NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Intro: As weapons limits expire, the scene is set for a new nuclear arms race between the US and Beijing

Around midday on October 30, 1961, a Soviet plane flying above the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya dropped the most powerful nuclear bomb ever created.

The USSR’s “emperor bomb” was 3,000-times more powerful than the US atomic attack that killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima two decades earlier. On explosion, it unleashed a six-mile-wide fireball and a mushroom cloud that loomed more than 40 miles into the sky. And the Soviets were testing it at only half of its designed capacity.

Since then, decades of negotiations and arms-control treaties have massively reduced American and Russian warhead arsenals, with neither side testing a nuclear bomb in more than three decades.

But the last of these bilateral agreements has expired – and, with it, hopes that the nuclear arms race had been consigned to the history books.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which capped the number of deployed nuclear warheads held by the US and Russia, has now come to an end.

It is the first time since the 1970s that the two powers have had no agreement in place without at least negotiations for a new treaty under way.

At a time of huge geopolitical upheaval, analysts and diplomats are concerned that the stage is set for a new nuclear arms race – one that could prove even more dangerous than the world has seen before.

This is because the competition will not just be confined to Russia and the US.

China has also been developing nuclear weapons at a startling trajectory. It has more than doubled its stockpile of warheads over the last six years.

A three-way race will be hugely destabilising for the world order. If America tries to build an arsenal large enough to deter its twin foes at once, it will spur an even more dramatic increase in their respective stockpiles.

The director of the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), says that although this is the end of an era, it is not the end of arms control “but it is definitely the end of arms control as we know it.”

Smaller nuclear powers such as Britain and France will also face pressure to bulk up, particularly at a time when US security guarantees feel less reliable. And there will likely be a proliferation of new nuclear states.

Donald Trump has insisted for decades that he wants denuclearisation. But he seems to have no strategy in delivering this. His plans to build a new missile defence system – which he refers to as the “Golden Dome” – are only fanning the flames.