"There is a school of thought that assumes an arms race will ensue any time the US does something with its arsenal [...] but changes to US forces are unlikely to engender a major departure from the current path of Russian force modernization." warontherocks.com/2026/02/runn...

With New START expired, the United States is likely to reopen the deactivated launch tubes on it‘s Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) starting March 1, allowing each SSBN to carry an additional four Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Money has already been appropriated.

At the Conference on Disarmament today, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (T) Thomas Di Nanno hinted at the expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and accused China of conducting a low-yield nuclear test in 2020.

“The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ — Mr. Trump’s signature domestic legislation — includes the schedule for the Ohio submarine nuclear upgrades, saying the obligated funds should not be spent before March 1 — that is, a little more than three weeks after New START expires.”

Da ich die Gleichsetzung in diversen Artikeln und Kommentaren zum Ende von New START gelesen habe: Abrüstung und Rüstungskontrolle sind nicht das Gleiche. Quantitative Begrenzungen haben sogar die Angewohnheit ein "qualitatives Wettrüsten" - also Verbesserung der Waffensysteme - zu befördern. (1/2)

My own very niche academic opinion: the expiry of New START won't spark a new arms race in and of itself. But its end is indicative of a deteriorating security environment that will involve some arms racing and more importantly a significantly heightened risk of a major war.

An Studierende und Lehrende, die überlegen, in welcher Weise sie KI einsetzen bzw. den sinnvollen Einsatz lehren sollen: Die geisteswissenschaftlichen Jobs, die es in der KI-Zukunft noch geben wird, werden solche sein, in denen Menschen KI-Ergebnisse überprüfen. 1/...

Also important to note that Russia “suspended” implementation of the treaty almost three years ago, so there are no longer any notifications and data-exchanges, as the article correctly notes. Inspections were halted during COVID, so many of the important treaty elements ceased to exist years ago.

Ja gut, in Paris geht es vielleicht, aber Deutschland ist eben keine Insel und außerdem haben wir Mercedes und Porsche und mögen Beton.

It‘s somewhat ironic that, over the last few decades, the US has assumed that it will no longer be able to deploy military forces uncontested into future operational areas due to enemy A2/AD capabilities. Yet, it continues to forward-deploy military forces without opposition, as it always has. 🧵 1/

Interesting reports suggesting predelegation may still exist today. “A senior National Security Council official in the Clinton administration said [...] that the White House would not comment on the pre-delegation issue. Other sources said some elements of pre-delegation still exist today, [...].”

The division of labour in deterrence implied in the new US National Defence Strategy (NDS) could put NATO to the test. @frankkuhn.bsky.social and I draw attention to this in a commentary for Table.Media. (1/4) table.media/en/security/...

Die in der neuen National Defense Strategy (NDS) der USA implizierte Arbeitsteilung bei der Abschreckung könnte für die NATO zur Zerreißprobe werden. Darauf machen @frankkuhn.bsky.social und ich in einem Kommentar für Table.Media aufmerksam. (1/4) table.media/security/tab...

Opening of the CNTR Lab: On January 21, we officially opened our laboratory at @tuda.bsky.social. This multifunctional space is dedicated to developing and testing verification technologies for arms control, bridging physics expertise with peace policy. www.cntrarmscontrol.org/news/article...

As @frankkuhn.bsky.social points out, the idea of a ‘division of deterrence labor,’ (Europe: conventional, US: nuclear), as expressed in the new NDS, implies new TNF in Europe. However, if THIS US administration offers new TNF, I would assume that this will lead to an existential crisis for NATO.

It is largely useless to infer anything from official foreign policy documents under this 🇺🇸 administration. Europe is suppossed to take the lead on Ukraine? Well, only until Trump decides to have another half baked peace proposal drafted over night that forces Ukraine to disarm of course etc etc

“Russia will remain a persistent but manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members for the foreseeable future. … [Our] NATO allies are substantially more powerful than Russia … positioned to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense, with critical but more limited US support.”

Feels like something cracked today in the transatlantic alliance. Europeans have been swallowing their pride, bitting their tongues, and bending the knee. That strategy may have bought them time but it has now clearly failed. It also had a major cost - it has made the WH think Europe will cave. 1/

Satan no more? @russianforces.org on the possible quiet demise of Russia's SS-18 heavy ICBM, which kept so many Western nuclear strategists up at night in the 1970s-80s. open.substack.com/pub/russianf...

“Given that the explanatory power of the security dilemma decreases when adversaries are greedier, the policy prescriptions that follow from imagining conflict driven by the security dilemma become at best less helpful and at worst potentially disastrous.” 🔗 muse.jhu.edu/article/36388

Despite the hiring spree, the defense sector remains rather niche in the German economy: “Even accounting for the strong growth since then, the number of people working in the defence sector in Germany remains well below the roughly 700,000 people who work in the embattled German auto sector.”

“Russia previously declared the RS-26 as an ICBM under the New START treaty. If Lukashenko’s statement that the system is on combat duty is correct, then Russia appears to be in violation of the treaty.” 🔗 www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1221...

”A corollary to the inescapable physicality of war is that if invasions of Cuba or Greenland are put into action, we will see buildups at various bases across the US, as we did in the Caribbean, or as we did in the fall of 2021, as Vladimir Putin prepared to attack Ukraine.“

Guilty as charged.

Colin Powell: ”I felt that we were wasting a lot of money on nuclear weapons. We really didn’t need any more. The Army did not need to have nuclear weapons. We could make the rubble bounce everywhere now.”

Newly declassified transcripts of Putin-Bush conversations obtained by @nsarchive.bsky.social – fascinating: President Bush: The Cold War was a time of suspicion, competition and diminishing each other. President Putin: You did the diminishing part very well. 📂 nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/337...

We have only limited data, so here is a conjecture based on what we know about US approaches to suppressing and destroying enemy air defenses from the past.

Die USA bräuchten Grönland für ihre nationale Sicherheit, so US-Präsident Trump. Diese Sicherheitsgründe sind nur vorgeschoben, meint Michael Paul @swp-intsecurity.bsky.social. »Grönland ist für Trump der größtmögliche territoriale Deal, den er erzielen kann.« www.tagesschau.de/ausland/euro...

1/Leaders are abducted/allies are threatened but pundits and governments are scratching their heads on what the US is doing. Danish PM on Greenland "It makes absolutely no sense". Why? Because actors using old IR models when we need a new lens. Enter neo-royalism. abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

“U.S. military aircraft movements through the United Kingdom this week are consistent with preparations for a maritime interdiction operation targeting a Venezuelan-linked oil tanker, according to open-source analysis [...].”

Important point by @ryanevans.bsky.social on supposedly 'irrational actors’: “[T]he claim of irrationality functioned as an alibi for an expert class unwilling to update its own view of how the world now works, with the post-Cold War era dead and decomposing.“

Whenever Trump does something crazy, people try to rationalize it. Now, they're saying it was Venezuela's "heavy, sour crude" that made him kidnap Maduro. I think the truth is much scarier and less strategic: He simply enjoys the feeling of power and humiliating his opponents.

The New START treaty doesn't expire until February 5. Stationing Oreshnik in Belarus prior to it's expiration is one last violation of the treaty. 🧵

Meine diesjährige Reise ins Baltikum geht dem Ende entgegen. Und es ist mir ein großes Bedürfnis zu sagen, was alle längst wissen sollten. Russland bereitet sich auf einen Angriff gegen die NATO vor. Der Kreml schlägt alle diplomatischen Angebote aus. Dieses Russland ist unser Feind.

“President Donald Trump unveiled plans for a 'Trump-class’ battleship on Monday that will carry nuclear-armed cruise missiles — the first time a surface ship will be armed with such weapons since the Cold War.

The new volume of “On the Horizon: A Collection of Papers from the Next Generation” edited by @doreenhorschig.bsky.social for @poni.csis.org is finally out! 📘 I take a look at how DoD could use existing elements of the joint targeting process to reduce the risk of unintentional nuclear escalation.

Some thoughts on the new U.S. National Security Strategy, including from yours truly. 👇

"Für Europa kann es nur einen Weg nach vorne geben. Autonomie und eine Politik, die Amerika als das behandelt, was es niemals sein wollte: Eine Großmacht wie jede andere." Letzte Meldung vor Weihnachten von @tobiaspfella.bsky.social und mir. www.ipg-journal.de/rubriken/aus...

Dokumentation von 1988 über US-Streitkräfte in Deutschland: "This is the frontline of the Cold War, perhaps the most militarized place on earth." Wenn heute über Hochrüstung oder Militarisierung gesprochen wird, sollte man diese Perspektive immer im Kopf behalten.

Some new, interesting details about the Dark Eagle #hypersonic missile‘s warhead strongly suggest that it can only destroy soft targets, such as radar sites, but not hard targets, such as intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos or even mobile ICBM launchers. 🧵 1/

LRF deployment to 🇪🇺 on track? “The U.S. Army this fall activated an artillery battalion in New York that is intended to give commanders in Europe new options for long-range strikes and deterrence. [...] It remains unknown, however, if — or when — soldiers and equipment will be deployed overseas.”

“The strategy [...] positions the United States to judge the internal order of its partners through the lens of ideological compatibility rather than institutional capacity or shared interests.”

“While European leaders will hope that the NSS is just political bluster, it is a document worth taking seriously. The strategy signals that the Trump administration plans to orchestrate the downfall of almost all of Europe’s political leaders, which come from center-right and center-left parties.”

So neu ist diese "Form der Kriegsdienstverweigerung" übrigens nicht. Schon 2001 hat Michael Geyer herausgearbeitet, dass die Ablehnung der Wiederbewaffnung in den 1950er Jahren erheblich dadurch motiviert war, der Bundesrepublik als Staat der "Besatzungsmächte" die Legitimation abzusprechen. (1/4)

The new US National Security Strategy says explicitly, that the US should intervene in European domestic policy. It is difficult to interpret "Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations." otherwise in the context of everything else this government says and does.

It also appears to have been written by a third-grader.

Trump's national security strategy is out and some of the Europe sections are shocking. "...the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism." www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Interesting piece. Two thoughts: 1. Buzzwords. Ofc you can call defensive lines as described here as "multi-domain enablers" but we already have a word for this: elastic defense. 2. I am sceptical if you can assign "the bulk of the static defense to machines". (1/2) warontherocks.com/2025/12/euro...

“[Eisenhower] never directly jeopardized the nation‘s position of strength in his arms control policy. Proposals were generally justified as maintaining a position of superiority.”

Germany hasn't had its own nuclear weapons program since 1945, and nobody in Berlin is asking for a German bomb. So why do so many in the United States suggest otherwise? Read more from @philipprombach.bsky.social. ⬇️