Non-Proliferation in the 2020s By Emma Visentin
Emma Visentin is a final year Master student in International Security Studies at Trento University. Her research interests within geopolitics are area-focused on China and Africa, and on nuclear proliferation as a subject. She is currently a Junior Analyst at Analytica for Intelligence and Security.
How I started worrying about the bomb (again)?
T
he Cold War was marked by the never-ending fear of the nuclear threat and by deterrence strategies, leading to an unprecedented nuclear arms race that could have proved deadly for the entire planet. The collapse of the USSR seemed to have put an end to it, with a significant decline in the number of warheads (from 70,300 in 1986 to an estimated 13,410 in early-2020 [1]) and to frenetic developments in the non-proliferation and arms control domains. But did it really? Or was the world just letting the sleeping dogs lie? This report will analyse the current standing of four main actors in nuclear arms control (the United States, Russia, China and the EU) and examine the contemporary trends that, if not carefully observed, could lead to a renaissance of the nuclear arms race. In international relations, nuclear deterrence is still a “currency of power”: that is, nuclear weapons are still considered both powerful military instruments and means to acquire political influence and prestige [2]. In other words, the nuclear threat was never really gone, but lurking in the shadows.
44 | KCL Geopolitical Risk Forecast Report 2021
The 2020’s started with concern as the last arms control treaty binding the US and the Russian Federation, the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), was to expire in February 2021 with little to no negotiations from either part. President Trump’s aggressive determination in including China [3] determined the entrance of the PRC in the restricted club of arms control negotiators, even though the estimated number [4] of its warheads is extremely small compared to those of the other two. It seems evident that the US considers China a threat, particularly after the 2019 Department of Defence report [5] noted that the PRC was modernizing its arsenal to possibly develop the capability to “launch on warning” of an incoming nuclear attack. However, it is unlikely that China will throw itself in a full-blown nuclear arms race, given that it would need to undertake a massive economic effort to catch up. Up till now, China has repeatedly refused to be part of any arms control agreement [6] as they impose verification mechanisms that would require the disclosure of exact numbers, types and locations of its nuclear warheads, thus endangering its current strategic advantage, based on unpredictability [7]. China does have a No-First-Use policy but has often been often criticized time and time again by Western governments for not being dependable on, even though it has been respected thus far [8]. The underlying risk, given the lack of precise information about its arsenal, is that a
