For the first time in more than half a century, the United States and Russia — together holding around 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons — are facing one another with no formal limits on their nuclear arsenals. The expiration of the last remaining arms control framework has sparked global fears that a new nuclear arms race may be underway.
For 15 years, the New START treaty capped each side’s deployed strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550 and imposed limits on intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. It also played a crucial role in ensuring transparency and predictability in nuclear relations. That era has now ended.
The timing could hardly be worse. China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are all expanding their arsenals, while new weapon systems and technologies threaten to further destabilize an already fragile balance.
Against that backdrop, European allies are beginning to question whether they, too, need to strengthen their existing nuclear capabilities.
With the threat from Russia growing and concerns mounting over possible U.S. disengagement, European countries are debating options for joint nuclear deterrence. France and the United Kingdom, two of the world’s nine nuclear-armed states, are already moving to deepen bilateral cooperation.
The Parliament spoke with Darya Dolzikova, senior fellow for proliferation and nuclear policy at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), to explore the future of nuclear risk and deterrence.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The nuclear weapons pact between the U.S. and Russia just expired. In the absence of a new agreement, are we at risk of a new arms race?
This is the last arms control agreement that exists between Russia and the U.S., and it is kind of the end of more than 50 years of arms control infrastructure, so it's certainly concerning, especially considering the state of geopolitical affairs.
Now, there are certainly drivers on both sides for increasing strategic nuclear capabilities. For the United States, the primary concern is the growing Chinese arsenal. Historically, it has only had to think about how to defend against Russian nuclear weapons. But now, it is increasingly having to think about how to defend against two nuclear peers going forward. For that reason, there are many in the U.S. government that argue for greater investments in strategic nuclear capabilities to be able to match both challenges.
On the Russian side, they have long been worried about attacks by the U.S. on their strategic capabilities, both using nuclear means but conventional capabilities. And NATO is rearming conventionally quite significantly. So, the Russians are worried about the survivability of their strategic assets, which could drive them to look to produce more. But also, they seem to be worried about the ability of their current assets to penetrate Western air defenses. So that's why you see the development of what the Russians call ‘novel nuclear systems,’ including the Poseidon and the Burevestnik cruise missiles, both of which are nuclear powered.
Having said that, these are very expensive and complicated systems to develop, so this isn't going to happen overnight. Thus, while the drivers are there, they'll probably be limited by the practicalities of what an arm's race actually means.
Is nuclear deterrence losing its effect?
You could argue both ways based on the data that we have or rather don't have. Inherently, it's very difficult to prove that nuclear deterrence works, because you're trying to prove a negative. ‘Was a decision not made because the country that was making it was afraid of a nuclear response?’
But if you look at the war in Ukraine, you could credibly argue that the provision of support by Western governments to Ukraine was slower than it would have been if NATO Western governments were not afraid of a nuclear escalation or a nuclear response from Russia. You could also argue that maybe Russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine kept its nuclear weapons. On the flip side, you could also argue that, first of all, if Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons, we would be in a very different state of play.
Yet if you look at some of the debates that we're having in Europe now, more and more countries are coming out and vocalizing their anxieties over what they perceive as a certain loss of credibility of the U.S. extended deterrence and an expectation for the U.S. and for the U.K. to step up the role of their nuclear deterrence. The fact that we've been having those conversations, to me, points that actually a lot of states do still see salience in nuclear deterrence.
How are the Russian threat and U.S. disengagement from Europe reshaping nuclear deterrence?
The U.S. has not indicated that it is going to pull back its extended nuclear deterrent over Europe. But it has already said that it expects Europe to carry most of the defense responsibility for NATO by 2027. There were some plans to draw back some U.S. troops as well. All those things have direct implications on the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence, particularly if we do end up seeing, and there's no direct indication for the moment that we will, but if we end up seeing a U.S. drawback of advanced conventional supporting capabilities, so things like intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, or air defense capabilities. That degrades deterrence, but more broadly, when you combine this kind of talk from the Americans — accusations of European freeloading, threats against the sovereignty of NATO allies’ territory — that really seriously has degraded the political credibility of U.S. extended deterrence. And political credibility is really the foundation of extended deterrence.
Europe is trying to move toward more military independence. What should it prioritize to develop a credible nuclear deterrent?
There are only two European nuclear states: the U.K. and France. I think the addition of a new European nuclear state is a non-starter. First, for practical reasons. None of these states have the technical know-how, nor the infrastructure in other parts of Europe to develop nuclear weapons. But non-nuclear allies have a different role to play in the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. And they do have an important role to play. And that is in making sure that the conventional capabilities are up to par. To make sure that we can defend against Russia and deter Russia up to the nuclear threshold, and to make credible to Russia that we are able and that we're willing to escalate along the conventional ladder potentially to a point where nuclear use then becomes credible by the French and by the British and potentially by the United States depending on what the conflict looks like.
Since last year, we have had the U.K.–France Nuclear Steering Group. How coordinated are we at European level?
There's a lot of room for growth in strengthening nuclear deterrence in the European context. The Russians think quite holistically across the deterrent spectrum, so they think of strategic deterrence as opposed to conventional versus nuclear deterrence. And I do believe that puts us at a slight disadvantage with regards to deterring Russia.
We have NATO, so we have to coordinate across various allies, including three nuclear-armed allies that have very different strategic cultures, and understandings of how their nuclear capabilities fit into their broader strategic thinking. The French in particular are very adamant about keeping their nuclear deterrent not only independent but to firewall it from their conventional capabilities. Plus, they're not part of the nuclear planning group within NATO, so that makes coordination across conventional nuclear capabilities and thinking within the NATO alliance quite challenging.
There's also a lot of southern European states which don't feel completely comfortable with the idea of closer integration between the conventional and the nuclear side of things. But I think there is room for further cooperation, coordination. You can see that the French have actually been quite impressively forward leaning in the last few years in terms of their willingness to engage with allies on nuclear issues. The Northwood Declaration is a really good example of that.
Ultimately, the fact that we can have these conversations with the French as well as the Americans is important. It also sends a strong message to our adversaries, that we are thinking about nuclear deterrence in a European context, even if the Americans aren't in the room.
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