The American director of the annual threat assessment of the National Director of National Intelligence (DNI), published on March 25, is thinking. Despite a change in government, the strategic threats faced by the United States is intensifying. Most concerning China improves its capacities in the five areas of war, improving its ability to acquire a coercive lever effect against Washington in emerging areas of strategic competition. The deepening of military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow is increasingly undermining the ability of the United States to guarantee its vital interests. Washington must strengthen deterrent in emerging competition areas to counter the joint threat of China and Russia.
The landscape of international security is more and more dangerous. THE Federation of American scientists Recently published the latest estimates of China’s nuclear force. Beijing is now supposed to have 600 nuclear warheads, against only 175 in 2010. 1,500 nuclear warheads Through its lands, its air and its sea -based triad. With increasing cooperation between Beijing and Moscow, the great opponents of the power of Washington now have a combined nuclear force of around 6,200 warheads. This figure is almost double the total size of the forces of the nuclear forces deployed in the United States, which stands at 3,700 warheads.
The current nuclear balance of forces strongly disintegrating the United States. In addition, the emerging tripolar nuclear landscape is unprecedented. Strategically, paradigmatic change in the security landscape presents new challenges in the United States. While President Donald Trump is looking for diplomatic breakthroughs with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the relationship with Beijing Aggrave. In geopolitics, nothing should be taken for granted. Trump’s efforts to form a strategic partnership with Moscow are not guaranteed. The unpredictability and uncertainty of the current strategic landscape can reflect and flow unforeseen. If Trump’s strategic gambit with Putin turns against Putin, this could increase distrust between Moscow and Washington.
Meanwhile, opponents of the United States, whose enmity to Washington is deep and is for a long time, are continuing their current trajectory of improving military and strategic capacities through the range of threats and domains. A situation that implies a less deterministic China is simply unrealistic. Like the DNI report said: “Beijing will continue to strengthen its conventional military capacities and strategic forces, intensify competition in space and maintain its economic and technological economic strategy to compete with American economic power and world leadership.”
Only effective deterrence can contain strategic ambitions from China. However, Washington is currently poorly equipped to dissuade the landscape with two Peer. The United States is more vulnerable to a first nuclear strike than it has never been. This is due to the revolution of emerging military technology and the pure sizes of American opponents.
China and Russia have sufficient nuclear forces together to target crediblely and hold in danger much more than 150 of the largest cities in the United States. Indeed, a first nuclear strike against the United States could impose 130 million American victims. In 2024, China alone owned the long -range nuclear ballistic missile capacity to hold 72,697,923 American civilians in danger. All that it would take to China to inflict unacceptable levels of damage against the United States is that one of its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) can vioder the ballistic anti-missile defense.
In the space, an area on which the United States is based on critical civilian civilians and military, China has now exceeded Russia as the main competitor of Washington. As the DNI report said, “China has overshadowed Russia as a head of space and is about to compete with the United States as a world leader in the deployment space for increasingly competent interconnected multi-caps systems and working towards ambitious scientific and strategic objectives.”
Chinese counter-space capacities are evolving continuously and Beijing’s spatial strategy extends beyond the intelligence, surveillance and recognition capacities (ISR) and includes a range of kinetic assets that can be used to target and strike the United States in orbit, on earth, in the air and at sea. Namely, operational capacities of direct ascent based on space Spatial on the ground which can be used for offensive and defensive purposes. For example, weapons systems such as anti-satellite missiles (ASAT) can destroy satellites in low orbit (Leo), targets striking at distances between 800 and 30,000 kilometers above the earth. In addition, the diversification and expansion of strategic delivery systems of weapons in China indicate that it will continue to improve its military power in the spatial field. An attack on American space assets would have a paralyzing effect in several critical areas, from economic operations to military operations.
In recent years, “RPC has carried out its first fractional orbital launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile with a hypersonic glid vehicle from China,” said a Pentagon report From 2023. “This has demonstrated the greatest distance traveled (~ 40,000 kilometers) and the longest flight time (~ 100 + minutes) of any Chinese land attack weapons to date.”
According to researchers Caitlin Talmadge and Joshua RovnerThe hypersonic glid vehicle tested was also nuclear compatible. They observed that there is no indication that a nuclear weapon had mounted at the top of the fractional orbital bombing system (FOBS) used. Nevertheless, as Talmadge and Rovner said: “[While] China has not mounted a nuclear weapon on the rocket in this test, it could do it in the future. »»
Closer to American soil, China and Russia have carried out joint aerial and naval patrols along the Côte d’Alaska. These operations were carried out with nuclear complacency delivery platforms, also demonstrating their ability to target and threaten American vital interests. In July 2024, two Chinese nuclear H-6 bombers operating in the Alaska air defense identification area were intercepted by the United States and Canadian aviators, which suggests that Chinese incursions in the Arctic are not strictly limited to scientific exploration and economic activities. Accompanied by Russian bombers capable of nuclear TU-95, air patrol was the first time that China and Russia have led a joint patrol Near Alaska.
The DNI report clearly indicates that the popular liberation army has the capacity to make long -term precision strikes against the periphery of the American homeland. Last September, Alaska Senator Dan SullivanWho also sits on the Senatorial Services Committee, said: “While the world becomes more dangerous, Alaska continues to be on the front line of authoritarian assault. The activity coordinated off the coasts of Alaska by the Russians and the Chinese increases. ”
Overall, the threats to which the United States is confronted from its adversaries of great powers are unprecedented in their scope, and the kinetic attacks against American vital interests in several areas can be executed at different levels of intensity of the fight against war. As the DNI report warned, “Cooperation between China and Russia has the greatest potential to pose lasting risks for American interests. Their leaders probably believe that they are more able to counter the American aggression perceived together than only, given the shared belief that the United States seeks to constrain each adversary. ”
In light of the annual DNI threat evaluation report, Washington faces reality that the fact of not improving deterrence could encourage Beijing and Moscow to undertake greater geopolitical risks at the expense of the United States. War in space would have catastrophic consequences, and not to face contradictory threats in the backyard of the United States could encourage China and Russia to intensify their challenge to American vital interests.