The questions about our national defense just keep coming: Do we need the New START Treaty limit of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments – especially since there isn’t even a New START Treaty anymore?

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Or, for that matter, do we even really need the treaty limit of 1,550 nuclear warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments, or 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments – when it takes only a fraction of that to blow any country off the face of the earth?

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Really think about that last sentence for a second. There are roughly 195 generally recognized sovereign states in the world. We have an estimated 3,700 nuclear warheads in our military stockpile (1,477 are retired and awaiting dismantlement).

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If you take only our 1,770 deployed warheads – which include intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and heavy bombers – we could literally blow up every single country in the world 9 times!

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In 2025, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that, based on the Department of Defense’s and the Department of Energy’s FY2025 budget requests, operating, sustaining, and modernizing our current nuclear forces and purchasing new forces would cost a total of $946 billion over the next ten years, or an average of about $95 billion a year. This is 25 percent (or $190 billion) larger than the CBO 10-year estimate just two years before.

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And remember, that’s just the money it takes going forward… but this outrageous spending has now been going on for well over eight decades. The Brookings Institution found that: “From 1940 through 1996, we spent nearly $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons and weapons-related programs, in constant 1996 dollars.” In today’s dollars, that’s $11.2 trillion. “If we could represent $5.5 trillion as a stack of dollar bills, it would reach from the Earth to the Moon and nearly back again, a distance of more than 459,000 miles.”

 

Does this make sense to you?

 

We gotta be honest, it makes no sense to us. Why in the world are we still spending so much money on nuclear weapons? To me, spending money on a ridiculously gigantic arsenal of big, scary bombs – again, when it takes only a fraction of what we already have to blow any country off the face of the earth – to prove nothing more than we have as many bombs as other people feels like the dumbest penis measuring contest of all time.

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Look, we get the concept of deterrence and the value of signaling to potential adversaries that an attack on America is too costly to launch. But do you really think it deters anyone less if the U.S. just had 1,760 deployed warheads rather than 1,770? … which is a difference of billions of dollars in our bank account?

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We already know that the global nuclear arms competition is the ultimate Prisoner’s Dilemma, where two adversaries would both be better off if each limits its arsenal, yet neither can be certain the other will commit to the same restraint. So, each believes they must maintain or even increase its military capabilities rather than risk falling behind. The result is that individually rational decisions can produce a collectively worse outcome, as both sides spend more and potentially increase the danger to themselves.

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Worse, this misdirected spending leaves us extremely vulnerable in other areas. In a 2024 essay for The Wall Street Journal, Glen VanHerck, a retired U.S. Air Force general who served as commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense command, and Pete Fesler, a retired Air Force major general who served as deputy director of operations for the North American Aerospace Defense Command warned:

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“The services are investing heavily in modernizing the nation’s nuclear deterrent… these systems were designed to deter a nuclear attack by promising devastating retaliation. They were never intended to deter more limited non-nuclear strikes, cyberattacks or attacks by small, unmanned drones on infrastructure. Adversaries are unlikely to believe the U.S. will respond with nukes to a non-nuclear attack. Nuclear deterrence isn’t enough to defend against new weapons.”

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“Despite the National Defense Strategy’s declaration that homeland defense is the Pentagon’s top priority, almost no additional resources have been allocated, and none are forthcoming. The focus is on offense and the fight around the world. Today the nation is defended by a small number of professionals equipped with systems largely designed and bought in the 1970s and ’80s, with no defined path to modernization. Today, as Russian ultraquiet submarines prowl off American shores and Chinese and Russian bombers and warships conduct joint operations near Alaska, our military is focused elsewhere. Fortress America stands largely unguarded.”

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And please let’s not forget that there are many ways to skin the deterrence cat. In our minds – yes – the United States needs a strong military to deter future wars, but it’s better not to be that close to war in the first place. As Sun Tzu said, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

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… but here is yet another example of how Donald Trump has made the world far less safe. In August 2019, during his first administration, he formally withdrew the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Then came February 2023, when Vladimir Putin announced the suspension of Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms control pact between the United States and Russia.

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Even though Putin offered to uphold the treaty’s central limits for one year following its expiration, Donald Trump declined the offer and the New START Treaty officially expired on February 5, 2026 – ending more than half a century in which U.S.-Soviet/Russian strategic arms control agreements imposed negotiated constraints on their nuclear forces. We have now returned to a world that has virtually no limits on the size or structure of nuclear arsenals and where nuclear weapons can reach unconstrained levels – entering a dangerous new nuclear age.

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This is a huge bummer because the world has made remarkable progress in reducing its total nuclear arsenal. The global inventory has fallen by more than 80 percent from a Cold War peak of roughly 70,000 warheads in the mid-1980s, to an estimated 12,187 at the beginning of 2026, and of the over fifty nation states that could have worked toward a nuclear option, only nine have them today – Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. < Note: The U.S., Russia, China, France and the UK are the only recognized “nuclear-weapon states” under the NPT. They are also the P5 (Permanent 5) members of the UN Security Council >.

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The NPT (1970) was followed by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (1987), which was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 to eliminate intermediate- and shorter-range missiles (those with ranges between 300 to 3,400 miles); the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed in 1991 by George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev; and the New START Treaty, signed in 2010, again by the presidents of the United States and Russia, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev. On February 3, 2021, Presidents Biden and Putin agreed to extend the New START Treaty through February 5, 2026.

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Now, not only is the Trump/Vance administration threatening the deployment of even more nuclear weapons, but also the resumption of underground nuclear testing. < The last nuclear weapon test in the United States was in 1992, before President George H.W. Bush halted such exercises at the conclusion of the Cold War. > “Because of other countries testing programs,” President Trump posted on October 29, 2025, “I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”

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What we're sure he considered a flex was actually a really dangerous and wildly irresponsible thing for him to say. Setting aside the fact that the Energy Department would test nuclear weapons, not the Defense Department – plus the fact that underground nuclear testing is no longer necessary since we can now maintain our arsenal through computer modeling – his flippant statement was likely taken very seriously by our adversaries – potentially publicly greenlighting a practice that has been a global taboo for three decades.

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< Sidebar: There is evidence that Russia has conducted critical nuclear-weapons experiments, and the United States has now accused China of doing so as well. In February 2026, U.S. officials alleged that China secretly conducted a very-low-yield underground nuclear explosive test at Lop Nur in June 2020 and employed techniques intended to conceal its seismic signature. China denies the allegation, and international monitoring data have not independently established that the event was a nuclear explosion. But the evidence and China’s lack of transparency certainly demand serious concern. That said, we need to demonstrate leadership and not immediately sink to their level. President Trump’s response is just an extensive of the “my bomb is bigger than your bomb” tit-for-tat strategy that we need to move away from. >

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Donald Trump is the last person on earth to care about the environmental destruction explosive testing causes, but does he care (or even know about) the human toll it takes? The radioactive fallout from our 20th-century nuclear testing programs created devastating generational health crises for populations in the Marshall Islands and the American West (known as “Downwinders”). The people alive then suffered acute radiation sickness, and subsequent generations have endured high rates of cancer (specifically thyroid, leukemia, and breast cancer); birth defects (like “jellyfish babies” born with no bones); and miscarriages.

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The Trump/Vance administration’s abdication of leadership regarding the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the New START Treaty, and nuclear testing could not have come at a worse time…. especially since the world’s authoritarian dictators clearly don’t take anyone in the administration seriously.

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For example, in October 2025, President Trump practically begged Kim Jong Un to meet with him on a swing through Asia. The answer was no. Then in August 2026, after he scaled back military drills with South Korea – giving Kim Jong Un a huge gift on a silver platter – the U.S. president boasted about his friendship and “very good relationship” with Kim, adding that they “understand” one other. He also claimed, without evidence, that the North Korean leader had responded “positively” to his request for a meeting by the end of the year. Again, there was the sound of crickets from North Korea.

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This is not good. In 2024, the Annual Threat Assessment from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence warned that “the expansion of nuclear weapons stockpiles and their delivery systems, coupled with increasing regional conflict involving nuclear weapons states, pose a significant challenge to global efforts to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons.”

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“China and Russia are seeking to ensure strategic stability with the United States through the growth and development of a range of weapons capabilities, including nontraditional weapons intended to defeat or evade U.S. missile defenses. Consequently, these new technologies probably will challenge the way states think about arms control, and we expect it will be difficult to achieve agreement on new weapon definitions or verification measures, particularly at the multilateral level. North Korea continues to threaten to conduct a seventh nuclear test and the potential for heightened tension between Pakistan and India could increase the risk of nuclear escalation.”

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Seventh nuclear test, huh? Seems like, despite what Donald Trump would like the world to believe, the June 12, 2018 “summit” (read: photo op) between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump during Trump’s first term didn’t go quite as planned.

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You know the one, where an American president met with a brutal tyrant and relentlessly praised him as being just another “very, very talented leader” who “wants to do the right thing” while being “very open, very honorable,” and very “worthy.” Donald even complimented the “respect” Little Rocket Man receives from his people: “His country does love him. His people, you see the fervor.” < You better believe there’s fervor. You don’t show fervor in North Korea you get your head chopped off. What is it with this man’s fascination with dictators? >

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After the June 2018 spectacle, a second summit in February 2019 ended early with no deal on nukes and, four months later, Donald Trump swung by North Korea on his way home from the Group of 20 summit in Japan and stepped across the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to step foot in North Korea… yet another visit that ended in no deal.

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However, it seems President Trump didn’t get the memo that the visits with his new buddy were a total bust because on his way home, he tweeted: “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” …which was a completely delusional thing to say, even for him.

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Right after Trump’s love fest, North Korea repeatedly fired short-range ballistic missiles and rockets, conducted two ground tests at one of its nuclear test sites, and increased production of long-range missiles and the fissile material used in nuclear weapons.

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One year after the summit, The Wall Street Journal reported that “Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford University nuclear scientist who has visited North Korea’s nuclear facilities, has estimated that North Korea might be capable of producing six or seven nuclear bombs a year.”

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In May 2020, Kim Jong Un made it clear he was evoking “new policies for further increasing” North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. That October, he threw a huge military parade to introduce his humongous new intercontinental ballistic missile… a missile that military experts said, if truly operational, was one of the largest road-mobile ICBMs in the entire world.

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Fast-forward to January 2021, when he made clear where North Korea stands with the U.S.: “Our external political activities must focus on controlling and subjugating the United States, our archenemy and the biggest stumbling block to the development of our revolution” – then launched another ballistic missile, this time off its east coast.

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… and Little Rocket Man hasn’t slowed down one bit since then. Pyongyang is now estimated to have around 60 assembled nuclear warheads in its stockpile and enough fissile material to produce at least 30 more, while continuing to produce additional fissile material.

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The 2025 Annual Threat Assessment confirmed that Kim “remains committed to increasing the number of North Korea’s nuclear warheads and improving its missile capabilities to threaten the Homeland and U.S. forces, citizens, and allies, and to weaken U.S. power in the AsiaPacific region, as evidenced by the pace of the North’s missile flight tests and the regime’s public touting of its uranium enrichment capabilities… North Korea is probably prepared to conduct a nuclear test and continues to flight test ICBMs so Kim can threaten the Homeland. Russia is increasingly supporting North Korea’s nuclear status in exchange for Pyongyang’s support to Moscow’s war against Ukraine.”

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A June 2025 report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog – revealed that North Korea’s nuclear test site at Punggye-ri can now support a nuclear test on short notice. The country has increased its missile testing; is working to build a new nuclear-powered submarine; and, on January 4, 2026, test fired hypersonic missiles.

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Four months later, Kim hosted yet another military parade – with Chinese, Vietnamese and Russian guests of honor – where he unveiled a new intercontinental ballistic missile, which he called his “most powerful” nuclear weapon yet.

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By April 2026, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi had announced there had been a “very serious” expansion in North Korea’s nuclear weapons production capabilities, including heightened activity at the Yongbyon nuclear site (which has a 5-megawatt reactor, a light water reactor, and reprocessing units).

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< Interesting fact: Although North Korea remains one of the most dangerous and unpredictable threats to the U.S., it was not mentioned even once in the Trump/Vance administration’s new National Security Strategy. Our thought is that Donald Trump didn’t include it because doing so would be an omission of his complete failure to sway his boyfriend during his first term, but whatever. >

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Meanwhile, China is expanding its nuclear stockpile and weapons-production facilities faster than any other country on earth. When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China was estimated to have around 240 nuclear warheads, but that number is changing quickly. In its December 2025 assessment, the Pentagon estimated that China’s nuclear stockpile remained in the low 600s and that the country was on track to possess more than 1,000 warheads by 2030. The Federation of American Scientists’ current 2026 estimate puts China’s stockpile at approximately 620 warheads (34 deployed strategic warheads and 586 reserve or nondeployed warheads).

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We already covered the disturbing display of nuclear-capable missiles for submarines and aircraft Xi Jinping unveiled in his military parade spectacle in September 2025, but China has also increased its number of road-mobile ICBM bases and has finished construction of three new ICBM silo fields. FAS estimates that roughly 30 silos have been loaded. They possess a fully operational nuclear triad – land-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear-missile-armed submarines, and strategic aircraft – and are developing a “launch on warning” posture (i.e., launching a retaliatory nuclear-weapons strike while an adversary’s missiles are still in the air).

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With all this going on, maybe – just maybe – it would make more sense for Donald Trump, JD Vance and Marco Rubio to spend more time, as President Dwight Eisenhower advised back in 1961, “learning how to compose differences not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”