What You Need to Know: A recent Center for New American Security (CNAS) study, sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), highlights the U.S.'s vulnerabilities in managing nuclear escalation risks with China. Unlike the Cold War dynamic with the Soviet Union, the U.S. and China lack open communication and coordination over nuclear forces.

-China’s expanding arsenal of non-strategic nuclear weapons, unrestricted by treaties like the defunct INF, gives it an edge in regional conflicts. The U.S.'s limited capabilities in this domain could tempt it to escalate to strategic nuclear weapons, risking catastrophic consequences.

-The report warns that China’s dominance in non-strategic nuclear warfare creates a dangerous imbalance.

America’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) recently sponsored the Center for New American Security (CNAS) to conduct a deep-dive study into the U.S. military’s preparedness for potential nuclear escalation with China in a possible future war scenario. The team at CNAS made a stark conclusion. According to the think tankers, “The United States is currently ill-equipped in its concepts and capabilities to manage escalation risks in the emerging Indo-Pacific era.”

They made these conclusions at a time in which the prospects of great power warfare, specifically between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), were the greatest they’ve been in years. Unlike the Cold War between the United........

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