The Biggest Nuclear Threats of 2018 Will Follow Us into the New Year
By Joe Cirincione
December 29, 2018
We whistled past the graveyard this year. Let’s be smarter in 2019.
There was some positive news this year — most importantly the decreased possibility of war in Korea — but, overall it was bleak. Let’s get right to it.
1. The New Nuclear Arms Race is the clear winner as the greatest global nuclear threat of 2018. Each of the nine nuclear-armed states is building new weapons and the United States, instead of strengthening the global nuclear safety net, is actively shredding it.
In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced five new nuclear weapons he said Russia was building in response to the U.S. decision to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. All are designed to circumvent defenses. Russia has also deployed a small number of ground-based cruise missiles whose range exceed that permitted by the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that President Ronald Reagan negotiated. In October, President Donald Trump said he would pull out of this arms elimination pact, despite the objections of NATO allies.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/12/biggest-nuclear-threats-2018-will-follow-us-new-year/153838/
