they set the date for the onset of Operation Red Storm as June 11 to allow for a gradual mobilization of PLA forces. The cover for Red Storm will be that it is simply another military exercise following a provocative American act—in this case, Senator Kerr’s speech in Taipei—to show Beijing’s disapproval.

10. Breakout: A World of Large Numbers

The events of this chapter follow the baseline events described in chapter 4.

The CMC Meets

In November 2036 the CMC calls a meeting, which General Secretary Li Cheng, head of the CCP, chairs. The sole item on the agenda is China’s nuclear arsenal. Specifically, the question is whether China should expand its arsenal, either by going beyond the SNF limits of the STRATFORE Treaty, or by developing TNF. To use a term that became popular during the Cold War and again in the 2020s, the CMC members gather to discuss the merits of a nuclear forces breakout.

The background materials for the meeting include a brief history of nuclear breakout, which is worth mentioning here, especially since the term’s usage varies. During the Cold War, when the Soviet Union began deploying its SS-20 IRBM nuclear-tipped TNF systems, the US discovered that the SS-20 was in fact a two-stage version of the three-stage SNF SS-16 ICBM then under development. There were fears in the United States that once the Soviets perfected the SS-16, they could stockpile its third stage. This would give them the ability to rapidly convert the SS-20s into ICBMs, substantially boosting their strategic forces in a short time. Consequently, a major US objective during the SALT II negotiations was to reduce the danger of an SS-16 breakout. The US called for a ban on rapidly reloadable ICBM launchers and a prohibition against storing excess missiles.¹⁶⁰

More recently, in the 2020s, breakout became associated with fears regarding Iran, which had a well-developed research and development nuclear weapons program. The US feared that by creating a turnkey nuclear weapons production capability, Iran could move quickly to become a nuclear power with a modest but steadily expanding nuclear arsenal.¹⁶¹

The CMC more closely identifies breakout with its Cold War–era use, in which an active, major nuclear military power rapidly shifts the balance significantly in its favor.

The Treaty

STRATFORE provided the basis for a world of low numbers with respect to nuclear weapons—at least in comparison to US and Soviet Cold War–era arsenals. STRATFORE and its New START predecessor placed caps on deployed SNF weapons, the former to 1,200, the latter to 1,550.¹⁶²Both treaties also limited strategic nuclear delivery vehicles—ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers.¹⁶³

Despite agreeing to STRATFORE’s terms, each of the tripolar powers had somewhat different motivations for doing so.

In Washington’s case, there were concerns over whether China’s ongoing nuclear buildup would trigger an arms race. By limiting deployed SNF weapons to 1,200, the Americans hoped they had successfully addressed the problem. Indeed, they were delighted that STRATFORE actually reduced SNF arms by over 20 percent relative to New START. Based on life cycle costs, nuclear forces absorb a small fraction of the US defense budget over time. Washington, however, had procrastinated on modernizing its triad of weapons delivery systems until it became necessary to recapitalize the entire force at once. By the 2030s, the United States was well over a decade into the effort, which, owing to the combination of weapons programs, came with a pretty hefty up-front price tag. Thus the treaty had the added benefit of reducing stress, even if only very modestly, on the defense budget and, indirectly, the resources available to meet pressing domestic problems. Arms control groups and their supporters also greeted STRATFORE warmly.

Moscow embraced the treaty for reasons somewhat similar to Washington’s. If anything, Russia needed STRATFORE far more than the Americans, as it was attempting to recover from the debilitating economic and human effects of its six-year war with Ukraine. With the sizes of nuclear forces set at relatively lower levels than during the Cold War, STRATFORE gave Russia the means to retain its great nuclear power status, although its economy was much smaller compared to the other tripolar powers. As Dmitry Ponomareff, the Russian defense minister, remarked at the treaty-signing ceremony, “We cannot afford a first-class nuclear arms race with our third-class economy.”

Beijing’s motives for signing the treaty were both the most varied and arguably the most calculated from a strategic point of view. At the time of the treaty’s signing, both the US and Russia had excess weapons and large stocks of fissile material to draw upon if they decided to expand their nuclear arsenals to maintain a healthy lead over China at least through the 2030s. From China’s viewpoint, the treaty locked US and Russian SNF in at low levels—1,200 deployed strategic nuclear weapons each. This enabled China, which had just achieved 1,200 deployed SNF, to obtain assured parity with its tripolar rivals much earlier than it anticipated. The STRATFORE agreement also gave China the right to hold 800 weapons in reserve while limiting Russia and the United States to the same levels. This was important as under New START both the Americans and the Russians each had over 3,000 additional weapons in their arsenals, including reserve and retired warheads.¹⁶⁴ Thanks to an expanding nuclear weapons industrial base, to include fissile material production capacity, in May 2035 the Chinese established an inventory of 800 reserve nuclear weapons, as the treaty permitted. This greatly surprised both US and Russian intelligence agencies, which had assessed that the PRC would not fill its reserve until 2038 at the earliest.

By 2037 China’s production of plutonium and weapons-grade (or highly enriched) uranium-235 has given it the ability to produce 400–500 weapons a year and the option to expand its arsenal to much higher levels.

India: Beijing’s Problem—or Opportunity?

One great Asian power, India, was not a part of the STRATFORE negotiations; nor, obviously, was it a party to the treaty. That being said, alarm over China’s large-scale nuclear arms buildup triggers a response from New Delhi, as India undertakes a substantial expansion of its nuclear arsenal. Chinese and Pakistani intelligence estimates reveal that, when it is complete in late 2036 or early 2037, India’s nuclear arsenal will comprise 600–700 weapons, or about half the deployed SNF levels that STRATFORE permits (or one-third, if it includes the 800 reserve weapons). The question several top Chinese strategists have posed, and one that stimulated the CMC’s decision to meet, is whether India’s nuclear force expansion is a problem for China, or an opportunity.

The CMC Discussions

On November 18, 2036, at 9:10 a.m. Beijing time, General Secretary Li Cheng calls the CMC into session:

The sole item on the agenda concerns whether China should break out of the STRATFORE agreement by effecting a large and rapid expansion of our nuclear arsenal. As will become clear, we now have the means to do so. The question before the commission is whether we should proceed and, if we do, how we might accomplish this goal to our maximum political advantage.

You will recall the options under consideration at previous CMC sessions on this issue since the signing of the STRATFORE agreement:

Option A: No force expansion
Option B: Expand the strategic nuclear force
Option C: Create a major theater nuclear force
Option D: Combine Options B and C

Let me make clear before we proceed further that any action on our part to increase the size of our nuclear forces will not—I repeat, will not—shift the nuclear balance in such a way as to provide us with the means to prevail in a nuclear war with the United States, Russia, or India. The notion of risking a general nuclear exchange with any of these countries is foolish in the extreme.

I know what some of you are thinking: If the balance of nuclear forces does not matter, if a major nuclear war is unthinkable, then why pursue a numerical advantage? As Huang Zhou will clarify, our nuclear forces have more purposes than to deter an all-out nuclear attack on our homeland. I have raised the question on several occasions before this commission: If the nuclear balance does not matter, why did General Secretary Khrushchev attempt to equalize the nuclear balance with the United States by covertly deploying short-range nuclear missiles into Cuba? His reasoning is clear: Nuclear weapons serve multiple purposes.

With that, I turn the floor over to Huang Zhou of the party’s National Security Commission. He will elaborate on the principal objectives we set for our nuclear forces.

Huang Zhou stands and begins his presentation:

Thank you, Chairman Li, commission members. In addition to deterring a nuclear exchange between us and a rival nuclear power, our nuclear forces are intended to serve the following security objectives.

First, to maintain, at a minimum, SNF parity with the United States.

Second, to maintain overall nuclear parity with Russia in strategic and theater nuclear forces.

Third, to offset India’s nuclear expansion without, in fact or in the other tripolar powers’ perception, diverting some of our SNF to address this new threat.

Fourth, to expand our freedom of action in the Western Pacific in particular and the Asia-Pacific in general.

Fifth, to deter Japan, South Korea, and the province of Taiwan from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Sixth, in the event of war, to provide us with escalation control by discouraging a nuclear rival from waging strategic warfare against us through NNSS or cyber means, or through selective use of nuclear weapons.

Chairman Li speaks up again:

I want to remind the commission members that these objectives are the same as those the CMC established after the signing of the STRATFORE agreement and after it became clear that India intended to expand its arsenal significantly.

The PLA Joint Staff Department, with the PLARF’s assistance, has assessed the four options. Under the guidance of several CMC members, they have prepared a plan of action for the commission’s approval.

Permit me to introduce General Xu Jianfeng, whom most of you know by reputation, if not personally. He will present the plan and the logic behind it. Our principal objective today is to consider this plan and to either reject it or approve it, which may include the option of approving it in a modified form. General Xu?

General Xu starts:

Thank you, Chairman Li.

CMC members, permit me to summarize the plan, code-named QUANTUM LEAP, before presenting details. It calls for pursuing Option C, fielding a large TNF force, which we view as a soft breakout, as a prelude to providing us with the means to then exercise Option B, should we choose to do so, thereby expanding our strategic nuclear forces, which we describe as a hard breakout. As I will explain, we have rejected Option D (simultaneously expanding our SNF and rapidly creating a TNF capability) as politically unsound and presently beyond our means. The option of maintaining our nuclear arsenal at STRATFORE levels through the mid-2040s (Option A) has little to recommend it, as it fails to advance us toward our security objectives.

Phase 1: Theater Nuclear Forces

After setting up the framework, the general further describes QUANTUM LEAP:

Our TNF are at present negligible. We have allocated our nuclear weapons production almost entirely to the SNF, which have now reached their limit under STRATFORE. Thus we now have the ability—and I would argue the need—to create a robust theater nuclear force capability. Doing so will help us meet several of the key strategic objectives that Huang Zu identified.

First, expanding our TNF will enable us to offset India’s nuclear force expansion. As Chairman Li has remarked repeatedly in these sessions, we did not sacrifice to gain nuclear parity with the Americans only to have the Indians bleed it away. Simply stated, we have no parity with the United States if we have to dedicate a significant portion of our SNF to the threat that India’s weapons pose.

As you well know, nothing in STRATFORE precludes us from creating theater nuclear forces. The key issue here is whether to use any of the 800 reserve warheads we have under STRATFORE to arm our theater missiles. We will argue that, as the PLA has not loaded these theater weapons onto strategic delivery systems, we are not violating the treaty. We will, of course, offer to negotiate the issue in the INF II talks, but will continue our soft breakout while doing so. The Americans are ill-postured to engage in a TNF race with us, as will become clear momentarily.

Moreover, the time is right. We have the fissile material stocks. We have over 250 IRBMs and MRBMs that we can fit with nuclear warheads, in some cases multiple warheads. The production lines for both our IRBM and MRBM missiles are warm. A mix of 400 of these dual-use-capable missiles, including some armed with conventional warheads, will more than offset New Delhi’s expansion. I am, of course, taking into account India’s need to address the nuclear threat of Pakistan. An additional benefit is that, aside from countering India’s nuclear force expansion, creating a theater nuclear force along these lines will also improve our relationship with Islamabad.

I can see I am about to be interrupted. Let me save you the trouble. Yes, QUANTUM LEAP will almost certainly trigger objections from the Americans.

Our response, which I have already prepared under the personal guidance of Chairman Li, will be as follows: The United States faces no rivals capable of inflicting a major nuclear attack on its soil, other than Russia and us. It has no “India” it must account for. It will wait forever before Mexico has its nuclear arsenal. SPACE

The other CMC members laugh, and then General Xu continues:

On the other hand, we Chinese (and the Russians as well) must account for the threats that other nuclear powers pose, beyond our tripolar rivals. Our problem is India. The Russians argue they have the British and French arsenals with which to contend, along with American nuclear-capable tactical aircraft, which are either based in NATO Europe or available to deploy there on short notice.

Our position will be that we are ready to negotiate a new INF Treaty—INF II, or TNF I, if you like—that would ban TNF. But we cannot accomplish this without considering the threats that third parties pose to us and Russia. As Foreign Minister Sheng Wantao has declared, “This is one area where ‘American exceptionalism’ is not acceptable.” Our intent is to use arms negotiations as a smokescreen—hence a soft breakout—encouraging American arms control advocates, their fiscal hawks, and groups favoring domestic spending and preservation of entitlement programs to adopt a wait-and-see approach. This strategy is far less provocative to the Americans, and to our Russian neighbors, than the hard breakout of expanding our strategic nuclear forces.

We are confident that the Russians, who have moved to develop TNF, will support us. That said, we need a hedge against Russia’s theater nuclear forces. Moscow says it needs these weapons to offset British and French nuclear forces, but we believe they are directed principally against us. In point of fact, we do not see Britain or France employing nuclear weapons save to retaliate against a countervalue nuclear attack on their country. Note, then, that we plan to size our theater nuclear forces to account for Russia’s TNF and the growth in India’s arsenal. We will maintain parity with Russia at all levels. Our current estimate is that this will require 750–900 TNF weapons.

A major risk we face here—and potentially a huge opportunity—concerns America’s allies.

Chairman Li interjects:

Permit me to interrupt your presentation, General. Our sense is that the TNF buildup we propose will also significantly expand our freedom of action in crises and conflicts beneath the nuclear threshold. During the Cold War, the Russians tried to do this with their TNF. You are all familiar with their SS-20 missile gambit. They designed it to delink the US nuclear umbrella from its European allies by creating an imbalance in those forces. Unfortunately for the Russians, the Americans had the means, the motive, and the willingness to apply pressure on their allies to approve the US counter to the Russian gambit. This response called for placing US TNF ballistic and cruise missiles in Europe. This, of course, threatened to shift the overall balance against Moscow. The SS-20s could not hit the United States, but America’s systems could hit many strategic targets in Russia—and with far less warning than an attack from the continental United States. The balance had shifted against the Russians!

So it appears to me the main risk we are taking with the TNF phase of QUANTUM LEAP is that the United States will position TNF forces with its allies in the Western Pacific along the First Island Chain: Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. Then, as during the Cold War, we will no longer have parity with the Americans. It will diminish our freedom of action. Like the Russians, we will see the strategic nuclear forces balance shift back in the Americans’ favor. General Xu? The general responds:

Let us return to our options and look at them solely from the objective of increasing our freedom of action within the first two island chains.

Option A: No force expansion. This gives us parity with the US in nuclear forces under STRATFORE. It is an improvement over the situation 10 years ago. As regards the nuclear balance, we accrue no greater advantage. With India’s expansion and Russia’s move to develop TNF, the threat to us based on the current situation actually increases.

Option B: Expand the strategic nuclear forces. The Americans are all but guaranteed to respond if we attempt to increase our SNF substantially and rapidly. This may, however, be an attractive downstream option. I’ll discuss this presently. <

Option C: Expand both our SNF and TNF arsenals simultaneously. As noted earlier, this option has little if anything to recommend it.

Option D: Field a major theater nuclear force. Again, this is on the table as Phase 1 of QUANTUM LEAP. If the Americans fail to respond in kind, we would greatly enhance our freedom of action out to the Second Island Chain. We would enjoy not only an advantage in the conventional balance of forces but also a numerical advantage in the nuclear weapons we have that can target areas in the Western Pacific. [emphasis in the original]

Given these factors, our goals of reincorporating Taiwan and undermining Washington’s alliances with Korea and the Philippines become far more likely than is the case today. With a virtual monopoly on TNF—the Americans would likely have some cruise missiles on ships and their attack submarines, and on their fighter aircraft at major air bases—we would greatly undermine the credibility of US extended deterrence. This will provide us with a much-enhanced freedom to leverage our advantage in conventional forces to coerce our enemies in the region to accede to our core interests—especially regarding Taiwan and within the Nine-Dash Line. Or it would give us leverage to seize by force what is ours, without having to fear that the Americans will escalate matters to the level of nuclear use. Look back at what the Americans had with respect to Cuba over 70 years ago—an opportunity to use their advantage in conventional forces in the Caribbean Sea. The US could do this because the Russians lacked a nuclear trump card, as the Americans once enjoyed over us. TNF would provide us with the same kind of advantage in Taiwan and along the chain.

Would the US seek to counter our TNF gambit, as it did against Russia back in the 1980s? It’s possible. But this time the conditions are very different—and the changes are almost entirely in our favor. For one, there is no NATO alliance through which the United States can coordinate a response. Its alliance structure is hub-and-spoke, as they say. Washington will have to engage each of its allies separately. And who will be the first to host American TNFs? And if one were to host, why would others follow?

Moreover, would the US even try? It is in a far weaker economic situation than it was in the 1980s. In that time it had the so-called Reagan economic boom, strong popular support for a defense buildup, and a comparable rival, the USSR, in rapid economic decline. None of that exists today. And even if things went well with its Western Pacific allies, the United States would face other significant barriers. One is cost, given the lagging modernization of its conventional forces and the need to complete the deployment of its Sentinel ICBMs and Columbia-class SSBNs, both of which remain behind schedule. I can’t imagine how long it would take them to field TNF missile systems. Five years? Ten? Fifteen?! And their allies, of course, could not afford to wait years for the Americans to sort things out. The other factor, of course, is the growing gap between the government’s debt and the demand for social services, especially among its growing retirement cohort, which continues to grow relative to the working age population.

The chairman interjects for a second time:

Excuse my interruption again, General.

I think it is important here to remind the commission of something that few outside this room have been privy to. Thanks to our work over the past two decades with our Venezuelan friends, and Washington’s long-term hostility toward their socialist government, we are confident that Caracas would agree to host our TNF systems—in return for a substantial boost in economic assistance, of course. And security guarantees. The same is true with respect to Cuba.

One issue we must consider is whether to let the Americans know of this. It may prove a powerful deterrent to their willingness to deploy TNF on our doorstep. General?

Phase 2: Strategic Nuclear Forces

General Xu answers:

Thank you, Chairman Li.

There is also the matter of Phase 2 of QUANTUM LEAP. This centers on greatly expanding our overall nuclear arsenal—moving, if you will, from a world of low numbers of nuclear weapons to a Cold War era–like world of high numbers. We could initiate this expansion beginning in 2038 or 2039, once our soft breakout is complete. [emphasis in the original]

As many of you may recall from previous CMC sessions over the past three years, there is general agreement among our members about the benefits of pursuing a second nuclear force breakout. A hard breakout.

A combined SNF and TNF buildup to a level 10 times greater than we would have at the end of QUANTUM LEAP’s first phase—2,000 SNF weapons (1,200 deployed and 800 in reserve) and roughly 750 TNF weapons—would give us over 27,000 weapons. We might not need to build to that level, but we are confident that we could reach it, or come very close to it, by 2045. [emphasis in the original]

What does this mean? It means that if either the Americans or (far more likely) the Russians refuse to match us, we will return to a far more stable bipolar great nuclear power system.¹⁶⁵ Or, if both our rivals abstained, perhaps we could even achieve a two-power standard, as the British had during their Pax Britannica.¹⁶⁶

Think about it. With its shrunken economy, Russia would find it extremely difficult to re-create an arsenal similar to the one it had in the late Cold War. This would help us in two ways. First, we would have far less need to hedge against the possibility that Moscow becomes hostile toward us. Second, if the United States were to expand its arsenal to match ours at a much higher level, Russia would be far more likely to cooperate with us than is currently the case. Again, that assumes Moscow’s foreign policy remains generally friendly toward us.

This would create a bipolar system, again, assuming the United States moved to match us. We might be able to agree on a new STRATFORE Treaty at 8,000–9,000 weapons on strategic delivery systems. What we want is an arsenal that makes us one of two powers in the bipolar system. It would also create a very high barrier to entry for other nuclear powers—specifically India—to become a new tripolar power. It is one thing to build a nuclear arsenal of 1,200 or even 2,000 weapons, but it is quite another to establish one 10 times greater.

Indeed, a Cold War–sized arsenal would allow us, for force sizing purposes, to dramatically discount the arsenals of minor powers—as the Americans and Russians once did. Think of how the Americans viewed us during the Cold War. That is what we are striving for when it comes to India and others.

Chairman Li brings the meeting to a conclusion:

Thank you, General.

Time to put QUANTUM LEAP to a vote. May I have a show of hands from those in favor of proceeding with Phase 1 of QUANTUM LEAP?

Gentlemen, the commission has ruled unanimously in favor of the resolution. I see no need for further discussion. The staff will prepare the necessary directives, as called for in QUANTUM LEAP, to proceed with Phase 1.

Thank you for your participation. This session of the commission is hereby adjourned.

11. Lighting the Path Ahead

The Value of Scenario-Based Planning

Well-designed scenarios provide senior policymakers with a plausible path to a significantly different world—and competitive environment—than the one they confront today. These different worlds can present novel challenges and opportunities. Key geopolitical, military-technical, and economic trends or drivers inform the scenarios presented here.

It is important to recall also what scenarios are not, lest policymakers attempt to derive more value from them than they can provide. The purpose of scenarios is not to provide a highly accurate forecast of the future. The paths into the future presented in the five scenarios that comprise this study are not predictions. Far too many variables are at work, and they will determine what the world will look like in a decade or so. The course of events will almost certainly find us traveling a somewhat different route than the ones in these pages. Nevertheless, the kinds of challenges identified in these scenarios are more likely to arise than those distilled from an assumption that tomorrow will simply be a linear extension of the world we know today.

Second, scenarios are diagnostic, not prescriptive. They do not provide policymakers with specific policy recommendations to prepare for the alternate futures they present. Thus scenario-based planning’s value is in its ability to identify different—but very plausible—competitive environments from those that exist today. Viewed in this light, well-crafted scenarios can be invaluable. To employ a medical analogy, getting the diagnosis correct is a fundamental prerequisite to identifying the prescription that will address the threat to the nation’s well-being.

Armed with insights from the scenarios presented in this study, policymakers will hopefully be able to make better decisions to prepare for an uncertain future. As Andrew Marshall pointed out, scenarios give defense policymakers “something to think about”—challenges and opportunities they may encounter that differ from those that dominate their thinking today. In brief, proper scenario-based planning enables US policymakers to do the following:

Gain awareness of key factors that could dramatically alter the competitive environment
Detect when these drivers are moving the world off its current path and toward major changes, thereby enabling them to adapt their policies and plans accordingly
Make better decisions to preserve vital US security interests regardless of which future emerges over time

Five Scenarios

The five scenarios presented in this study were informed in part by known knowns—trends that are well underway, that are likely to exert a major influence on the competitive environment, and that appear very likely to persist over the planning horizon. The two key trends, or core assumptions, in this study are the emergence of a tripolar system of major nuclear powers and the decline of US fiscal standing. To these assumptions one might add the assumption embedded in the bridge scenario of chapter 4 (“A World of Low Numbers: 2025–35”): It limits the tripolar nuclear powers—China, Russia, and the United States—over the next decade to nuclear arsenals at roughly the levels set in the New START agreement.

The five scenarios were also shaped by one or more drivers that have the potential to effect a major shift in the character of the competition:

Arms control
The blurring of the nuclear-conventional firebreak
Nuclear weapons use
Breakout
The expansion of theater nuclear forces
Nuclear force asymmetries
The Lesser Tripolar System (China–India–Pakistan)

Five scenarios emerged from this research and analytic effort:

The Missiles of April
The Fear of Being a Poor Second
Mobilization Race
Crossing the Firebreak
Breakout: A World of Large Numbers

Chapter 4 provides the bridge between the present day and these scenarios by covering the time from the present to the planning horizon of 2035–45. The scenarios stimulated a number of findings, or insights, as to how the character of the nuclear competition could change in significant and potentially disruptive ways over the next 10–20 years. This planning horizon represents the time frame in which decisions made today by senior US national security policymakers with respect to the country’s nuclear force posture are likely to have their greatest effect. A summary of these findings and insights follows.

Selected Findings and Insights

A World of Low Numbers

The finding that New START limitations will likely endure until the mid-2030s was distilled in the course of crafting the bridge scenario. It finds that the United States and Russia have little incentive to expand their nuclear arsenals, although both have the fissile material, stored weapons, and delivery systems to do so. That said, both powers confront growing economic problems. The Russians also face the challenge of rebuilding parts of their economy damaged by their war with Ukraine and foreign sanctions. The US government confronts a rapidly declining fiscal posture. Furthermore, the United States is likely to encounter strong opposition from its arms control community to even complete its current triad modernization effort.

China, on the other hand, encounters no comparable barriers. Its lack of sufficient fissile material with which to fabricate nuclear weapons for its delivery systems is the primary limitation on its ability to expand its arsenal. Analysts project that the PRC will eliminate this shortfall by the mid-2030s, when it will have matched Russia and the United States, at least within New START’s limitations on deployed SNF. The process could accelerate if China’s new fissile material production facilities come online sooner than anticipated, or if a market in fissile materials develops and enables China to purchase substantial quantities of plutonium or highly enriched uranium.

A World of Large Numbers

Another finding that emerged from work on the scenarios is that the three tripolar powers, but China in particular, will have strong incentives to break out of the world of low numbers once Beijing achieves nuclear parity with Russia and the United States. The probability of moving to a world in which nuclear arsenals are significantly larger—and are perhaps Cold War–sized (a world of large numbers)—will almost certainly increase significantly in a tripolar system.

As chapter 10 (“Breakout: A World of Large Numbers”) describes, these motives include a desire to return to a more stable bipolar system (assuming one of the three tripolar powers proves unwilling or unable to match the other two) and to sharply reduce the threat from secondary nuclear states. Expanding nuclear forces to Cold War levels—far beyond the 1,550 deployed SNF that New START permits—would also establish a much higher entry barrier for any secondary nuclear power tempted to trade up to great nuclear power status in a world of low numbers. China, in particular, may feel the need to expand its arsenal to counter any Russian attempt to build up TNF, or by India to expand nuclear forces in response to China’s large-scale nuclear buildup.

Theater Nuclear Forces

As noted above, the bridge scenario in chapter 4 finds the tripolar powers maintaining deployed SNF at relatively low numbers over the next decade, albeit for different reasons. Beyond that point, however, chapter 10 describes the potential motivation of China (especially) and Russia to undertake a soft breakout by fielding TNF to avoid breaching New START (now STRATFORE) limits. As noted above, Russia will primarily need to hedge against Chinese theater nuclear forces and to offset a US/NATO conventional force advantage. China, on the other hand, having achieved SNF parity with the United States, may need to hedge against Russia’s TNF and, especially, India’s prospective nuclear force expansion.

Both powers will have an incentive to pursue a soft breakout. First, there is less chance of triggering a corresponding US response than if the Chinese and Russians violated an existing treaty limiting strategic arms. Second, while planners project the United States will have SNF delivery systems in production in the mid-2030s, it currently has no plans to produce IRBMs and MRBMs. Should this remain the case, the Americans would find themselves far behind in any soft breakout competition. Third, any US TNF capable of offsetting the Chinese or Russian TNF threat to Washington’s allies would likely require basing on their soil. But the US cannot assume host-nation approval. The US arms control community will almost certainly oppose entering a soft breakout competition, and the American government’s accelerating fiscal decline will hobble any ability to do so. Yet any failure by the United States to field and deploy TNF would very likely undermine the credibility of its extended deterrence guarantees, providing an additional incentive for a Chinese or Russian soft breakout.

The Decline of Extended Deterrence?

Several of the scenarios find the US nuclear umbrella encountering strong winds and heavy rains during the bridge period and over the 2035–45 planning horizon. There are several reasons for this.

Unlike during the Cold War, with China’s nuclear buildup the United States will increasingly confront two comparable adversaries, not one. Consequently, the nuclear balance of forces could shift considerably to the United States’ disadvantage. This would reduce US allies’ confidence in extended deterrence.

Were Russia or (especially) China to pursue a soft breakout by building up its TNF, each would have additional nuclear weapons with which to threaten US allies in Asia and Europe. If the United States failed to respond by placing its own TNF on ally territory, it would further shift the balance in its rivals’ favor.

These prospects would place those sheltering under the US nuclear umbrella in a difficult situation. If they come to see extended deterrence as no longer credible, they will face difficult choices. The more militarily advanced states—such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea—could, at considerable political and material cost, field their own nuclear forces. This might restore deterrence, at least in terms of discouraging China, Russia, or even North Korea from employing nuclear weapons against them. Alternatively, they might seek to accommodate themselves to a new order in which Beijing, and perhaps Moscow, increasingly sets the rules.

Increased Chinese and Russian Freedom of Action

The United States, a status quo power, confronts China and Russia, two revisionist powers seeking to overthrow the existing international order and replace it with one of their own. Consequently, US policymakers need to plan against the nuclear forces of both China and Russia. As China reaches US nuclear force levels, and to the extent those two powers feel they have to account for only the American arsenal and not each other’s, their freedom of action will likely increase since the nuclear balance of power will have shifted significantly in their favor. As chapter 5 (“The Missiles of April”) suggests, this is especially true for China.

Such a sense of freedom of action seems unlikely to translate into overt aggression against US vital interests. It does, however, imply a willingness to challenge other American interests more aggressively than anyone has since the Cold War.

The Tripolar Conventional Forces Balance

The United States may continue to enjoy an advantage in the conventional balance of forces with respect to Russia. This is more likely if its principal NATO allies follow through on their pledge to increase substantially the resources they devote to defense.¹⁶⁷

Given current trends, however, and the implications of the scenario drivers, the US seems likely to forfeit any conventional forces advantage it has over China in the next decade. This, and the loss of the US nuclear trump card over China will, all other factors being equal, find Beijing enjoying considerably greater freedom of action, especially in the Western Pacific.

Furthermore, China enjoys other advantages over the United States and its allies relative to Russia. The latter confronts a unified alliance in NATO. China, on the other hand, faces a disjointed hub-and-spoke bilateral alliance system in which the United States is the hub and some key allies (such as Japan and South Korea) are unlikely bedfellows. Moreover, while the United States has ready access to bases in Europe—especially in the Eastern European frontline states—the same is not true of bases in key Western Pacific geographic locations, especially in the Philippines and Taiwan.

In brief, current trends suggest the ongoing shift in the military balance will likely continue in China’s favor, in both conventional and nuclear areas of the competition. Put simply, China’s achievement of nuclear parity with the United States will heighten the importance of the Western Pacific conventional forces military balance.

The Crumbling Barriers to Nuclear Use

In the only two instances when they were employed in war, nuclear weapons reduced the better part of two cities to rubble. Today’s thermonuclear weapons have yields an order of magnitude greater than those used in 1945. When employed in large numbers, these weapons can cause the breakdown of entire states and societies. Thus the desire to avoid such outcomes understandably dominates thinking about nuclear weapons, and policymakers emphasize deterring such a catastrophe. As two of the scenarios (chapter 7, “The Fear of Being a Poor Second,” and chapter 9, “Crossing the Firebreak”) suggest, however, use of nuclear weapons in a future conflict would not necessarily lead to apocalyptic consequences.

These two scenarios highlight the risks of blurring the once-bright conventional-nuclear firebreak. The emergence of NNSS capabilities and cyber weapons has made nonnuclear strategic warfare possible, at least to some extent.¹⁶⁸ Correspondingly, the availability of nuclear weapons with very low yields or special designs (such as EMP weapons) allows militaries to wage strategic warfare more effectively than they could with either conventional or cyber weapons. They can also do so without necessarily creating the widespread devastation often popularly associated with nuclear weapons use.

Indeed, despite fears of an atomic Armageddon, nuclear weapons might be employed in ways that do not bring about the End of Times but find the warring parties exercising mutual restraint. As shown in the “Crossing the Firebreak” and “The Fear of Being Second” scenarios, it is possible to employ highly accurate, VLY nuclear weapons in ways that greatly limit the damage to life and property.¹⁶⁹Given these considerations, prudent strategic planning dictates the need to understand the consequences of nuclear use when the belligerents survive and, in some cases, are even able to achieve their strategic objectives.

That being said, policymakers should not underestimate the potential shock associated with any employment of nuclear weapons. Doing so would break the fourscore years of nuclear peace that the United States and other countries have expended considerable effort to sustain. Deterrence, long the primary means of dealing with the danger of nuclear weapons, would have failed. Deep-seated fears among both publics and elites would arise over how, or even whether, to restore the nuclear taboo, and to what degree. Policies and strategies relating to nuclear weapons—to include arsenal size, weapon type, delivery system requirements, and the circumstances of their use—could shift suddenly and dramatically.

The reverberations of nuclear weapons use would almost certainly have significant implications for US security. The perceived success—or failure—of nuclear weapons employment would be a major factor shaping states’ responses to such a disruptive event. Moreover, states could form different conclusions regarding nuclear weapons use, in part depending on how they view the near-term or long-term effects. As the scenarios suggest, thinking about these and related issues could aid senior US policymakers in their efforts to deter nuclear use, minimize the adverse consequences if deterrence failed, and better prepare the United States to improve its strategic position in the wake of nuclear use.

A Tripolar System Doomsday Machine?

There is little evidence that the leader of a nuclear state is inclined to order a general nuclear strike on a comparably armed adversary in the course of normal events—to launch a bolt-from-the-blue attack. That being said, the geopolitical and military-technical trends in this study, which informed chapter 8’s “Mobilization Race” scenario, strongly suggest the need to scrutinize the implications of nuclear force generation (mobilization) under crisis conditions.

The process of developing this scenario identified so many issues of interest that, given time and space limitations, it was possible to develop only a subset of them, and even then only superficially. Rather, the chapter gave the reader a rich menu of prospective challenges upon which to reflect.

Two Scorpions or Three? Oppenheimer’s Bottle or Schelling’s Fears?

It appears that Oppenheimer’s analogy of two (or three) scorpions in a bottle¹⁷⁰ rings most true in situations that most closely resemble peacetime circumstances. The more the international system moves toward a crisis between nuclear states, however, the more Thomas Schelling’s fear begins to resonate: that “we live in an era in which a potent incentive on either side—perhaps the main incentive—to initiate total war with a surprise attack is the fear of being a poor second for not going first.”¹⁷¹

These fears regarding crisis stability’s resilience, or what Albert Wohlstetter termed the “delicate balance of terror,”¹⁷² are not new. Schelling’s observation, for example, is over half a century old. Moreover, as described earlier in this study, similar fears led to a major debate in the 1970s regarding whether advances in the size and sophistication of the Soviet nuclear arsenal had created a window of vulnerability for the US ICBM arm of the triad.

Yet as noted in chapter 3, the character of the nuclear competition has changed considerably since then, with perhaps even more significant change on the way. As highlighted in “Mobilization Race,” during the 2035–45 planning horizon, there is at least a significant likelihood that the United States will, for the first time, confront an environment with two comparably armed nuclear rivals. In a tripolar system crisis, this may increase the risk of being a “poor third” for not moving first.

For example, in a Chinese counterforce strike against US triad forces, both Beijing and Washington would have to account for the fact that Russia would retain its full arsenal after their exchange. Simply put, in calculating the costs, benefits, and risks of launching a first-strike counterforce attack, they would both have to consider their post-strike arsenal’s ability to counter their immediate rival, and Russia as well.

The incentive to execute a first-strike counterforce attack may increase for other reasons. This might be especially true with respect to Chinese or Russian incentives to preemptively attack the US forces comprising the nuclear triad.

First, consider that today the US has concentrated its forces at far fewer bases than in the 1970s, when many feared a window of vulnerability. Fewer bases find America’s nuclear eggs concentrated in relatively few baskets. There are no current plans to expand this base structure significantly.

Second, major enhancements in delivery system accuracy have reduced the number of weapons and/or weapon yields necessary to achieve a comparable level of counterforce strike effectiveness.

Third, as the scenario’s back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest, the US nuclear triad basing posture, when combined with highly accurate rival delivery systems, offers a prospective attacker some highly favorable exchange ratios. For example, a few Chinese ICBMs could possibly destroy half of the US SSBN fleet while it sits in port (along with the ports themselves), as well as the handful of US strategic bomber bases.

Fourth, compared to the window-of-vulnerability scenarios of the 1970s, and for the reasons cited earlier, a first-strike counterforce attack on US SSBN bases and strategic bomber bases will create far less collateral damage in terms of casualties and critical economic infrastructure. Put simply, a contemporary counterforce attack could dramatically reduce the risk that it would be seen as a countervalue attack. If so, this could resurrect something analogous to the no-cities doctrine, which emphasized counterforce attacks and was advocated by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1962.¹⁷³

Mobilization Race Dynamics

As chapter 8’s scenario depicted, mobilization races can create dynamics of their own, to include shifts in the military balance, increased uncertainty, and the sense among policymakers that they are not guiding events but vice versa. This chapter recalls how the doomsday machine of rapidly mobilizing armies found European leaders losing control over the crisis in the summer of 1914, when mobilization greatly incentivized them to choose war for fear of suffering a severe disadvantage. They feared consignment to being a poor second for not going first.

The scenario raised the issue of whether, in an increasingly multipolar nuclear competition, the United States would increase or enhance crisis stability if it failed to mobilize (or generate) its nuclear forces in lockstep with its tripolar rivals.

Extended Mobilization and Crisis Stability

As chapter 8 notes, a mobilization race among the tripolar nuclear powers (and perhaps others) may not immediately trigger a general nuclear exchange even though it erodes crisis stability. In a protracted crisis, or even in a war that remains below the nuclear threshold, the nuclear forces could find themselves having to sustain a generated high alert posture for weeks or even months. If so, over time the tripolar powers could transition from a mobilization race to a mobilization marathon. Just as in the initial generation of forces, the balance of weapons on high alert status would likely change over time, perhaps significantly. What this would mean for crisis stability is, however, unclear, as the scenario did not extend down this particular path.

What is clear is that the more countries that have their nuclear forces fully mobilized (generated) and on hair-trigger alert, and the longer they remain in this posture, the greater the risk of an accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons.

India: Minimal Deterrent or Avoidance of Preemption?

Since it joined the Nuclear Club, India has pursued a “credible minimal deterrence” posture: its nuclear forces are intended to deter a nuclear rival from attacking with nuclear weapons.¹⁷⁴ New Delhi does so through the threat of inflicting unacceptable damage on a nuclear attacker’s population and industry. In maintaining this policy, India rejects a warfighting counterforce capability in favor of an assured destruction countervalue force.

For several decades after Pakistan joined the Nuclear Club, it also adopted a minimal deterrence posture, as had China. All three powers possessed nuclear arsenals in the low triple digits. None of their forces were on heightened alert. The assumption that appeared to guide the three powers was that the threat of inflicting assured destruction on an attacker—even weeks or even months following a nuclear attack against it—was sufficient to deter an attack.

The low alert postures associated with the minimal deterrent posture had the additional virtue of enhancing the government’s control over its nuclear arsenal, as none were on hair-trigger alert. It also reduced the need for highly sophisticated early warning and command-and-control systems, as a prompt response to an attack was not necessary. The perceived lack of such a requirement was all the more important given the three powers’ close geographic proximity.

As the scenario in chapter 7, “The Fear of Being a Poor Second,” suggests, this situation is rapidly changing, and for the worse with respect to crisis stability. This is due primarily to China’s apparent decision to expand its nuclear arsenal from a few hundred weapons to perhaps 1,500 or more, and to place a significant portion on heightened alert.

Beijing’s move increases the threat of crippling the relatively small arsenal of its principal nuclear rival, India, in a counterforce attack. Were even a quarter of India’s roughly 200 weapons to survive such an attack, New Delhi would face the prospect of executing an assured destruction attack on China with full knowledge that the Chinese would retaliate in kind and Pakistan would retain its full complement of nuclear weapons. Under such circumstances, it seems unlikely that India would choose mutual suicide or expose itself fully to Pakistani nuclear coercion.

Given China’s buildup, the fear-of-being-a-poor-second scenario posits that India would seek to offset China’s buildup through one of its own, albeit on a more modest level.¹⁷⁵ This, however, creates a problem for Pakistan. India’s fielding of a “China-lite” arsenal—roughly half as large but with substantial forces on heightened alert—poses an increased threat of preemption to Islamabad’s nuclear forces.

Moreover, Pakistan, while not abandoning its minimal deterrence strategy, has recently incorporated a doctrine called “full-spectrum deterrence,” which stems from India’s conventional force advantage and the Cold Start operational concept. To counter India’s advantage, Pakistan has refused to forswear using nuclear weapons first in a conflict.¹⁷⁶

In brief, India’s effort to adapt its nuclear forces and doctrine to China’s nuclear buildup threat creates a similar problem for Pakistan. Islamabad confronts a dilemma: It needs to adapt its nuclear doctrine to the threat of an Indian preemptive counterforce strike. However, it also needs to tightly control its weapons to minimize the risk of radical Islamist elements capturing (and perhaps employing) them.

Suggested Additional Work

Were this exercise undertaken on a continuing basis, some candidate scenarios appear to merit some attention:

Failed Nuclear Use. The two scenarios that touch on nuclear use in this study are (or are anticipated to be) successful. But what if nuclear use fails, especially if there is a great loss of life and property? What consequences might emerge from such an event? Would arms control efforts be invigorated? Would nonproliferation regimes be radically strengthened, to include forcible dismantling of suspect programs?

Entanglement. The five scenarios generally sidestepped this issue. It begs consideration in the context of a war between nuclear powers employing dual-use strategic delivery systems, to include the bombers and missiles capable of conducting NNSS counterforce and countervalue attacks.

Whither India? How will India react, if at all, to China’s nuclear buildup, especially if New Delhi comes to see it as giving Beijing the ability to conduct a disarming counterforce attack against India?

Antisubmarine Warfare. Potential advances in ASW have not received the attention they deserve in this study. Progress in information processing, artificial intelligence, and related technologies has led some to argue that in the coming decades, the oceans will become less and less opaque, even quasi-transparent. If so, it could trigger the rapid obsolescence—or at least the precipitous decline in the effectiveness—of undersea nuclear forces as they currently exist.

A US Theater Nuclear Force Option. At present, the United States seems ill-prepared to deter or, if necessary, compete effectively if Russia, China, or both move to effect a soft breakout. This could have profound implications for US extended deterrence and, consequently, for America’s position in the world.

Closing Thoughts

A Case of “The Slows”

As the pace and scale of its nuclear triad modernization program reflect, the United States is suffering from a case of “the slows”¹⁷⁷ in reacting to the trends and drivers in this study’s scenarios and their implications. The US established the current nuclear force modernization program of record during a time when Washington confronted a relatively stable and favorable competitive environment. This environment preceded the onset of China’s nuclear buildup; it no longer exists today and has not for at least half a decade.

Like strategy and force development planning, scenario planning effort is not a sometime thing—it’s an all-the-time thing. This is especially true in today’s highly dynamic and competitive environment, where the probability of disruptive change is great. Briefly stated, crafting scenarios should be a persistent, enduring enterprise, just like the overall strategic planning effort it supports. Planners should expect the scenario set to change with regularity, introducing new scenarios while scrapping others.

Two Things

In closing, it is my hope that readers will come away from this study having benefited in two ways. First, I hope they will have a better understanding of the very different challenges senior US policymakers may confront 10–20 years hence with respect to the country’s nuclear forces. Put another way, the scenarios will give the reader some things to think about. Second, I hope readers will have a greater appreciation for how scenario-based strategic planning can enable policymakers, by taking them step-by-step to a very plausible and very different future, to make better decisions as they work to enhance US national security.

Missile Defense National Security and Defense

References (177)

^1.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., Modernizing the Nuclear Triad: Decline or Renewal? (Hudson Institute, 2021), https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/modernizing-the-nuclear-triad-decline-or-renewal.

↝
^2.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “The New Nuclear Age,” Foreign Affairs 101, no. 3 (May/June 2022): 92–104, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-04-19/new-nuclear-age.

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^3.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., Beyond the Nuclear Balance: A Strategic Forces Net Assessment (Hudson Institute, February 5, 2025), https://www.hudson.org/defense-strategy/beyond-nuclear-balance-strategic-forces-net-assessment-andrew-krepinevich.

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^4.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., 7 Deadly Scenarios (Bantam Books, 2015). For examples of scenario-based planning in the corporate sector, see Pierre Wack, “Scenarios: Uncharted Waters Ahead,” Harvard Business Review (September 1985), https://hbr.org/1985/09/scenarios-uncharted-waters-ahead; and Pierre Wack, “Scenarios: Shooting the Rapids,” Harvard Business Review, (November 1985), https://hbr.org/1985/11/scenarios-shooting-the-rapids. See also Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View (Doubleday, 1991); and Kees Van der Heijden, Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation (John Wiley & Sons, 2005).

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^5.
Risk refers to situations when planners can identify a range of outcomes and assign probabilities to them. For example, if intelligence assessments suggest there is a 25 percent chance China might double its warhead stockpile by 2035, this constitutes a strategic risk that planners can model and integrate into force-sizing decisions or deterrence calculations. Uncertainty, by contrast, refers to situations when planners know neither the outcomes nor their probabilities. A future leadership shift in Beijing that radically changes its nuclear doctrine and the development of an unforeseen disruptive military technology are examples of uncertainty. Planners cannot forecast or assign meaningful odds to these possibilities. Put simply, risk is measurable uncertainty.

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^6.
Schwartz, The Art of the Long View, 3–4.

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^7.
Thus scenarios stand in stark contrast to forecasting, which consists of linear projections into the future. Examples of forecasts are long-range weather projections and prognostications at the beginning of a sports league season as to its constituent teams’ order of finish. Moreover, as they tend to project current trends into the future, forecasts typically fail in what senior decision-makers need most—identifying plausible major shifts in the competitive environment.

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^8.
Barry D. Watts, Memorandum for the Record, “Strategy Seminar,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, September 25, 2007, 7.

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^9.
B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd ed. (Meridian Books, 1991), 343; and Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 1976), 198.

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^10.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford University Press, 1971), 66.

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^11.
Van der Heijden, Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation, 59.

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^12.
Richard Nixon, Six Crises (Doubleday, 1962), 235.

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^13.
Van der Heijden, Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation, 4–6.

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^14.
The quote is from Samuel “Sandy” P. Berger, President Bill Clinton’s national security advisor from 1997 to 2001. R. W. Apple Jr., “A Domestic Sort with Global Worries,” New York Times, August 25, 1999, A10.

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^15.
The quote is from Susan Rice, President Barack Obama’s national security advisor from 2013 to 2017. Mark Landler, “Obama Could Replace Aides Bruised by a Cascade of Crises,” New York Times, October 29, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/world/middleeast/mounting-crises-raise-questions-on-capacity-of-obamas-team.html.

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^16.
David A. Nichols, Eisenhower 1956 (Simon & Schuster, 2011), 7.

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^17.
Madeleine K. Albright, interview by Matt Lauer, Today Show, NBC, February 19, 1998, https://1997-2001.state.gov/statements/1998/980219a.html.

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^18.
Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China (W. W. Norton, 2022), 135–38; and Elbridge Colby, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict (Yale University Press, 2021), 203–5.

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^19.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., Beyond the Nuclear Balance: A Strategic Forces Net Assessment (Hudson Institute, 2025), https://www.hudson.org/defense-strategy/beyond-nuclear-balance-strategic-forces-net-assessment-andrew-krepinevich.

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^20.
Fred C. Iklé, “The Second Coming of the Nuclear Age,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 1 (January/February 1996): 119–28. See also Paul Bracken, “The Second Nuclear Age,” Foreign Affairs 79, no. 1 (January/February 2000), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2000-01-01/second-nuclear-age.

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^21.
For an excellent history of the nuclear era, to include a discussion of strategy, see Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 4th ed. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

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^22.
There was, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis. But there were several other close calls. Shortly after midnight on September 27, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, the duty officer at a missile attack early-warning station south of Moscow, received warnings from a Russian satellite monitoring US missile fields indicating that an attack had been launched. Russia had activated the satellite system providing the information only the year before, and its testing was incomplete. A complete check of the satellite and of the center’s computer system would take roughly 10 minutes—too much time to lose if an attack was really in progress. Petrov noted that it had detected only one missile launch. He considered the situation and informed his superiors that the indication was a false alarm. Shortly thereafter, however, the system began reporting more launches from the American missile fields. Fortunately for humanity, Petrov checked the data from the satellite’s crude optical telescope and found no launches. He again reported the “attacks” as a false alarm. David E. Hoffman, The Dead Hand (Anchor Books, 2009), 5–11.

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^23.
See Marc Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton University Press, 1991), especially 3–46, 100–152, 261–86. See also Freedman and Michaels, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 22–44.

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^24.
Individuals as disparate as physicist Leo Szilard, mathematician John van Neumann, and pacifist Bertrand Russell argued for waging such a war. Von Neumann went so far as to declare, “If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at five o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?” Ananyo Bhattacharya, The Man from the Future (W.W. Norton, 2021), 208–10; McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival (Random House, 1988), 251–53; Trachtenberg, History and Strategy, 143; and Ray Perkins Jr., “Bertrand Russell and Preventive War,” Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives, (Winter 1994–95): 135–53, https://web.archive.org/web/20170305003733/http://www.plymouth.edu/department/history-philosophy/files/2012/10/Bertrand-Russell-and-Preventive-War.pdf.

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^25.
The largest pure fission weapon ever tested was the US bomb Ivy King, whose yield was roughly 500 kilotons. The British tested a “boosted” fission weapon in their Orange Herald test that registered roughly 720 kilotons. Correspondingly, the Soviet thermonuclear weapon test on October 30, 1961, popularly known as “Tsar Bomba,” registered at approximately 50 megatons. (The Russians had originally designed it for a yield of 100 megatons but scaled it down to reduce fallout.) Viktor Adamsky and Yuri Smirnov, “Moscow’s Biggest Bomb: The 50-Megaton Test of October 1961,” Bulletin of the Cold War International History Project, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 3, 19–21, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/CWIHP_Bulletin_4.pdf; “Operation Ivy,” Defense Threat Reduction Agency, September 2021, https://www.dtra.mil/Portals/125/Documents/NTPR/newDocs/8-IVY%20-%202021.pdf; and Susie Boniface, “Operation Grapple,” in The Damned: The Human Fallout of Britain’s Nuclear Bombs, special report by The Mirror (UK), accessed November 2025, https://damned.mirror.co.uk/chapter3.html.

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^26.
The challenges that these developments pose are addressed in Albert Wohlstetter, The Delicate Balance of Terror, P-1472 (RAND Corporation, 1958), https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P1472.html.

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^27.
During the Cold War, two other states that some quarters viewed as “pariah states,” Israel and South Africa, also acquired nuclear weapons. India, while not creating a nuclear arsenal, conducted a so-called peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974.

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^28.
The development of ballistic missiles coincided with the publication of Bernard Brodie’s seminal work on nuclear strategy, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton University Press, 1959). Regarding US ICBM development, see G. Harry Stine, ICBM: The Making of the Weapon That Changed the World (Orion Books, 1991); David K. Strumpf, Minuteman: A Technical History of the Missile That Defined American Nuclear Warfare (University of Arkansas Press, 2020), 55–59; and Neil Sheehan, A Fiery Peace in a Cold War (Random House, 2009). For SLBM developments, see Owen Coté, The Politics of Innovative Military Doctrine: The US Navy and Fleet Ballistic Missiles (PhD diss., MIT, 1996), https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/11217. For nonstrategic motivations for these weapons developments, see Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Brookings Institution, 1974), 29–30, 32–34, 57–58, 162–63; and Coté, The Politics of Innovative Military Doctrine, 343–47.

↝
^29.
Robert S. McNamara, “Commencement Address at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (‘No Cities’),” Department of State Bulletin 47, no. 1202 (July 9, 1962): 64. (Authoritative print source; text carries the line “principal military objectives . . . should be the destruction of the enemy’s forces, not of his civilian population.”) For accessible online texts, see US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. VIII, doc. 82 (Athens address with substantially similar language) and a scanned Ann Arbor transcript. See also Freedman and Michaels, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 234–39.

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^30.
Americans could achieve assured destruction by ensuring the residual force surviving an all-out Soviet surprise attack could kill 30 percent of the USSR’s population while destroying half of its industry. It could arguably accomplish this by a force with a yield of some 400 megatons. Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford University Press, 1983), 317; and Bundy, Danger and Survival, 544, 547. For a slightly different perspective, see John Newhouse, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age (Vintage Books, 1990), 164. Two points bear noting. First, a significant number of variables are involved in calculating the weapon requirements to achieve assured destruction. Second, these requirements are not static: Consider that populations change over time, population densities shift, etc. The same applies to industrial capacity and distribution: New industries arise; others are shuttered. The works cited also assert that the forces they assessed as sufficient for assured destruction depended as much (if not more) on economic factors (“diminishing marginal returns”) as on any belief as to what level of destruction would destroy the Soviet Union as a functioning political, economic, and social entity.

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^31.
A missile’s throw weight includes the weight of the warheads, warhead decoys, and the “bus” that houses them. “What Is Throw-Weight?,” New York Times, July 15, 1991, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/15/world/what-is-throw-weight.html. The bus is what remains after the booster falls away following the boost phase of a missile’s flight path.

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^32.
For a simple but instructive example of the dangers that MIRVed missiles might pose to crisis stability, see Bundy, Danger and Survival, 550–51.

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^33.
Bundy, Danger and Survival, 554.

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^34.
Recognizing the Soviets had achieved a rough parity with US nuclear forces, in 1974 Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger coined the term essential equivalence, declaring that “there must be essential equivalence between the strategic forces of the United States and the USSR—an equivalence perceived not only by ourselves, but by the Soviet Union and Third World audiences as well.” The Carter administration retained that objective; Defense Secretary Harold Brown said it intended that “our overall forces be at least on a par with those of the Soviet Union and also that they be recognized to be essentially equivalent.” John T. Correll, “The Ups and Downs of Counterforce,” Air and Space Forces, October 1, 2005, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1005counterforce; and “Presidential Directive/NSC-59,” July 25, 1980, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Vol. IV, Office of the Historian, US Department of State, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v04/d208.

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^35.
In 1991 the United States had roughly 19,000 weapons and the USSR around 35,000. The US arsenal had peaked at over 31,000 weapons in the mid-1960s, while the Soviet inventory grew to some 45,000 weapons before beginning to decline in the late 1980s. Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945–2010,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 66, no. 4 (July 2010): 77–83, https://doi.org/10.2968/066004008.

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^36.
Bundy, Danger and Survival, 576–78; and Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. and Barry D. Watts, The Last Warrior (Basic Books, 2015), 131–32, 167–70.

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^37.
The US Army Air Defense Command (ARADCOM) had primary responsibility for anti-aircraft defenses.

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^38.
By one estimate, the total number of nuclear weapons peaked in 1986 at 69,368 and stood at 55,260 in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Less than 20 years later, in 2010, the number had dropped to 17,995, a reduction of nearly 75 percent from the peak. Norris and Kristensen, “Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories.”

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^39.
India conducted a nuclear weapon test on May 18, 1974 (“Smiling Buddha”), but did not formally declare itself a nuclear power until 1998. That being said, in the late 1980s, New Delhi may have assembled several dozen nuclear weapons capable of delivery by air. George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (University of California Press, 1999), 293–97.

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^40.
The years immediately following the Soviet Union’s collapse also saw a handful of former Soviet republics turn over their nuclear weapons to Moscow. When the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, several former Soviet republics—the now newly independent states of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine—possessed some 3,200 strategic nuclear weapons among them, along with some 3,000 or so tactical nuclear weapons. They apparently returned the latter to Russia by the beginning of 1993. The Lisbon Protocol resolved the matter: Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine agreed to turn over these weapons and accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as nonnuclear-weapon states. They signed the protocol in May 1992, and the turnover was complete by the end of 1996. All three of the newly liberated states have continued to abide by the protocol. “The Lisbon Protocol at a Glance,” Arms Control Association, December 2020, https://www.armscontrol.org/node/3289. By the end of the Cold War, South Africa had built six nuclear weapons with yields estimated at 10–18 kilotons. In 1990 the government ordered their destruction, which it completed in 1993 and the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed. “Nuclear Disarmament: South Africa,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, January 29, 2024, https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/south-africa-nuclear-disarmament.

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^41.
Krepinevich Jr., Beyond the Nuclear Balance, 23–24.

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^42.
In 1984, Soviet Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov declared, “Rapid changes in the development of conventional means of destruction and the emergence in the developed countries of automated reconnaissance-strike complexes, long-range high-accuracy terminally-guided combat systems, unmanned flying machines, and qualitatively new electronic control systems make many types of weapons global and make it possible to sharply increase, by at least an order of magnitude, the destructive potential of conventional weapons, bringing them closer, so to speak, to weapons of mass destruction in terms of effectiveness.”

That same year, an article in the Russian journal Ekonomika, Politika, Ideologiya argued that the weaponry Ogarkov described had a power and effectiveness “similar to weapons of mass destruction in terms of their combat features.” V. R. Bogdanov and A. I. Podberezkin, “Notes on the Qualitative Arms Race,” Ekonomika, Politika, Ideologiya (March 1984), 125. The term weapons of mass destruction, as Soviet writers used it, includes chemical and biological weapons in addition to nuclear weapons. In this context, however, the reference is clearly to nuclear weapons. Cited in Michael J. Sterling, Soviet Reactions to NATO’s Emerging Technologies for Deep Attack, N‑2294‑AF (RAND Corporation, 1985), 8, https://www.rand.org/pubs/notes/N2294.html.

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^43.
The first extensive use of PGMs occurred during the Vietnam War. The US Air Force employed over 4,000 laser-guided bombs against North Vietnam between April 1972 and January 1973, an average of 400 weapons per month. The first intensive use of PGMs occurred during the First Gulf War, when over 17,000 were employed over a period of 43 days (January 17, 1991, to February 28, 1991), an average of nearly 400 weapons per day. Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey: Summary Report (US Government Printing Office, 1993), 226, https://web.archive.org/web/20080926224252/http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/Publications/Annotations/gwaps.htm. Contrasting strategic warfare prior to the widespread use of precision-guided weapons, consider the following example. During World War II, in all of 1943 the US Eighth Air Force was able to strike roughly 50 strategic targets in Germany. In the First Gulf War, however, the US-dominated coalition air forces struck approximately three times as many targets on the first day of the war. Keaney and Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey, 189. See also Christopher Bowie, Untying the Bloody Scarf: Casualties, Stealth, and the Revolution in Aerial Combat (IRIS Independent Research, 1998), 14; and General Ronald R. Fogleman, “Getting the Air Force into the 21st Century,” speech at the Air Force Association Air Warfare Symposium, Orlando, Florida, February 24, 1995.

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^44.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., Modernizing the Nuclear Triad: Decline or Renewal? (Hudson Institute, 2021), 16–17.

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^45.
Krepinevich Jr., Modernizing the Nuclear Triad, 17. For a general discussion of this trend toward multidimensional strategic warfare, see Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., The Decline of Deterrence (Hudson Institute, 2019), 34–38, https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/the-decline-of-deterrence.

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^46.
For example, in May 2021 a ransomware attack occurred against the Colonial Pipeline Company, which operates a pipeline over 5,000 miles in length transporting gasoline, diesel fuel, and natural gas. The company had to shut down parts of the pipeline to address the threat. At the time, the United States produced roughly 40 percent of its electricity by burning natural gas. The firm paid some $5 million to reopen the system. Michael D. Shear, Nicole Perlroth, and Clifford Krauss, “Colonial Pipeline Paid Roughly $5 Million in Ransom to Hackers,” New York Times, May 13, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/us/politics/biden-colonial-pipeline-ran-somware.html; and Andy Greenberg, “The Colonial Pipeline Is a New Extreme for Ransomware,” Wired, May 8, 2021, https://www.wired.com/story/colonial-pipeline-ransomware-attack. See also Dan Lohrmann, “Ransomware Remains a ‘Brutal’ Threat in 2024,” Government Technology, July 21, 2024, https://www.govtech.com/blogs/lohrmann-on-cybersecurity/ransomware-remains-a-brutal-threat-in-2024.

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^47.
Use of the word modestly reflects the fact that nuclear weapons enjoy unique advantages relative to precision strikes and cyberattacks. They offer a very high probability of kill, even against hardened targets. Nuclear weapons are also more likely to induce prompt effects. While many PGMs need satellite access or clear weather for guidance, it is not possible to ensure such access or conditions, respectively. A cyber weapon’s effectiveness may not be known until forces employ it. Once they do, it may lose its effectiveness. Moreover, while precision strikes can be far more discriminate than nuclear weapon strikes, the latter generally leave relatively little doubt with respect to ensuring accurate battle damage assessment (BDA). Furthermore, for the victim of a nuclear attack, its effects can be far more difficult to reverse than nonnuclear ones. A massive nuclear attack could indeed find the target bombed “back to the Stone Age” or to a “smoking, radiating ruin.” An effective cyber strategic campaign may find the victim “bombed back to the 1980s,” and in the case of precision strikes, perhaps not even that far. The phrase “smoking, radiating ruin” comes from a general description of the effects the US Strategic Air Command intended to create in the Soviet Union by employing a single massive attack. David Alan Rosenberg and W. B. Moore, “A Smoking Radiating Ruin at the End of Two Hours,” International Security 6, no. 3 (Winter 1981/82): 11, https://doi.org/10.2307/2538605.

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^48.
Although the topic is of considerable debate among scholars, arguably the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 established several key elements (the “Westphalian System”) that, in the words of Henry Kissinger, served to “elevate a fact of life—the existence of a number of states of substantially equal strength—into a guiding principle of world order.” Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster, 1994), 21.

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^49.
A war between nuclear powers may not involve nuclear weapons use or, if it does, would not inevitably escalate to an all-out nuclear exchange. For a discussion of this issue, see Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “The Big One: Preparing for a Long War with China,” Foreign Affairs 103, no. 1 (January/February 2024): 104–18, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/united-states-big-one-krepinevich.

↝
^50.
During the Cold War, policymakers and military leaders widely accepted the category “strategic nuclear” to refer to intercontinental nuclear delivery systems and weapons targeting key “strategic” military, economic, or population sites in an opposing nation’s heartland.

↝
^51.
For a description of the dynamics of the China-India-Pakistan nuclear rivalry, see Ashley Tellis, Striking Asymmetries (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2021), 189–247.

↝
^52.
For both Moscow and Washington, possessing nuclear forces that were similar in size placed them on an equal footing. This was especially important for the United States, which sought to discourage Soviet nuclear coercion of key US allies and security partners through extended deterrence. As such, Washington was keen to avoid creating the perception among these states that its nuclear forces were in any way inferior to Moscow’s.

↝
^53.
For an overview of these issues, see Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “The New Nuclear Age,” Foreign Affairs 101, no. 3 (May/June 2022): 75–86, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-04-19/new-nuclear-age.

↝
^54.
The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2025 to 2035 (Congressional Budget Office, 2025), 2, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-01/60870-Outlook-2025.pdf.

↝
^55.
“2025 Social Security Trustees Report Explained,” Bipartisan Policy Center, August 5, 2025, https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/2025-social-security-trustees-report-explained.

↝
^56.
This represents cuts to the Hospital Insurance trust fund. Medicare also includes the Supplemental Medical Insurance trust fund. Boards of Trustees, The 2025 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplemental Medical Insurance Trust Funds (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2025), https://www.cms.gov/oact/tr/2025; and “Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund Could Be Exhausted in 8 Years,” Peter G. Peterson Foundation, June 24, 2025, https://www.pgpf.org/article/medicares-hospital-insurance-trust-fund-could-be-exhausted-in-8-years.

↝
^57.
The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2025 to 2035, 2.

↝
^58.
In a recent poll, the American public ranked “strengthening the military” seventeenth in a list of priorities. “Americans’ Top Policy Priority for 2024: Strengthening the Economy,” Pew Research Center, February 29, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/02/29/americans-top-policy-priority-for-2024-strengthening-the-economy. In a similar poll, out of 11 policy priorities, the military and national defense finished tenth in terms of support for additional funding and second in terms of being overfunded.

↝
^59.
IRBMs have a range of 3,000–5,500 kilometers, or 1,860–3,410 miles; an MRBM’s range is 1,000–3,000 kilometers, or 620–1,860 miles. As of the mid-2020s, China had over 200 IRBMs and MRBMs. Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “World Nuclear Forces,” in SIPRI Yearbook 2024: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Oxford University Press, 2024), 298–99, 323, https://www.sipriyearbook.org.

↝
^60.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., Beyond the Nuclear Balance: A Strategic Forces Net Assessment (Hudson Institute, 2025), 45, https://www.hudson.org/defense-strategy/beyond-nuclear-balance-strategic-forces-net-assessment-andrew-krepinevich.

↝
^61.
Tony Capaccio, “US Navy Sees Delays of a Year or More for New ICBM Submarine,” Bloomberg, April 2, 2024, https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/us-navy-sees-delays-of-a-year-or-more-for-new-icbm-submarine-1; Stephen Losey, “Air Force’s Next Nuclear Missile at Risk after Costs Spike,” Defense News, January 19, 2024, https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/us-navy-sees-delays-of-a-year-or-more-for-new-icbm-submarine-1; Chris Gordon, “Air Force Orders Halt to Some Work on Sentinel ICBM,” Air and Space Forces, February 11, 2025, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/air-force-orders-halt-some-work-sentinel-icbm; and Valerie Insinna, “Northrop Logs New $477M Loss on B-21 Bomber Due to Higher Manufacturing Costs,” Breaking Defense, April 22, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/04/northrop-logs-new-477m-loss-on-b-21-bomber-due-to-higher-manufacturing-costs.

↝
^62.
For example, consider China’s construction of some 300 ICBM silos. The PLA could fill some or all with its new DF-41 missiles. These missiles can carry one to ten MIRVs, creating the potential for a Chinese nuclear force breakout. Development of a market in fissile materials could enable such a breakout, a possibility that the US should not discount as China has given considerable assistance to North Korea and Pakistan to expand their fissile materials production capacity. Moreover, it is at least conceivable that Russia could transfer some of its fissile material stocks to China, given the former’s growing economic dependence on the latter.

↝
^63.
“Advocates for abandoning the triad in favor of a dyad generally argue that SSBNs provide the most survivable and assured second-strike capability, rendering land-based ICBMs unnecessary. US Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues,RL33640 (Congressional Research Service, 2021), https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/RL33640.pdf.

↝
^64.
See, for example, Bryan Clark, “The Emerging Era in Undersea Warfare,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, January 2015, http://csbaonline.org/research/publications/undersea-warfare; Ari Kattan, “Emerging Submarine Detection Technologies and Implications for Strategic Stability,” CSIS, 2019; Kris Osborn, “No Place to Hide for the US Navy? End of Submarine Stealth?,” 1945, March 2, 2025, https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/03/no-place-to-hide-for-the-u-s-navy-end-of-submarine-stealth; Ryan Neuhard, “Submarine Detection and the Future of the US Fleet,” Georgetown Security Studies Review, March 30, 2018, https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2018/03/30/submarine-detection-and-the-future-of-the-u-s-fleet; and Liam J. Coy, “Assessing Quantum Magnetometry as an Emerging Detection Modality for Strategic Anti-submarine Warfare,” Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, MIT, May 2025, https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/159947/coy-lcoy-bs-nse-2025-thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. For a more optimistic perspective, see Tom A. Stefanick, “Undersea Nuclear Forces: Survivability of Chinese, Russian and US SSBNs,” Journal of Strategic Studies 48, no. 2 (2025): 334–406.

↝
^65.
As stated in The Science of Military Strategy 2020, “Strategic deterrence has two basic functions. One is to stop the other party from doing what they . . . want to do through deterrence, and the other is to use deterrence to coerce the other party to do what they must do.” Xiao Tianliang, Lou Yaoliang, Kang Wuchao, and Cai Renzhao, The Science of Military Strategy2020 (National Defense University Press, 2020), In Their Own Words, trans. China Aerospace Studies Institute, January 2022, 131, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Translations/2022-01-26%202020%20Science%20of%20Military%20Strategy.pdf. See also Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (Yale University Press, 1967), 69.

↝
^66.
The term itself refers to the Old Testament’s recounting of Samson, a man of extraordinary strength. Captured by his enemies, the Philistines, he is chained between two pillars in a temple. He uses his strength to collapse the pillars and the temple with it, killing himself and all the Philistines present. Louis René Beres, “Navigating Chaos: Israel, Nuclear Ambiguity and the ‘Samson Option,’” Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, March 10, 2024, https://besacenter.org/navigating-chaos-israel-nuclear-ambiguity-and-the-samson-option; and William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “‘Last Secret’ of 1967 War: Israel’s Doomsday Plan for Nuclear Display,” New York Times, June 3, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/world/middleeast/1967-arab-israeli-war-nuclear-warning.html.

↝
^67.
Herman Kahn, Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s (Simon & Schuster, 1984), 29.

↝
^68.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., The Decline of Deterrence (Hudson Institute, 2019), 35–36, https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/the-decline-of-deterrence.

↝
^69.
For example, consider this observation from the PLA’s 2001 Science of Military Strategy: “As information technology develops and it has more influence on the function of nuclear weapons, the discharge of nuclear energy will also be included into information control and applied in the struggle over the control of information rights (such as the electromagnetic pulse weapon being developed). Nuclear weapons may walk out of deterrence and be used in actual combat” (my emphasis). Peng Guangqian and Yao Youzhi, eds., Science of Military Strategy (Military Science Press, 2001), 361. Military Science Press published an English translation of this book in 2005. Cited in Barry G. Watts, Nuclear-Conventional Firebreaks and the Nuclear Taboo (CSBA, 2013), 64. Russian strategic studies experts have argued along similar lines.

↝
^70.
A classic example of this form of planning by military staffs is the American military’s “color” and “rainbow” plans prior to World War II. See Henry G. Gole, The Road to Rainbow (Naval Institute Press, 2002).

↝
^71.
“New START Treaty,” US Department of State, June 1, 2023, https://www.state.gov/new-start-treaty. Although the treaty lapsed in 2026, both Russia and the United States continued to abide by its limits.

↝
^72.
See Rose Gottemoeller, “Arms Control Is Not Dead Yet,” Foreign Affairs, April 15, 2025, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/arms-control-not-dead-yet.

↝
^73.
The New START agreement limited the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 each for Russia and the United States.

↝
^74.
New START’s accounting rule for heavy bombers counts only one warhead for each nuclear-capable heavy bomber. At the time of the treaty’s signing, the maximum loads for the United States’ 76 B52H and 20 B-2 bombers potentially enabled more than 1,700 US nuclear bomber weapons to go “uncounted.” In similar fashion, the maximum loads for the 63 Tu-95s and 13 Tu-160 Russian bombers enabled Moscow to exceed the 1,550-warhead limit by 760 weapons. Thus while New START appears to limit Washington and Moscow to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads each, the bomber counting rule enables both treaty members to boost their deployed weapons substantially higher. It also allows both parties to have 100 non-deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers over and above the 700 permitted to be deployed. Any strategic warheads they maintain in their stockpiles for these launchers also go uncounted. Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, U.S.-U.S.S.R., February 5, 2011, article III, para. 1(c), https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/140035.pdf. See also “New START Treaty.”

↝
^75.
In February 2022, following a high-level summit during the Beijing Winter Olympics, China and Russia issued a joint communiqué declaring, “Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.” Cited in Ted Snider, “Breaking Down That Putin-Xi Joint Statement on a ‘New Era,’” Responsible Statecraft, February 12, 2022, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/02/12/breaking-down-that-putin-xi-joint-statement-on-a-new-era/#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20compels%20democracy%20upon,“friendship%20has%20no%20limits.”&text=Ted%20Snider%20is%20a%20regular,Responsible%20Statecraft%20and%20other%20outlets.

See “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on International Relations Entering a New Era,” In Their Own Words, trans. China Aerospace Studies Institute, February 4, 2022, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/CASI/Display/Article/2923495/itow-china-russia-joint-statement-on-international-relations-entering-a-new-era.

↝
^76.
Estimates based on The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2025 to 2035; and “Analysis of CBO’s March 2025 Long-Term Budget Outlook,” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, March 27, 2025, https://www.crfb.org/papers/analysis-cbos-march-2025-long-term-budget-outlook.

↝
^77.
Fatima Hussein and Tom Murphy, “Medicare and Social Security Go-Broke Dates Are Pushed Back in a ‘Measure of Good News,’” Associated Press, May 6, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/social-security-medicare-entitlements-treasury-35a2913a3f21a3b0ff40f2c88cbf9cbc.

↝
^78.
The armistice included minor changes in the front lines as they stood at the time of signing. It saw Ukrainian forces withdrawing from several minor incursions into Russia and the Russians pulling back partially from salients in eastern Ukraine. The agreement called for negotiations of a final peace treaty between the two belligerents. These talks remain ongoing over a decade after the fighting came to a close.

↝
^79.
The Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China is China’s senior national defense decision-making and command body for the PLA. It commands China’s armed forces, to include developing military strategy and policy, establishing budget priorities, and setting personnel and equipment standards. It functions very similarly to the ministries of defense and defense departments of other countries. The CMC traditionally comprised seven members: the CCP chairman, two vice chairmen, and four members, each of whom is a general or admiral. China’s Ministry of National Defense serves a primarily diplomatic role. The defense minister, however, is always a member of the CMC. Extending back to Mao Zedong, the head of the CCP has always served as the CMC chairman. Between August 2023 and April 2025, however, three CMC members were purged, reducing the membership to four, Liu Zhen, “What Is China’s Central Military Commission and Why Is It So Powerful?,” South China Morning Post, October 18, 2022, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3196360/what-chinas-central-military-commission-and-why-it-so-powerful; and Yi Zang, “China’s Fast-Shrinking Central Military Commission: Implications for the PLA,” The Diplomat, August 2025, https://magazine.thediplomat.com/2025-08/chinas-fast-shrinking-central-military-commission-implications-for-the-pla.

↝
^80.
Nasir Hafeez, “The Legacy of India’s Nuclear Weapons Test,” Arms Control Today, November 2024, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-11/features/legacy-indias-nuclear-weapons-test.

↝
^81.
Benjamin R. Young, “Putin and Kim Hate the West—and Mistrust Beijing,” RAND Corporation, April 7, 2025, https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/04/putin-and-kim-hate-the-west-and-mistrust-beijing.html.

↝
^82.
The Sino-Soviet split saw increasing strain on relations between the Soviet Union and Communist China during the 1960s, culminating in 1969 with clashes between the two countries’ military forces along their Ussuri River border. Several engagements occurred, extending from March through August. The crisis escalated over the summer when Moscow began sounding out other key states’ prospective reactions if the Soviets conducted a preemptive nuclear strike on China’s nascent nuclear forces. The crisis finally abated in October when the two sides entered into negotiations over the status of the islands along the river. The negotiations lasted several decades before an agreement was reached. During this period, Beijing felt it was at a disadvantage as “above the negotiating table hangs the Soviet atomic bomb.” Michael S. Gerson, “The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict,” CNA, November 2010; A. A. Brezhnev, “Kitaiskie Zarisovki” [Notes from China], in Diplomaty Vspominaiut [Diplomats remember] (Nauchnaia Kniga, 1997), 350; and Kireev Rossiia-Kitai, Neizvestnye stranitsy pogranichnykh peregovorov [Russia-China: Unknown pages of border negotiations], 126, both cited in Gerson, “Border Conflict,” 52.

↝
^83.
Sharon Omondi, “Countries with the Longest Land Borders,” World Atlas, August 1, 2019, https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-longest-land-borders.html.

↝
^84.
The 1969 military clashes over the Ussuri River stemmed in part from China’s resentment regarding “unequal treaties” with Russia during the nineteenth century, in which Russia acquired large tracts of Chinese territory. One such treaty, the 1860 Treaty of Peking, established the river as a boundary between the two countries.

↝
^85.
This refers originally to the British Naval Defense Act of 1889, which required the Royal Navy to be at least the equal of the next two largest naval powers combined.

↝
^86.
Anya L. Fink, “Russia’s Nuclear Weapons,” Congressional Research Service, January 22, 2025, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12672.

↝
^87.
The CMC estimates 450–500 warheads will be available.

↝
^88.
With respect to Russia, the term unequal treaties stems in large measure from the Treaty of Aigun (1858) and the Convention of Peking (1860), which the Russian Empire and the weak Qing Dynasty signed. The agreements saw China cede vast lands along the left and right banks of the Amur River. Ever since, the Chinese have held that these unfair treaties must be undone. Velvl Chernin, “On China’s Territorial Claims Against the Russian Federation,” Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, March 1, 2025, https://besacenter.org/on-china-territorial-claims-against-the-russian-federation; “Sino-Soviet Border Talks: Problems and Prospects,” Office of Current Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, November 10, 1969, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000662437.pdf; and Toshio Ueda, “The Abolition of the Unequal Treaties in China,” India Quarterly 14, no. 4 (October–December 1958): 364–72.

↝
^89.
China was fabricating and storing the warheads at a high-security facility in North Korea, less than 50 miles from its border.

↝
^90.
Steve LeVine, “Demographics May Decide the US-China Rivalry,” Axios, July 3, 2019, https://www.axios.com/2019/07/03/demographics-decide-us-china-rivalry; and Eleanor Albert and Beina Xu, “China’s Environmental Crisis,” Council on Foreign Relations, February 12 ,2025, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-environmental-crisis.

↝
^91.
China employed the term quarantine intentionally to describe what is, in effect, a blockade. Under international law, a blockade is an act of war. The United States most notably employed the term to describe its naval blockade of Cuba in October 1962.

↝
^92.
Beijing also used the phrase one country, two systems to describe the agreement that returned Hong Kong to China in 1997. Since the 2020s, however, China has fully absorbed Hong Kong into its political and economic systems.

↝
^93.
As stated in TheScience of Military Strategy 2020, “Strategic deterrence had two basic functions. One is to stop the other party from doing what they don’t want to do through deterrence, and the other is to use deterrence to coerce the other party to do what they must do” (my emphasis). Xiao Tianliang, Lou Yaoliang, Kang Wuchao, and Cai Renzhao, The Science of Military Strategy2020 (National Defense University Press, 2022), In Their Own Words, trans. China Aerospace Studies Institute, 131, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Translations/2022-01-26%202020%20Science%20of%20Military%20Strategy.pdf.

↝
^94.
Neither Japan nor South Korea permits the United States to store nuclear weapons on their territories.

↝
^95.
The reference is to the First and Second Gulf Wars. In the leadup to the US-led coalition’s offensives in 1991 and 2003, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein did not attempt to prevent the buildup of American and allied forces in the Middle East.

↝
^96.
The secretary of state overspoke. Taiwan is not a treaty ally of the United States.

↝
^97.
Soviet forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. Absent the presence of Soviet troops and Moscow’s withdrawal of military assistance, the Kabul government under Mohammad Najibullah fell to the mujahideen in 1992. Infighting among the mujahideen leadership led to the Pakistan-backed Taliban’s rise. For an overview of these events, see Franz-Stefan Gady, “30-Year Anniversary of Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan: A Successful Disengagement Operation?,” The Diplomat, February 6, 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/30-year-anniversary-of-soviet-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-a-successful-disengagement-operation.

↝
^98.
Zia ur-Rehman, “A Long Fight to Keep a Closer Eye on Madrasas Unravels in Pakistan,” New York Times, January 3, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/world/asia/pakistan-madrasas.html.

↝
^99.
Anupreeta Das, Pragati K. B., Showkat Nanda, and Suhasini Raj, “A Perfect Day in a Gentle Meadow Is Shattered by Bloody Carnage,” New York Times, April 23, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/world/asia/kashmir-pahalgam-attack-victims.html; and Anupreeta Das, Suhasini Raj, and Showkat Nanda, “At Least 24 Tourists Gunned Down by Militants in Kashmir,” New York Times, April 22, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/world/asia/kashmir-terrorist-attack.html.

↝
^100.
For a discussion of China’s nuclear forces buildup and related activities, see Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, and Mackenzie Knight, “Chinese Nuclear Weapons, 2024,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 80, no. 1 (January 2024), https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-01/chinese-nuclear-weapons-2024.

↝
^101.
LOW is a nuclear weapons posture in which a country commits to launching its nuclear missiles immediately after detecting signs of an incoming nuclear attack, and before the enemy warheads arrive and detonate.

↝
^102.
For an assessment of India’s nuclear forces and doctrine, see Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, and Mackenzie Knight, “Indian Nuclear Weapons, 2024,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 80, no. 5 (September 2024), https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-09/indian-nuclear-weapons-2024.

↝
^103.
The term “pre-mating” appears to imply the warhead is not actually mated with the missile but in a near-complete configuration nearby so it can be readied and mated on short notice if needed. The warhead would have to be brought out from storage and mated with the missile in a special handling facility. Kristensen et al., “Indian Nuclear Weapons, 2024,” 329.

↝
^104.
Kristensen et al., “Indian Nuclear Weapons, 2024,” 326. India’s arsenal had increased from roughly 170 weapons in 2024 to around 200 in 2030 (still only roughly a fifth of China’s expanding nuclear stockpile at the time).

↝
^105.
The Nasr is a short-range Pakistani ballistic missile. It reportedly has a range of around 45 miles and is capable of carrying up to a 5 kiloton nuclear warhead. The only major Indian city within the Nasr’s range is Amritsar in Punjab. Many believe Pakistan developed the Nasr with an eye toward complicating India’s nuclear doctrine and its conventional Cold Start operations doctrine. The Nasr was Pakistan’s way of creating a battlefield nuclear capability against Indian forces attempting to conduct Cold Start operations. As former Pakistani army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa declared, “Nasr has put cold water on Cold Start.” Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, “Pakistan’s Nasr Missile: ‘Cold Water’ over India’s ‘Cold Start,’” The Diplomat, January 31, 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/pakistans-nasr-missile-cold-water-over-indias-cold-start.

India developed Cold Start following the December 2001 Islamist terrorist attack on its parliament. As India viewed the risk of triggering a Pakistani nuclear response as precluding its own military’s deep penetration into Pakistani territory, Cold Start called for retaliating against Pakistan by executing multiple rapid, shallow attacks. It assumed it could limit the scope of such attacks sufficiently to deter Islamabad from employing nuclear weapons while securing enough territory to get strong leverage in negotiations to unwind the conflict. This would include securing a firm pledge from Islamabad to cease support for the insurgency in India’s portion of Kashmir. Kyle Mizokami, “The ‘Cold Start’ Doctrine Is How India Plans to Take on Pakistan,” The National Interest, November 14, 2021, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/cold-start-doctrine-how-india-plans-take-pakistan-196236; Franz-Stepan Gady, “Is the Indian Military Capable of Executing the Cold Start Doctrine?,” The Diplomat, January 29, 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/is-the-indian-military-capable-of-executing-the-cold-start-doctrine; “Nasr Missile: Pakistan’s Tactical Ballistic Missile Deterrent Against India’s Cold Start Doctrine,” Monthly Interaction, August 1, 2023; Ankit Panda, “Pakistan Tests Its Nasr Short-Range Ballistic Missile System, Improving Range,” The Diplomat, July 10, 2017, https://thediplomat.com/2017/07/pakistan-tests-its-nasr-short-range-ballistic-missile-system-improving-range.

↝
^106.
Muhammad Faisal, Tanvi Kulkarni, Ruhee Neog, and Saima Aman Sial, “Nukefest 2017 Hot Takes: Potential Indian Nuclear First Use?,” South Asian Voices, March 20, 2017, `https://southasianvoices.org/sav-dc-nukefest2017-potential-indian-nuclear-first-use.

↝
^107.
Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, and Eliana Johns, “Pakistan Nuclear Weapons, 2023,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 79, no. 5 (September 2023): 333, https://thebulletin.org/premium/2023-09/pakistan-nuclear-weapons-2023.

↝
^108.
Kristensen et al., “Pakistan Nuclear Weapons, 2023,” 333.

↝
^109.
Khalid Kidwai, “25 Years of Yom Takbeer: Promoting Peace, Stability and Development,” speech at the Arms Control and Disarmament Centre/Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad meeting, May 24, 2023, https://issi.org.pk/speech-by-lt-gen-retd-khalid-kidwai-advisor-national-command-authority-and-former-dg-spd-on-25th-youme-e-takbeer.

↝
^110.
“Pakistan Refutes Saudi Funding, Weapons Claims,” World Bulletin, November 9, 2013. Cited in Paul Kerr and Mary Beth Nikitin, Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons, RL34248 (Congressional Research Service, 2016), 19, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL34248.

↝
^111.
For an assessment of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and doctrine, see Kristensen et al., “Pakistan Nuclear Weapons, 2023.”

↝
^112.
The Indian government has threatened to suspend the treaty’s provisions once before, following the 2025 terrorist attack by Pakistanis on civilians in Kashmir. “Transcript of Special Briefing by MEA,” Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, April 23, 2025, https://www.mea.gov.in/media-briefings.htm?dtl/39443.

↝
^113.
Prime Minister Mehdi’s remarks are highly reminiscent of those by his country’s former prime minister, Hanif Abbasi, following the April 2025 terrorist attacks on India. Nakul Ahuja, “130 Nukes Aimed at You: Pak Minister’s Open Threat to India as Tensions Flare,” India Today, April 27, 2025, https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/pakistan-minister-hanif-abbasis-open-threat-to-india-as-tensions-flare-130-nukes-aimed-at-you-2715738-2025-04-27.

↝
^114.
The ISI is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing information it deems relevant to Pakistan’s national security, and providing it to the government of Pakistan. It primarily comprises serving military officers drawn on secondment from the three service branches of the Pakistan Armed Forces, the Pakistan Army, Pakistan Navy, and Pakistan Air Force. Hence the name “Inter-Services.”

↝
^115.
Technical assistance from the Russians greatly enhanced India’s ballistic missile accuracy. Indian advanced nuclear weapon designs, to include those employed in the attacks, also benefited from Russian technology transfers.

↝
^116.
China’s advanced alert calls for increasing the percentage of land-based ballistic missiles on high alert from 15 percent to 20 percent.

↝
^117.
A neutron bomb, also known as an enhanced-radiation weapon (ERW), is a thermonuclear weapon. It differs from standard nuclear weapons in that its primary lethal effects come from the radiation damage caused by the neutrons it emits. Toward this end the weapon’s blast and heat effects are reduced. Thus the proportion of the energy released from a neutron bomb in the form of prompt radiation is roughly 50 percent, or roughly an order of magnitude greater than that in a “standard” nuclear weapon. “Neutron Bomb: Why ‘Clean’ is Deadly,” BBC, July 15, 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/395689.stm; and “The Neutron Bomb,” AtomicArchive,https://www.atomicarchive.com/science/fusion/neutron-bomb.html.

↝
^118.
President Clauson formerly served as a state governor and campaigned on a platform that emphasized domestic affairs. Indeed, the previous autumn’s election campaign saw little interest (or debate) on foreign policy or national security issues.

↝
^119.
The term DEFCON is an abbreviation for defense readiness condition or simply defense condition. The US instituted the DEFCON system in 1959, when fear of a surprise Soviet nuclear attack was increasing. The system assigns DEFCON 5 to the lowest readiness state, or everyday peacetime operations, and DEFCON 1 indicates the country is at war. DEFCON 4 is the state of everyday operation for fighting units and increased military intelligence gathering and security preparation. DEFCON 3 finds designated US forces assuming a much higher level of readiness, such as occurred during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The US has ordered nuclear forces to assume DEFCON 2 only once, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. During the alert, over 90 percent of US strategic nuclear delivery systems were ready to launch within an hour. Strategic Air Command, “Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis of 1962,” Historical Study No. 90, Vol. 1, 58, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/dobbs/SAC_history.pdf; and Tiffini Theisen, “DEFCON Levels,” Military.com, January 23, 2023, https://www.military.com/military-life/defcon-levels.html.

↝
^120.
John Newhouse, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age (Vintage Books, 1988), 184. McNamara’s observation brings to mind an exchange in 1957 between General Curtis LeMay, then commander of the US Strategic Air Command, and Robert Sprague, a member of the Gaither Committee. According to Sprague, LeMay declared, “I will know from my own intelligence whether or not the Russians are massing their planes . . . for a massive attack against the United States.” He continued, “If I come to that conclusion, I’m going to knock the shit out of them before they get off the ground.” Sprague responded, “General, that isn’t national policy. . . . You know that.” LeMay, he says, replied, “No, it’s not national policy, but it’s my policy.” Newhouse, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, 280.

↝
^121.
For a discussion of these phenomena, see Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., The Decline of Deterrence (Hudson Institute, 2019), 62–77, https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/the-decline-of-deterrence; and also Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “The Eroding Balance of Terror,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 1 (January/February 2019): 62–74, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/eroding-balance-terror.

↝
^122.
Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 270.

↝
^123.
The Pax Britannica eroded with the breakdown of the continental order that the Congress of Vienna established following the Napoleonic Wars. The decline of the Ottoman Empire (the “sick man of Europe”), the establishment of new nation-states in Italy and (especially) Germany, and the rise of major military and economic powers beyond the so-called Concert of Europe in the form of Japan and the United States contributed to the decline of British industrial supremacy in the late nineteenth century. For a history and analysis of this era, see Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster, 1994), 103–217; Niall Ferguson, Empire (Basic Books, 2002), 222–88; and Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (Random House, 1987), 151–256, especially 198–202.

↝
^124.
For a discussion of the principles behind the balance of power, see Kissinger, Diplomacy, 182.

↝
^125.
Russia’s economic dependence on China recalls its similar dependence on France prior to World War I, which limited its diplomatic flexibility. This dependence deepened greatly during Russia’s war on Ukraine. See “Xi Jinping Has Vladimir Putin over a Barrel,” The Economist, May 12, 2025, https://www.economist.com/china/2025/05/12/xi-jinping-has-vladimir-putin-over-a-barrel; and Margaret MacMillan, The War That Ended Peace (Random House, 2013), 157–58, 201.

↝
^126.
For example, the Congress of Vienna restored the European balance of power following Napoleon’s bid for hegemony. The Congress of Paris ended the Crimean War and resolved the outstanding issues related to the conflict. The Congress of Berlin brought the European powers together following the Russo-Turkish War to restore a sense of equilibrium following Russia’s clear victory in the conflict. The Concert of Europe, which included these and other congresses, was hardly entirely successful. That said, for nearly a century it did much to prevent a major European war.

↝
^127.
Kissinger, Diplomacy, 202.

↝
^128.
Kissinger, Diplomacy, 203.

↝
^129.
Juche is the state ideology of North Korea. It holds that the country must strive for independence or self-sufficiency politically, economically, and militarily. In the 1980s Kim Jong Il refined Juche as a means of leading North Korea (indeed, all of humanity) to a utopian state in which not only is it entirely self-sufficient but it has also achieved mastery over nature itself. Britannica, “Juche,” by Ethan Teekah, last updated April 17, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Juche.

↝
^130.
For a discussion of the implications of parity and assured destruction requirements in a tripolar nuclear system relative to a bipolar system, see Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “The New Nuclear Age,” Foreign Affairs 101, no. 3 (May/June 2022): 92–104, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-04-19/new-nuclear-age.

↝
^131.
Data on US and Russian post–Cold War alert postures is drawn from Hans M. Kristensen and Matthew McKinzie, Reducing Nuclear Alert Rates (United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2012); and Hans M. Kristensen, “Alert Status of Nuclear Weapons,” AIP Conference Proceedings, November 15, 2017.

↝
^132.
Weapons on high alert are those that forces can employ within 30 minutes after receiving authorization. Of course, the lag time between notification of the national command authority that an attack is underway, a response decision, and communication of the decision to a state’s nuclear forces is likely to add significantly to the time between attack initiation and a retaliatory response.

↝
^133.
The assumption is that one DF-41 with eight warheads could destroy both US SSBN bases and all five B-21 bases. The loss of six SSBNs would result in the loss of 384 warheads. The destruction of 120 B-21s would reduce the US deployed nuclear forces by another 120 weapons under STRATFORE counting rules, although each bomber is capable of carrying multiple weapons. Thus total US losses would amount to 504 of its 1,200 deployed weapons. Even if the attacker employed two DF-41s (16 warheads), it would realize a greater than 30:1 exchange ratio.

↝
^134.
In the case of bombers, the term “strip alert” refers to those aircraft that are armed, fueled and ready for immediate takeoff.

↝
^135.
During the 1970s, US defense analysts raised concerns that Soviet ICBMs had, or would soon become, sufficiently accurate to destroy US ICBM silos with far fewer warheads than had previously been the case. These concerns were at the heart of the Committee on the Present Danger, which was a group of leading conservative strategic analysts established in 1976. The committee did not accept the intelligence community’s assessment of the accuracy of Soviet ICBMs. President Gerald Ford’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board supported the committee’s proposal for an independent assessment of Soviet ICBM accuracy. “Team B” conducted this assessment and produced a more pessimistic estimate, one that time showed to be flawed. Pavel Podvig, “The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn’t,” International Security 33, no. 1 (Summer 2008): 118–38, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2008.33.1.118. See also Frank N. von Hippel, “The 1970s ICBM ‘Window of Vulnerability’ Still Lingers,” Arms Control Today, September 2024, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-09/arms-control-today/1970s-icbm-window-vulnerability-still-lingers.

↝
^136.
In this simple analysis, assuming the Chinese employed two DF-41s, each armed with 10 RVs, to destroy the two US SSBN bases and five B-21 bases, they would retain 1,180 deployed strategic weapons. By contrast, the United States would retain 320 SLBM warheads and 600 Sentinel warheads, for a total of 696 weapons. Were the Chinese to employ 376 weapons against the Sentinels, they would retain 584 deployed strategic weapons against 396 for the United States (320 SLBM and 76 ICBM warheads). In both cases, the Russians would retain 1,200 weapons and the North Koreans 80–100.

↝
^137.
At present, the Air Force would require days, perhaps a week, to place its bombers on alert status. Even then, it could sustain only a fraction of them on alert over an extended period. Adam Lowther and Derek Williams, “It’s Time to Put American Bombers Back on Alert,” Breaking Defense, August 26, 2024, https://breakingdefense.com/2024/08/its-time-to-put-american-bombers-back-on-alert.

↝
^138.
During the 1950s, the common view was that tactical or nonstrategic nuclear weapons were those possessing a relatively modest yield (although some weapons were several times more powerful than those the US employed against Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and placed primarily on artillery systems with ranges of only a few dozen kilometers. Planners saw these nuclear weapons as influencing local, or battlefield, military operations. The differentiation between strategic and tactical weapons was initially relatively clear, as forces positioned strategic weapons on long-range delivery systems to strike distant strategic counterforce and countervalue targets inside US and Soviet territory. Basing tactical aircraft, whose range enabled them to reach strategic targets, forward and arming them with nuclear weapons significantly eroded this relatively clear-cut difference. Just as forces can employ so-called tactical nuclear weapons against strategic targets, the same applies to VLY nuclear weapons.

↝
^139.
As early as the Zapad-1999 (“West-1999”) exercise, the Russian military, in response to a NATO attack on the Kaliningrad oblast, conducted a limited nuclear strike with four air-launched cruise missiles. It conducted two live launches of nuclear-capable Tochka-U (SS-21) missiles in Vostok-2010 (“East-2010”) in eastern Russia against the command post of a hypothetical opponent. The Russians apparently believe their large strategic nuclear arsenal will deter an opponent from responding in kind or escalating to large-scale nuclear use and that their employment of tactical nuclear weapons will enable them to terminate a conflict on conditions acceptable toMoscow. Nikolai N. Sokov, “The Evolving Role of Nuclear Weapons in Russia’s Security Policy,” in Engaging China and Russia on Nuclear Disarmament, ed.Cristinia Hansell and William C. Potter (Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2009), 78; Gunnar Arbman and Charles Thornton, Russia’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Part I: Background and Policy Issues (Swedish Defense Research Agency, 2003), 29–30; and Roger McDermott, “Reflections on Vostok 2010: Selling an Image,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 7, no. 134 (July 13, 2010), https://jamestown.org/program/reflections-on-vostok-2010-selling-an-image.

↝
^140.
The commander of US Strategic Forces Command called for a force of 145 B-21s. The bomber has a payload capacity of 12–13 tons. John A. Tirpak, “STRATCOM Chief: Air Force Needs 145-B21s and More New Strategic Systems,” Air and Space Forces, March 18, 2025, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/stratcom-chief-b-21s-lrso-strategic-systems.

↝
^141.
Amy A. Woolf, Conventional Prompt Global Strike and Long-Range Ballistic Missiles: Background and Issues, R41464 (Congressional Research Service, 2019), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R41464.

↝
^142.
Alison A. Kaufman and Brian Waidelich, PRC Writings on Strategic Deterrence: Technological Disruption and the Search for Strategic Stability (CNA, 2023), 30, https://www.cna.org/analyses/2023/04/prc-writings-on-strategic-deterrence.

↝
^143.
Jiang Tianjiao, “The US Nuclear Warfighting Deterrence Strategy: Theory, History and Reality,” Journal of International Security Studies no. 2 (2021): 32–33. Cited in Kaufman and Waidelich, PRC Writings on Strategic Deterrence, 30.

↝
^144.
Kaufman and Waidelich, PRC Writings on Strategic Deterrence, 31.

↝
^145.
That being said, China’s doctrine for employing nuclear forces in particular, and strategic forces in general, is far from transparent. Its NFU policy—“not to be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances” and “not to threaten to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear-weapon states”—has remained a central element of the CCP’s declared policy since it became a nuclear power in 1964. Yet the policy appears to have an expansive view of what constitutes a first-use strategic attack on China. It may include attacks of any type that threaten China’s nuclear forces or their command and control, or attacks that generate effects traditionally associated exclusively with nuclear weapons use. Similar to Russia, China would also likely consider employing nuclear weapons if the overall military situation gravely threatened the CCP’s grip on power. The NFU policy may also call for the Chinese to employ nuclear weapons if an adversary is preparing to launch, or is in the process of launching, a nuclear attack. Toward this end, the PLA has implemented some operational procedures that approximate a LOW posture. Known as “early warning counterstrike,” they call for executing a nuclear strike upon receiving warning that a rival’s nuclear attack is underway. As a recent version of The Science of Military Strategy stated, “To improve the rapid response capability, it is necessary to increase the alertness of the strategic missile force and always maintain a high alert state.” Such a change in nuclear alert posture would bring the PRC into closer alignment with US and Russian postures. Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (US Department of Defense, 2022), 105–6; XiaoTianliang, Lou Yaoliang, Kang Wuchao, and Cai Renzhao, The Science of Military Strategy2020 (National Defense University, 2022), In Their Own Words, trans. China Aerospace Studies Institute, January 2022, 383, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Translations/2022-01-26%202020%20Science%20of%20Military%20Strategy.pdf. See also Kaufman and Waidelich, PRC Writings on Strategic Deterrence, 31.

↝
^146.
The total fertility rate (TFR) is 2.1. It represents the average number of children each woman needs to have in her lifetime to maintain a stable population size, assuming no net migration and constant mortality rates. Thus 1.1 is only roughly half of that needed to sustain a country’s population at its current level. Japan’s TFR in 2024 was 1.15; roughly 30 percent of the population was age 65 or older. South Korea’s TFR hit a world-record low of 0.72 in 2023. Erica Yokoyama, “Japan’s Fertility Rate Hits Record Low Despite Government Push,” Japan Times, June 4, 2025, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/06/04/japan/fertility-rate-low/; Justin McCurry, “Japan Records Lowest Number of Births in More Than a Century as Population Fears Grow,” The Guardian, June 5, 2025,https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/05/japan-records-lowest-number-of-births-in-more-than-a-century-as-population-fears-grow; Chad de Guzman, “Why Birth Rates in South Korea and Japan Just Hit Record Lows,” Time, June 6, 2024, https://time.com/6836949/birth-rates-south-korea-japan-decline; andKathleen Oh, “South Korea’s Plan to Reverse a Population Crisis,” Morgan Stanley, January 14, 2025, https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/south-korea-population-decline-aging-crisis.

↝
^147.
“China’s Demographic Outlook and Implications for 2035,” The Economist Intelligence Unit, January 30, 2024, https://www.eiu.com/n/chinas-demographic-outlook-and-implications-for-2035.

↝
^148.
The preference for males over females is shifting, especially in the developed world where there is a growing preference for girls over boys. “More and More Parents Around the World Prefer Girls to Boys,” The Economist, June 7, 2025, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/06/05/more-and-more-parents-around-the-world-prefer-girls-to-boys.

↝
^149.
As of 2021, China had an estimated 30 million more men than women. Yun Zhou, “Gender Inequality: A Key to Understand China’s Population Decline,” Australian Outlook (blog), Australian Institute of International Affairs, June 1, 2023, https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/gender-inequality-a-key-to-understand-chinas-population-decline.

↝
^150.
The Nine-Dash Line on Chinese maps includes most of the South China Sea. “China: Maritime Claims in the South China Sea,” Limits in the Seas no. 143, US Department of State, December 5, 2014, https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/LIS-143.pdf.

↝
^151.
“A Summary of the 2025 Annual Reports of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds,” Social Security Administration, June 2025, https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum. See also “CBO’s Options to Improve Social Security Solvency,” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, March 22, 2024, https://www.crfb.org/blogs/cbos-options-improve-social-security-solvency.

↝
^152.
Zachary Keck, “The CCP Didn’t Fight Imperial Japan; the KMT Did,” The Diplomat, September 4, 2014, https://thediplomat.com/2014/09/the-ccp-didnt-fight-imperial-japan-the-kmt-did. President Xi Jinping describes the China Dream as working to “spread the Chinese spirit, which combines the spirit of the nation with patriotism as the core, and the spirit of the time with reform and innovation as the core” (my emphasis). Suthichai Yoon, “The China Dream: What Does It Really Mean?” Musings from Thailand (blog), August 3, 2013, http://suthichaiyoon.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-china-dream-what-does-it-really-mean.html. Xi also spoke of a “strong-army dream.” See “Xi Jinping and the Chinese Dream,” The Economist, May 4, 2013, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21577070-vision-chinas-new-president-should-serve-his-people-not-nationalist-state-xi-jinping. Others see it as an attempt by the CCP to further increase its hold on power. As one observer puts it, “The Communist Party already controls much of the reality in China; now it wants to control its people’s dreams.” Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, “The Chinese Dream,” Latitude (blog), New York Times, May 3, 2013, http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/whats-xi-jinpings-chinese-dream. See also Justin McCurry, “China Lays Claim to Okinawa as Territory Dispute with Japan Escalates,” The Guardian, May 15, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/15/china-okinawa-dispute-japan-ryukyu.

↝
^153.
David Sacks, “What Xi Jinping’s Major Speech Means for Taiwan,” Asia Unbound (blog), Council on Foreign Relations, July 6, 2021, https://www.cfr.org/blog/what-xi-jinpings-major-speech-means-taiwan.

↝
^154.
Shannon Tiezzi, “What Did the 20th National Party Congress Tell Us about China’s Taiwan Plans?,” The Diplomat, November 2022, https://magazine.thediplomat.com/2022-11/what-did-the-20th-national-party-congress-tell-us-about-chinas-taiwan-plans.

↝
^155.
Robert D. Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron (Random House, 2014), 143.

↝
^156.
See “Remarks of President John F. Kennedy at the Rudolph Wilde Platz, Berlin, June 26, 1963,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum,https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/berlin-w-germany-rudolph-wilde-platz-19630626.

↝
^157.
In Chinese strategic thought, shi (是) is the latent force and momentum generated by the alignment of favorable circumstances. It is a strategic advantage. “Thus the energy (shi) developed by good fighting men is as the momentum of a round stone rolling down a mountain thousands of feet in height. . . . The wise ruler need not impose his will directly but instead capitalizes on the propensity (shi) inherent in the configuration of forces.” Sun Tsu, The Art of War, trans. Ralph D. Sawyer (Westview Press, 1994), 161; Timothy L. Thomas, The Chinese Way of War: How Has It Changed? (Foreign Military Studies Office, 2020), 37–39; and Roger T. Ames, The Art of Rulership: A Study in Ancient Chinese Political Thought (University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 153.

↝
^158.
Scott Neuman, “US Official: Beijing Preparing for ‘Short, Sharp’ War with Japan,” National Public Radio, February 21, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/21/280698489/u-s-official-beijing-preparing-for-short-sharp-war-with-japan.

↝
^159.
The GBU-57, as it is officially known, is the US military’s largest nonnuclear bomb, at 30,000 pounds and with a yield equivalent to nearly three tons of TNT. It is capable of penetrating up to 200 feet of earth or dozens of feet of reinforced concrete. Its warhead is roughly 6,000 pounds, or 0.06 kilotons. Brandon J. Weichert, “Forget the MOAB: America’s 30,000-Pound GBU-57 Is the ‘Father of All Bombs,’” The National Interest, April 4, 2025, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/forget-the-moab-americas-30000-pound-gbu-57-is-the-father-of-all-bombs; and “GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP),” GlobalSecurity.org, November 15, 2011, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/mop-specs.htm.

↝
^160.
SALT II would have limited the number of ballistic missiles and banned certain types of missiles. It would have capped US and Soviet ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers at 2,250 delivery vehicles. Of these, it would have also limited MIRV delivery systems to 1,320. “Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II (SALT II),” Arms Control Association, accessed October 3, 2025, https://www.armscontrol.org/treaties/strategic-arms-limitation-talks-ii.

↝
^161.
Simon Henderson, “Iranian Nuclear Breakout: What It Is and How to Calculate It,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, March 24, 2021, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/iranian-nuclear-breakout-what-it-and-how-calculate-it; Jennifer Hansler and Kylie Atwood, “Blinken Says Iran’s Nuclear Weapon Breakout Time Is Probably Down to 1–2 Weeks,” CNN, July 19, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/19/politics/blinken-nuclear-weapon-breakout-time; and Amir Daftari, “Iran Lawmaker Urges Nuclear Breakout If US Talks Fail,” Newsweek, May 12, 2025, https://www.newsweek.com/iran-lawmaker-nuclear-weapon-breakout-us-talks-2070977.

↝
^162.
New START limited the treaty signatories to a maximum of 700 deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped to carry nuclear weapons. It also placed a ceiling of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped to carry nuclear weapons. “New START Treaty,” US Department of State, June 1, 2023, https://www.state.gov/new-start-treaty.

↝
^163.
“SALT II,” Nuclear Threat Initiative. See also Strobe Talbott, Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II (Harper and Row, 1980), 71–72, 265.

↝
^164.
In 2025 the United States had roughly 5,200 nuclear weapons, and the Russians 5,500. By 2032 they had dismantled nearly all of the so-called retired warheads (around 1,200 Russian and 1,500 American). STRATFORE required the three powers to reduce the number of reserve/non-deployed warheads (some 2,600 and 1,900 for the Russians and Americans respectively) to 800 each. Hans Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight-Boyle, and Kate Kohn, “Status of World Nuclear Forces,” Federation of American Scientists, March 28, 2025, https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces.

↝
^165.
For a comparison of a bipolar versus a tripolar nuclear system, see Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “The New Nuclear Age,” Foreign Affairs 101, no. 3 (May/June 2022): 92–104, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-04-19/new-nuclear-age.

↝
^166.
The British two-power standard required sizing the Royal Navy to match the combined strength of the world’s second and third most powerful fleets.

↝
^167.
At NATO’s 2025 summit, the United States’ allies committed 5 percent of their GDP annually to core defense requirements and defense- and security-related spending by 2035, allocating a minimum of 3.5 percent of GDP to core defense requirements. “Defence Expenditures and NATO’s 5% Commitment,” NATO, June 27, 2025, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49198.htm. See also Lara Jakes, “Goal to Spend More on Militaries Splits NATO Allies,” New York Times, June 5, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/world/europe/nato-defense-ministers-spending.html.

↝
^168.
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., Modernizing the Nuclear Triad: Decline or Renewal? (Hudson Institute, 2021), 38–39.

↝
^169.
See, for example, Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “The Big One: Preparing for a Long War with China,” Foreign Affairs 103, no. 1 (January/February 2024): 106–8, 112–13.

↝
^170.
“We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.” J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Atomic Weapons and American Policy,” Foreign Affairs 31, no. 4 (July 1953): 529, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/robert-oppenheimer-atomic-weapons-american-policy.

↝
^171.
Thomas Schelling, “Surprise Attack and Disarmament,” Bulletin of theAtomic Scientists 15, no. 10 (1959): 413–14, https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.1959.11454030.

↝
^172.
Albert Wohlstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” RAND Corporation, 1958, https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P1472.html.

↝
^173.
Robert S. McNamara, “Commencement Address at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (‘No Cities’),” Department of State Bulletin 47, no. 1202 (July 9, 1962): 64. McNamara declared that “the US has come to the conclusion that to the extent feasible, basic military strategy in a possible general nuclear war should be approached in much the same way that more conventional military operations have been regarded in the past. That is to say, principal military objectives, in the event of a nuclear war stemming from a major attack on the Alliance, should be the destruction of the enemy’s forces, not of his civilian population.”

↝
^174.
Amit R. Saksena, “The Paradox of India’s ‘Credible Minimum Deterrence,’” The Diplomat, August 6, 2014, https://thediplomat.com/2014/08/the-paradox-of-indias-credible-minimum-deterrence.

↝
^175.
Gabriel Honrada, “India Drifting Away from Minimum Nuclear Deterrence,” Asia Times, September 2, 2024, https://asiatimes.com/2024/09/india-drifting-away-from-minimum-nuclear-deterrence.

↝
^176.
Sitara Noor, “Pakistan’s Evolving Nuclear Doctrine,” Arms Control Today, October 2023, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2023-10/features/pakistans-evolving-nuclear-doctrine.

↝
^177.
The term refers to President Abraham Lincoln’s assessment of General George McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln found him to have a bad case of “the slows”—to prove exceedingly sluggish in responding to developments at both the operational and tactical levels of war. Tom Wicker, “A Case of ‘the Slows,’” New York Times, October 30, 1988, https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/30/books/a-case-of-the-slows.html.

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Lighting the Path Ahead: Scenario-Based Planning in the Tripolar Nuclear Age

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