Abstract

In 1996, renowned U.S. defense expert Fred Iklé proposed that the nuclear drama of the past decades had entered its more volatile second act. Soon after, the term “second nuclear age” began to be widely used among nuclear strategists. Unlike the first age, marked by bipolar competition with the Soviet Union, the main challenge of the second age would come from belligerent regional powers equipped with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and ballistic missile technology. However, this era was not thought to last forever—for Professor Colin Gray, even in 1996, wrote the “second nuclear age can be seen as a period of interregnum between irregular cyclical surges in the kind of great power rivalry that organizes many strands in the course of strategic history.” Judging by the language of recent U.S. strategic documents, it seems that this interregnum may now be at its end—possibly hailing the dawn of what can be seen as a third nuclear age, this time including China as a great power as well as Russia. The latest U.S. National Defense Strategy highlighted the reemergence of great power competition as the main cause of global disorder; in the words of Secretary of Defense James Mattis, “great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of US national security.” The dramatic deterioration of the global threat environment and the return of great power rivalry similarly