John R. Bolton served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump and is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”
His intent, of course, was to try to intimidate the United States and its allies aiding Ukraine against Russia’s aggressions. Putin was playing another of his nuclear cards, just as he had with implicit threats to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine or to escalate the ongoing conventional war. Those threats appeared to unnerve NATO leaders, who hesitated to ship weapons requested by Kyiv.
Putin was, sadly, not entirely mistaken about the effect of his announcement: Some in the West bemoaned the impending death of the last major strategic-weapons agreement. But given the growing strength of the Russia-China entente and China’s expanding nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs, Cold War-style, U.S.-Russia arms agreements are not merely inadvisable but dangerous.
While still unclear what “suspending” rather than withdrawing fully from New START means, Putin’s gambit has exposed the real stakes, extending far beyond Ukraine or New START, which was a bad deal when written and unimproved by age.
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End of carouselOpinions on the war in Ukraine after one year
One year ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. Post Opinions is marking the anniversary with columns looking at all that has transpired and what may lie ahead.
Post Opinions partnered with the Brookings Institution to visualize the war’s effects on Ukraine’s economy, immigration trends and more. Together, these indicators suggest the fighting is unlikely to end anytime soon, write Michael O’Hanlon, Constanze Stelzenmüller and David Wessel of Brookings.
The Editorial Board looked for solutions, calling on the United States and its European allies to intensify their military, economic and diplomatic support for Kyiv. Vladimir Putin hopes for a stalemate, the Editorial Board writes, and the West needs to fuel a game-changing shift in momentum.
In an op-ed adapted from her Feb. 9 speech at the “Rebuilding Ukraine, Rebuilding the World” conference at Harvard, Oleksandra Matviichuk writes that it is not only wrong but also immoral not to provide weapons for Ukraine.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling describes the Ukraine war as a slugfest, not a stalemate. He outlines five phases of the war and predicts that Ukraine’s forces will ultimately prevail.
Columnist Jason Willick looks at the war through the lens of U.S. politics. President Biden, he says, is positioned to take advantage of divided government by using as his foil Republicans who oppose continued support for Ukraine.
Antony Beevor, a former tank commander with the British Army, says the Ukraine war has revived the role of the main battle tank.
Columnist David Ignatius examines three main characters of the war: Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky and Joe Biden. A year into the war, Ignatius writes, Putin’s staying power begins to seem questionable, while Zelensky and Biden have never looked stronger.
Columnist George F. Will discusses the importance of continued support for Ukraine, writing that Putin can win only if Ukraine’s allies neglect to maximize their moral and material advantages.
Graham Allison, a professor of government at Harvard, reconsiders what it would mean to win in Ukraine. A new Cold War, he writes, might not be the worst outcome.
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By addressing only strategic and not tactical nuclear weapons, the treaty effectively ratified a huge existing Russian advantage. New technologies — such as hypersonic missiles — have rendered it obsolete. In 2021, President Biden erred in extending New START for five years, locking in Moscow’s advantages. Even the White House now concedes Russia has significantly violated the treaty.
These flaws, however, pale before the emerging tripolar nuclear world’s complexities. China clearly understands this reality, and no doubt that is why it has refused to join any negotiations over a New START successor. Chinese President Xi Jinping likely is aiming to increase his nuclear assets until it is too late for negotiations to restrain their growth. The Post reported in 2021 on a “building spree” revealed by satellite imagery showing China’s construction of more than 100 silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles. The commander of U.S. nuclear forces told Congress in 2021 that a “breathtaking expansion” of China’s nuclear weapons program was underway.
The United States and Russia possess much larger nuclear stockpiles than China’s, but the important point is Beijing’s drive toward deployed weapons. The New START agreement, in theory, limited the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads; last year, the Pentagon projected that China would have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035, imminently in nuclear terms. No wonder silo construction is in overdrive.
The previous basically bipolar nuclear world was far simpler, strategically and operationally. The foundational U.S. nuclear doctrines and deterrence strategies assumed one main nuclear adversary. Unfortunately, what we “knew” during the Cold War is wholly insufficient today. Now facing two major nuclear adversaries, the United States must urgently recalibrate its warhead and delivery-system requirements in multiple, new, uncharted scenarios.
Consider two such possibilities. We could, for example, face a nuclear confrontation with Russia, after which, assuming we emerged “victorious,” we immediately faced a second nuclear confrontation with China. Another potential crisis could have us confronting a China-Russia axis, menacing us and our European and Asian allies simultaneously.
Before engaging in further strategic-arms diplomacy, Washington must decide fundamental issues of how large U.S. nuclear assets must be to face two adversaries. It would be suicidal to argue that the United States could make do with all three countries at equal warhead levels, a result typical of arms-control agreements. But how many more deliverable nuclear warheads would the United States need for self-defense and to establish deterrence? How many more weapons would be optimal, or even minimally sufficient? Equal to the combined Moscow-Beijing total, or more?
And don’t forget that North Korea, Iran and other aspiring nuclear-weapons states almost certainly see Russia and China as friendly nations, and the United States and its nuclear-armed allies Britain and France as enemies.
Enormously consequential strategic questions such as these, with far-reaching ramifications for the U.S. nuclear posture, anti-missile assets and defense budget, are here now. These life-and-death decisions are much more urgent for defending the United States than arms-control deals. Better to have the arms in hand, and then, if we choose, limit them, than not to have enough, allowing Moscow and Beijing to dictate future relations.
We also need our allies to engage, this time globally; it won’t be sufficient for the United States to deal with NATO on one hand or a series of bilateral, hub-and-spoke Indo-Pacific alliances on the other. China’s coming attainment of peer status as a nuclear power, and its entente with nuclear-superpower Russia, is a global threat. For making the urgency clear, thank you, President Putin.