On 5 February 2026, the New START treaty expired. For the first time since SALT I negotiations began in 1969, no binding agreement constrains the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia—states that together hold roughly 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons. The only multilateral framework still standing is the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, a regime whose core bargain—disarmament in exchange for non-proliferation—is now more hollowed-out than ever. Days later the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds before midnight, the closest it has ever been to symbolic catastrophe. The question confronting strategists, diplomats and citizens alike is stark: how dangerous is the situation, and can anything be done about it?
A thin thread of hope appeared when, on the margins of the second round of U.S.-brokered Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi, Russian and American negotiators acknowledged the need to begin nuclear-arms discussions “as soon as possible”. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that “both parties will take responsible positions”. Simultaneously, Washington and Moscow agreed to re-establish high-level military-to-military communication. These are welcome signals. But two things stand out: the talks are embryonic, with neither verification arrangements nor force-level caps even under discussion; and China—whose nuclear stockpile has more than tripled in five years, from the low 200s to over 600 operational warheads, on track for 1,000 by 2030—is conspicuously absent. Beijing continues to reject trilateral negotiations, arguing that its arsenal remains far smaller than those of the two nuclear superpowers.
Into this vacuum, President Trump has injected a further destabilizing variable: the Golden Dome, an ambitious space-and-ground-based missile-defense system intended to render the United States (almost?) impermiable to ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missile attack. Congress has already appropriated over 13 billion dollars for the program in fiscal year 2026, though independent estimates suggest the full system could cost upward of a trillion dollars over two decades.
The strategic logic is familiar and troubling. It reprises the tension that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was designed to manage. That treaty codified a fundamental insight: if either superpower capability could shield itself from retaliation, the other’s second-strike capability—the bedrock of deterrence—would be fatally undermined, and incentives for a pre-emptive first strike would grow. When the United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002, claiming a need to shield itself from rogue-state (North Korea, Iran) attack, it reopened the offence–defense spiral. Golden Dome threatens to accelerate it dramatically.
Russia is already responding asymmetrically. In October 2025, President Putin announced the successful test of the Poseidon—a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed autonomous torpedo designed to devastate coastal regions with radioactive tsunamis, explicitly conceived to bypass any conceivable missile-defense architecture. Putin described its destructive power as exceeding the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile. Russia has also tested the Burevestnik nuclear-capable cruise missile and, according to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and U.S. intelligence sources, is developing nuclear anti-satellite weapons for deployment in low-Earth orbit—a direct violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Meanwhile, China is building its own full nuclear triad: land-based ICBMs (including extensive new silo fields), the JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile on Type 094 submarines, and an air-delivered component via the H-6N bomber—complemented by hypersonic glide vehicles and a fractional orbital bombardment system.
In addition, there is media reporting of the US already acting on freeing itself from the New START limitations, including renewed missile deployments on its Ohio class nuclear submarines.
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) — the grim equilibrium that prevented great-power nuclear war throughout the Cold War — rested on a specific condition: each side’s certainty that a first strike could not prevent a devastating retaliatory blow. That certainty demanded transparency (arms-control treaties and verification), communication (hotlines, risk-reduction centers), and above all a rough parity of vulnerability. All three pillars are now eroding.
Without New START’s data exchanges and on-site inspections, neither Washington nor Moscow can be confident about the other’s posture; worst-case planning will fill the vacuum. The pursuit of missile defense actively undermines mutual vulnerability—which is precisely why Russia treats Golden Dome not as a shield but as the enabling infrastructure for a first strike. And the emergence of China as a third major nuclear power introduces what game theorists call the “three-body problem”: bilateral stability calculations break down when each party must simultaneously deter two potential adversaries whose interests may diverge.
Compounding this, the integration of emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, offensive cyber operations—into nuclear command, control and communications raises the spectre of miscalculation. Automated decision-support tools may compress decision times and generate opaque recommendations that leaders feel pressured to follow, especially under duress. Cyber intrusions into early-warning systems could produce false positives or mask genuine attacks, eroding confidence in the very information on which deterrence depends.
The result is an increasingly brittle strategic environment. Traditional arms-control frameworks, designed for a bipolar world of relatively slow-moving technological change, are ill-equipped to regulate a fluid tripolar system permeated by dual-use technologies. Verification becomes harder when the same satellite network that supports civilian communications and weather monitoring also enables precision targeting and real-time battlefield awareness. Distinguishing between conventional and nuclear delivery systems, or between defensive and offensive cyber tools, becomes conceptually and practically fraught.
Can strategic stability be reconceived for a tripolar nuclear world? Several alternatives to classic MAD have been mooted. A “minimum deterrence” regime, in which all three powers agree to maintain only enough warheads to guarantee retaliation, would reduce numbers and lower the salience of first-strike calculations—but requires a degree of mutual trust that currently does not exist. A “mutual assured protection” model, in which defensive systems are shared or made transparent, was briefly discussed in Reagan-era negotiations but remains utopian. More practical might be a layered approach: bilateral U.S.–Russian ceilings (as a successor to New START), parallel U.S.–China confidence-building measures, and technology-specific constraints on destabilizing systems such as hypersonic glide vehicles, space-based weapons and autonomous nuclear platforms. None of this is easy. But history shows that arms control has sometimes advanced precisely when tensions were highest—SALT I was negotiated during the Vietnam War and the Prague Spring.
There is, however, a darker possibility. If the Trump administration judges strategic nuclear stability with Russia to be its overriding priority, it may calculate that the price of re-engagement is a settlement in Ukraine that overwhelmingly favours Moscow. The Abu Dhabi format—where nuclear talks and Ukraine peace discussions run on parallel tracks—lends itself to precisely this kind of strategic linkage. In blunt terms: would Washington trade Ukrainian sovereignty for Russian willingness to negotiate a new arms-control architecture? The risk is real, and European capitals know it.
For Kyiv, such a bargain would be a bitter repetition of history. Ukrainians remember that, under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, they surrendered the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for guarantees of their territorial integrity from, among others, Russia and the United States. To see their fate once again subordinated to great-power nuclear bargaining would further erode the already fraying norm that aggression should not be rewarded. It would also send a corrosive signal to other states contemplating whether nuclear weapons are, in fact, the only reliable insurance policy against invasion.
This calculus is already accelerating European debates about an independent nuclear deterrent. France’s President Macron has proposed extending France’s nuclear umbrella to cover European allies; Germany, Poland and the Baltic states have signaled interest in exploring alternatives to sole reliance on Washington. Yet developing a credible European deterrent—whether by expanding France’s 300 warheads into a continental role, or through deeper Franco–British nuclear coordination—poses immense technical, political and financial challenges, and would take a decade or more. In the interim, Europe’s most realistic course is to strengthen conventional forces so that the nuclear threshold remains as high as possible, while beginning the long conversation about what a post-American nuclear guarantee might look like.
This debate intersects with broader questions of European strategic autonomy. Any move towards a more independent European nuclear posture would have to grapple with the constraints of existing treaties, domestic political resistance in key member states, and the risk of fragmenting NATO cohesion. At the same time, failure to at least explore options risks leaving Europe permanently exposed to the vicissitudes of U.S. domestic politics. The credibility of deterrence ultimately depends not only on capabilities but on perceived will, and that perception has been badly shaken.
These strands converge in the Arctic. Trump’s insistence that Greenland is essential to Golden Dome’s architecture—Pituffik Space Base already hosts early-warning radars tracking polar missile trajectories—has created a crisis in alliance cohesion even as it underlines the island’s strategic centrality. A deal announced at Davos between Trump and NATO Secretary-General Rutte may defuse the immediate sovereignty dispute, but the underlying tension remains: America wants Greenland for its own continental defense; Europe needs it as part of a cooperative NATO deterrence framework that includes monitoring Russia’s Northern Fleet and its sea-based nuclear forces operating out of the Kola Peninsula.
The Arctic is also where climate change, resource competition and militarization collide. Melting sea ice is opening new shipping routes and access to hydrocarbons, drawing commercial and strategic interest from China as well as from Arctic states themselves. Dual-use infrastructure—ports, airfields, satellite ground stations—can serve both civilian and military purposes, blurring lines and complicating crisis management. In such an environment, the deployment of missile-defense assets or anti-satellite capabilities takes on a wider geopolitical resonance, signaling not just deterrence but potential coercion.
If Washington’s nuclear priorities lead it to subordinate European concerns—on Ukraine, on alliance governance, on Arctic security—to a bilateral (or eventually trilateral) great-power bargain, the cohesion of the Western alliance will face its most severe test since Suez. Europeans will have no choice but to invest simultaneously in solidarity with Ukraine, autonomous defense capabilities, and a credible voice in whatever new nuclear order emerges. Eighty-five seconds is not much time.
Michael Sahlin