The world needs a Russia that is not playing with nuclear escalation and threatening nuclear holocaust. If Russia continues on its present course, we will be dealing with a very large nuclear pariah state with thousands of warheads and the missiles to deliver them. A major goal of U.S. policy must therefore be to move Moscow away from nuclear saber-rattling and back to the more responsible role it has played since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis in controlling nuclear weapons and avoiding their proliferation. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union cooperated to avoid nuclear escalation. 

The United States has also been looking for ways to talk to China about its nuclear intentions, but thus far, Beijing has kept silent. The Chinese are pursuing a rapid nuclear modernization, including the construction of more than 300 new silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles and a major expansion of their warhead arsenal, from fewer than 500 today to more than 1,000 by the 2030s.

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