Threats and Challenges of the Nuclear Arms Race on the Current Stage

Abstract

Contemporary issues of nuclear weapons and the nuclear arms race in the modern world are examined, based mainly on the assessments of the German “Statista” company, the American Federation of Scientists and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It is emphasized that invented more than seventy years ago, nuclear weapon has not lost its basic qualities of the most massive and large-scale destruction, but also added to this the latest factors of global threat of its proliferation and the challenges of innovative technological advances in its means of delivery. The latter is increasingly imposed on the growing conflict of the modern multipolarworld order, thereby giving impetus to global competition in the accumulation of all forms of nuclear weapons and allocating unprecedented financial resources from nuclear and non-nuclear powers. It is shown that the most fierce competition in the nuclear arms race is developing in the triangle of relations and national interests between the US, Russia and China. On the same fact base, it is argued that China cannot be compared to the other two nations in the accumulated nuclear weapon arsenals, but that its technological positions and growing military potential lead to major changes in the bilateral concepts of international security and even to the termination of a number of Russian-American treaty agreements, above all in development of medium- and short-range ground-based missiles. There is also a gradual transition to a new deployment of forces and global strategies in the field of nuclear arms. World awareness of these changes is needed in a kind of the Swedish proposal on implementation of strategy for the “step-by-step” approach to nuclear disarmament. In general, challenges and threats should stimulate international dialogue in defense of the principle of peace-sharing in a global age