Nuclear, Cyber, and Space Competition

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which opened for signature in 1968, formally recognizes five nuclear-weapon states: the United States, Russia (as successor to the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, France, and China. India, Pakistan, and North Korea possess nuclear weapons outside the NPT framework, while Israel is widely assessed by outside analysts to possess an undeclared arsenal, a status its government has neither confirmed nor denied. The New START treaty, signed by the United States and Russia in 2010 and extended in 2021 for five years, capped the two countries' deployed strategic nuclear warheads and delivery systems; in February 2023, Russia announced it was suspending its participation in the treaty's inspection and verification provisions, while China's own nuclear arsenal has been expanding, according to assessments by the US Department of Defense and independent research organizations such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.