New ‘cold war’ grows ever warmer as the prospect of a nuclear arms race hots up

• Bush met on the cruise ship, Maxim Gorky, off the coast of Malta to declare the end of the cold war.
• With the cold war over, Gorbachev liberalised the Soviet Union, presiding over its dismantling, which formally occurred on December 26 1991.
• To their own people.” Reagan and Gorbachev agreed that a nuclear war couldn’t be won, so must never be fought.
• He has now explicitly threatened to resort to use of nuclear weapons three times since launching his invasion in 2022.

‘Nuclear neolateralism’

• A new Silk Road nexus has emerged across China, Russia, Iran, Israel and North Korea since the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
• This web of relationships is shaped by regional dynamics, strategic interests and global power shifts that influence security and global weapons proliferation.
• But tensions remain along shared borders – and freshly leaked classified papers reveal Russia’s fear of Chinese nuclear attack.
• In February 2023, the leader of the People Power Party, Chung Jin-suk, argued that South Korea needs nuclear weapons.
• Saudi Arabia does not have nuclear weapons, but officials have said that they will acquire them if their regional rival, Iran, becomes nuclear.

A new arms race

• The UN has said that a quantitative arms race seems imminent.
• The latest US nuclear posture review revealed a plan worth US$1.5 trillion (£1.21 trillion) to modernise US nuclear capability and create a “nuclear sponge” of 450 nuclear silos to absorb a future Russian attack.
• Now the UK has announced it will increase its defence budget to 2.5% of GDP to put it on a “war footing”.

Becky Alexis-Martin receives funding from ICAN.