WASHINGTON: The United States may have to deploy more strategic nuclear weapons in coming years to “deter growing threats” from Russia, China and “other adversaries”, a White House aide said on Friday.

Pranay Vaddi, the top National Security Council arms control official, made his comments in a speech on “a more competitive approach” to arms control that outlined a policy shift aimed at pressing Moscow and Beijing to reverse rejections of US calls for arsenal limitation talks.

“Absent a change in adversary arsenals, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required. We need to be fully prepared to execute if the president makes that decision,” he told the Arms Control Association.

“If that day comes, it will result in a determination that more nuclear weapons are required to deter our adversaries and protect the American people and our allies and partners.”

The US currently observes a limit of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads set in the 2010 New START treaty with Russia, even though Moscow “suspended” its participation last year over US support for Ukraine, a move Washington called “legally invalid”.

Vaddi spoke a year after National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the same group there was no need to increase US strategic nuclear arms deployments to counter the arsenals of Russia and China, to which he offered talks “without preconditions”.

The administration remains committed to international arms control and non-proliferation regimes designed to curb the spread of nuclear weapons, Vaddi said. But, he alleged, Russia, China and North Korea “are all expanding and diversifying their nuclear arsenals at a breakneck pace”.

The three and Iran “are increasingly cooperating and coordinating with each other in ways that run counter to peace and stability, threaten the United States, our allies and our partners and exacerbate region tensions”, he said.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2024