On October 22, Foreign Policy published a biweekly column featuring Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and New American Engagement Initiative senior fellow Emma Ashford assessing the latest news in international affairs.
In this column, they discuss China’s new FOBS delivery system amid the country’s broader nuclear buildup, debate the viability of lasting arms control, and outline implications of an arms race – or war – with China.
The United States needs to accept it may be returning to a more equitable state of affairs, one in which mutual deterrence is maintained, at the cost of the United States no longer being so far ahead of the pack [in near nuclear primacy].
The real choice is to allow revisionist autocracies to build weapons that will threaten the United States, its allies and partners, and the rules-based system – or build the forces needed to deter Russian and Chinese aggression.