Nuclear Weapons and Trilateral Superpower Competition — Global Security Review

After the Cold War, there was a great deal of intellectual confusion about nuclear weapons, nuclear strategy, and the rationale for nuclear weapons. After the Cold War ended, people around the world believed that this was the end of great power competition; there would be no more threat of major conventional or nuclear war between the great powers. The international system had fundamentally changed to a unipolar world. Humans had fundamentally changed, and that was the end of history. For historians, the end of the Cold War would not have mattered much in the larger history of human conflict.

The aggression of Russia and China, two revisionist countries, today reminds the world of the normality of war in human existence. The United States, the leader of the free world, must once again deter authoritarian regimes from engaging in this aggression. But this time, it is no longer in the same dominant position as before.

U.S. nuclear deterrence plays a critical role in managing the modern international system, the latest iteration of which is tripolar. While many analysts in the arms control and disarmament community accuse those in the deterrence community of “Cold War thinking,” they are making grossly inaccurate assertions that misrepresent reality. The Cold War, which brought much of the world to the brink of a nuclear exchange, generated unprecedented strategic thinking about how to manage great-power relations and deter wars between them.

The concepts underlying deterrence—second strike, damage limitation, escalation control, delegation of authority, and many others—are concepts that remain relevant today and require careful consideration as the tripolar era advances. The implications of new technologies such as effective missile defenses, hypersonic gliding vehicles, and drones could change perceptions in unexpected ways.

More than a decade ago, academics and think tanks were warning governments about the imminent return of great-power competition in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific. The study of history has one advantage: it allows us to spot trends without assuming that they will repeat themselves. But the constancy of human nature makes Thucydides’ warnings as relevant today as they were 2,500 years ago.

It is time to rethink how to apply the classical strategic theories and concepts that helped navigate the first nuclear age. They can help the West navigate successfully through this era of tripolar superpower competition.

The bipolar construction of the Cold War was a unique development in history. This construction of two nuclear superpowers competing for global influence was the new dynamic of what international great power competition historically looked like. What appeared to be a global competition was, in reality, a regional competition centered on Western Europe and NATO, with second- and third-order effects for the rest of the world. The Asia-Pacific primarily suffered the consequences and interests of the Cold War.

It is difficult to think about concepts such as strategic stability, deterrence, extended deterrence, and arms control (developed during the Cold War) when the West is contemplating confrontation in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. This is especially important as China intensifies its aggressive activities in the South China Sea, expands its nuclear arsenal, and builds a military specifically designed to defeat the United States.

The prospect of great-power war raises the question of how America’s postwar alliances, formed at the dawn of the nuclear age, might endure and function in such a world. The strategic concepts and connotations of the first nuclear age will have to be rethought to formulate strategies that reassure allies and deter adversaries. Ultimately, the credibility of America’s extended deterrence may not endure as the world enters a period resembling what William Walker has called nuclear disorder.

Walker suggests that the establishment of the nuclear order in the late 1960s relied on framed systems of deterrence and abstinence. The former was a system in which a set of recognized states would continue to use nuclear weapons to prevent war and maintain stability, but in an increasingly controlled and regulated manner. There was a degree of familiarity in the dyadic deterrence relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Nuclear abstinence was a system in which other states gave up their sovereign rights to develop, possess, and use such weapons in exchange for economic, security, and other benefits. This system was accompanied by the establishment of a nuclear umbrella and a stable Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It was a system in which not only the possession but also the use of nuclear weapons was controlled. According to Walker, the stability and robustness of these two systems provided the justification for many states in the international system to refrain from acquiring weapons and for several key states to rely on prolonged U.S. deterrence for their national survival.

Several elements characterize the nuclear order and underpin the structural foundations of the credibility of this extended deterrence. First, the number of nuclear-armed states is relatively small. Second, nuclear weapons are no longer viewed as more powerful and capable conventional weapons, as they once were. Third, there are strict norms prohibiting the possession and use of nuclear weapons. Fourth, U.S. allies are not under existential threat. Fifth, a great-power war is relatively unlikely, even with Russian threats.

In the mid-2000s, the nuclear order began to unravel. This process was accelerated by the invasion of Ukraine and China's nuclear breakthrough. It became necessary to rethink the theory and strategic concepts that had helped us through the first nuclear era. After all, the future is a long time away.

There are still many known unknowns and perhaps even more unknowns. What is known is that no other weapon has the gravitational pull of nuclear weapons. It is therefore important to adapt strategic theory and concepts to address a dangerous era of international politics that is not well understood. Despite idealistic claims that war and nuclear weapons can or will cease to exist, conflict is a fundamental part of humanity, and the technology to wield it continues to proliferate. The goal should be to become smarter at deterring it. Nuclear weapons and strategic theory help achieve this goal.

Christine Leah, Ph.D., is a fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. The views expressed are her own.