The size of China's nuclear arsenal is increasing, though its pace and objectives remain poorly understood, raising fundamental questions about U.S. deterrence and an arms-control system designed for a different era. Experts disagree sharply on the response — some call for renewed nuclear dominance, others for restraint and eventual disarmament — and no consensus has formed. That's not because the questions are unanswerable. It's because much of the disagreement rests on assumptions experts hold but rarely state out loud. Deterrence and arms control are usually treated as separate issues. They aren't. An arms control agreement is only as sound as the deterrence logic behind it — so progress on one requires clarity on the other. Simultaneously, the stakes are rising: friction in Asia and Europe, the rollout of Golden Dome, and the expiration of New START all raise the cost of the US policy community's continued ambiguity about its own position. Ambiguity comes at a cost. Adversaries may read it as an opening; allies, as unreliability. This report draws on a pilot project run October–November 2025 by the Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (Geneva Graduate Institute) with support from the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ploughshares. Its centerpiece was a one-day workshop held November 17, 2025 in Washington, DC. Roughly twenty experts convened under the Chatham House Rule around three commissioned papers — on crisis scenarios, build-up options, and arms control — to work through these assumptions directly rather than past one another. A second phase, run jointly with MIT's Center for Nuclear Security Policy, follows in 2026–2027. See Section 1.5 for the full workshop structure and Section 1.2 for the wider landscape of expert opinion this project sits within. The findings below are organized around four main messages, which the editors hope will help inform the ongoing debates
The expiration of New START without a successor reflects a strategic environment increasingly difficult to manage through the bilateral frameworks of the past. China’s expanding nuclear capabilities, renewed confrontation between Russia and the West, and new technologies affecting strategic stability raise questions about which actors, capabilities, and risks future arms control should address. These questions are inseparable from deterrence, yet there is little consensus over whether future arrangements should remain bilateral, become trilateral or multilateral, or begin with narrower measures focused on transparency and risk reduction. A joint initiative of the Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) at the Geneva Graduate Institute and MIT’s Center for Nuclear Security Policy, this project brings together expert and policy communities that do not routinely engage with one another to test competing assumptions and explore possible approaches to deterrence, strategic stability, and arms control without presupposing a particular framework or outcome.
The project has been supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), Ploughshares, University of California, and Effektiv Spenden.
Arms control and strategic-stability dialogues helped manage U.S.-Soviet and later U.S.- Russian nuclear competition from the 1960s until New START expired in February 2026 without a successor. Reconstructing that framework is now harder because the strategic environment no longer fits a bilateral model: Russia and the United States retain much larger arsenals, while China is rapidly expanding from a lower base and sees little reason to accept limits that would lock in that asymmetry. Including China in a future arrangement brings its own complications — Moscow may in turn pressfor British and French forces to be counted — while leaving China out lets its arsenal keep growing unconstrained. Missile defense, nonstrategic weapons, verification, and differing perceptions of strategic vulnerability add further points of disagreement. These nuclear questions are also increasingly entangled with wider rivalries — from the war in Ukraine to U.S.-China tensions — that can restrict cooperation even where interests in reducing nuclear risk overlap. The challenge, then, is not simply to replace New START, but to determine what forms of restraint remain possible among three powers with unequal arsenals, different security concerns, and no shared view of what a stable nuclear balance should look like. This project examined possible paths through that problem, using research and facilitated dialogue among nongovernmental experts, conducted in consultation with officials.
The shifting geopolitical landscape since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed both the strengths and fragilities of the transatlantic partnership. NATO has regained salience as a platform for collective defense, even as disagreements over strategy, trade, burden-sharing, and the future U.S. role in Europe have raised questions about the durability of the wider political relationship. This project examines how Europe and the United States might navigate these pressures across several connected dimensions: transatlantic political and security dynamics; European resilience and preparedness; the political economy of mobilization; and the capacity of European and American defense industries to meet growing military requirements. It also examines the risks and consequences of a prolonged arms race, alongside the potential for future arms-control and risk-reduction frameworks. Bringing these strands together, the project explores how political cohesion, economic constraints, industrial capacity, deterrence, and restraint interact in shaping the future of European security.
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The Global Dynamics and European Security (GDES) Project stands out for its distinctive focus on the post-war security architecture involving the United States, Russia, and Europe. The project achieves this by facilitating two separate but interconnected dialogues: one dedicated to US and Russian experts, and another engaging US and European experts and officials. Few initiatives manage to successfully integrate diverse Russian perspectives while synchronizing US-Russia dialogues with US-Europe discussions on the post-war security architecture. The project participants include highly connected experts and former and current officials from key countries. Since 2023, the project organized more than 7 meetings and produced more than 17 background and position papers, along with three comprehensive reports, all regularly delivered in person to key decision-makers in Washington DC, Moscow, and Europe.
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Funding: The project has been supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), Ploughshares, University of California, and Effektiv Spenden.
