The world faces a “third nuclear age”, the head of the Armed Forces has said as he warned that China poses a major threat to the West.
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, said in a speech on Wednesday night that the nuclear stability achieved in the wake of the Cold War was at an end.
He warned that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea all posed a threat, and highlighted Beijing as a particular challenge for the US.
For decades, the nuclear threat from China was not considered significant, but it is now thought to be expanding its arsenal more quickly than any other country and is set to be on a par with the United States and Russia by 2030.
Adml Sir Tony’s comments came just hours after the veterans’ minister said that the British Army would be destroyed in “six months to a year” if it had to fight Russia.
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute’s annual Chief of the Defence Staff lecture, Adml Sir Tony said that the world was “at the dawn of a third nuclear age”.
He said the first nuclear age was the Cold War, a period “defined by two opposing blocs governed by the risk of uncontrollable escalation and the logic of deterrence”.
The second nuclear age was defined by “disarmament efforts and counter-proliferation”, he continued.
However, the situation faced by the world now was “altogether more complex”.
Adml Sir Tony said: “From Russia, we have seen wild threats of tactical nuclear use, large-scale nuclear exercises and simulated attacks against Nato countries, all designed to coerce us from taking the action required to maintain stability.
“China’s nuclear build-up poses a two-peer challenge to the United States. Iran’s failure to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency is a concern, and North Korea’s ballistic missile program and erratic behavior present a regional and, increasingly, a global threat.”
In recent years, China has emerged as a nuclear superpower, building hundreds of new intercontinental ballistic missile silos. By the end of this decade, its stockpiles are expected to grow beyond 1,000 operational nuclear warheads.
