{"id":26138,"date":"2026-06-16T09:29:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T09:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/?p=26138"},"modified":"2026-06-16T09:30:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T09:30:04","slug":"new-reports-nuclear-war-with-china-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/16\/new-reports-nuclear-war-with-china-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"New Reports: Nuclear War with China Coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of these regimes [Russia, North Korea, and China], the most dangerous is China, now engaged in the fastest nuclear buildup since the Cold War. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, estimates that the Chinese military “now has around 620 nuclear warheads.”<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“There are, however, two main unknowns,” he also said. “First, there is a new generation of small nuclear warheads revealed in a late 2025 book by China-educated engineer Hui Zhang. Second, the China Military Power Reports do not report the number of smaller ‘theater’ missile warheads in the inventory of the People’s Liberation Army. That number could be large, perhaps close to 1,000.”<\/em><\/p>\n

China’s theater arsenal, Fisher argues, “constitutes a major threat to the Asian democracies.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Dangerous regimes are fast preparing for war. China, Russia, and North Korea are “expanding and diversifying their nuclear arsenals at a breakneck pace, showing little or no interest in arms control,” said Pranay Vaddi, a National Security Council official, in June 2024 at an arms-control conference. These three regimes and Iran, he said, are “increasingly cooperating and coordinating with each other\u2014in ways that run counter to peace and stability, threaten the United States, our allies and our partners, and exacerbate regional tension.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“The risk of nuclear conflict is rising, with the world on the cusp of a nuclear-arms race centered on the Asia-Pacific,”\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0the International Institute for Strategic Studies this month. “China’s expanding military capabilities and North Korea’s growing arsenal are driving the assertive force postures and procurement decisions of regional states and the U.S.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Apart from small additions to the arsenals of India and Pakistan, the only nations increasing deployed nuclear weapons are Russia, North Korea, and China,” Peter Huessy of the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and the Gold Institute for International Strategy told Gatestone last week.<\/em><\/p>\n

Of these regimes, the most dangerous is China, now engaged in the fastest nuclear buildup since the Cold War. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)\u00a0estimates<\/a>\u00a0that the Chinese military “now has around 620 nuclear warheads.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The 620 count is “plausible,” considering the U.S. intelligence community’s assessments in the Pentagon’s China Military Power Reports, Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told this publication the other day.<\/em><\/p>\n

“There are, however, two main unknowns,” he also said. “First, there is a new generation of small nuclear warheads revealed in a late 2025 book by China-educated engineer Hui Zhang. Second, the China Military Power Reports do not report the number of smaller ‘theater’ missile warheads in the inventory of the People’s Liberation Army. That number could be large, perhaps close to 1,000.”<\/em><\/p>\n

China’s theater arsenal, Fisher argues, “constitutes a major threat to the Asian democracies.”<\/em><\/p>\n

As Huessy pointed out, Russia in 1999 decided to build low-yield, super-accurate battlefield nuclear weapons, a “reckless move now also adopted by China.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin has, in a sense, already used these weapons. He threatened their use immediately before his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and he got what he wanted: Western states backed down and did not support Ukraine as they had planned to do.<\/em><\/p>\n

China, when it decides it is ready to go to war, will almost certainly make similar threats against Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, or other states in the region.<\/em><\/p>\n

In fact, China, which has pledged to never use nuclear weapons first, has throughout this decade made threats to do just that. For instance, in July and September of 2021, China threatened to nuke Japan for supporting Taiwan and Australia for joining AUKUS, the submarine-building coalition of Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. In March 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Defense promised the “worst consequences” for countries helping Taiwan defend itself.<\/em><\/p>\n

These threats followed a series of warnings against America, made during the first decade of this century.<\/em><\/p>\n

In our age of rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals and less-than-resolute Western leaders, something is bound to go horribly wrong.<\/em><\/p>\n

“For most of the nuclear age, it was assumed nuclear weapons were instruments of deterrence,” Huessy told me in June 2024. “There has, however, been a sea change in contemplated nuclear weapons use. Now, these weapons in the hands of China, Russia, and North Korea are instruments of coercion and blackmail.” Now-retired U.S. Air Force Gen. John Hyten\u00a0called this<\/a>\u00a0the “escalate to win, escalate to end” strategy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dangerous regimes are fast preparing for war. China, Russia, and North Korea are “expanding and diversifying their nuclear arsenals at a breakneck pace, showing little or no interest in arms control,”\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Pranay Vaddi, then a National Security Council official, in June 2024 at an arms-control conference. These three regimes and Iran, he said, are “increasingly cooperating and coordinating with each other\u2014in ways that run counter to peace and stability, threaten the United States, our allies and our partners, and exacerbate regional tension.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The United States has comprehensively disclosed the size and composition of its arsenal while, as Huessy noted, China, Russia, and North Korea have covered their buildups in secrecy.<\/em><\/p>\n

China is refusing to talk to the United States about arms control. Its refusal to engage led the Trump administration to let New START, the last major nuclear arms-control agreement with the Russian Federation, expire in February. It was simply untenable for America to agree to limits on nuclear weapons with Russia when China was not a party to the treaty.<\/em><\/p>\n

Russia and China have made it clear they are partners, something the pair has repeatedly affirmed. Although the U.S. does not need to maintain parity in warheads with all adversaries to maintain deterrence, a serious imbalance is nonetheless dangerous because it can embolden these bad actors.<\/em><\/p>\n

The combined number of China’s and Russia’s nukes \u2014 not to mention North Korea’s \u2014 is beginning to create the imbalance that could lead to horrible consequences.<\/em><\/p>\n

As SIPRI writes about those consequences, “States are increasingly relying on nuclear weapons as instruments of national power\u2014reversing decades of efforts to reduce the numbers and role of nuclear weapons\u2014even as the risk of miscalculation and escalation are rising.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0egretnewseditor@gmail.com\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of these regimes [Russia, North Korea, and China], the most dangerous is China, now engaged in the fastest nuclear buildup since the Cold War. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, estimates that the Chinese military “now has around 620 nuclear warheads.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47471,"featured_media":26139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[152,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-international-politics","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47471"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26140,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26138\/revisions\/26140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}