If not restrained, these efforts could mark the start of a dangerous new nuclear arms race. US relations with Russia and China remain tense, with all three countries engaged in an array of nuclear modernization and expansion efforts-including China’s apparent large-scale program to increase its deployment of silo-based long-range nuclear missiles the push by Russia, China, and the United States to develop hypersonic missiles and the continued testing of anti-satellite weapons by many nations. Still, the change in US leadership alone was not enough to reverse negative international security trends that had been long in developing and continued across the threat horizon in 2021. A more moderate and predictable approach to leadership and the control of one of the two largest nuclear arsenals of the world marked a welcome change from the previous four years. Perhaps even more heartening was the return of science and evidence to US policy making in general, especially regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, in 2021 the new American administration changed US policies in some ways that made the world safer: agreeing to an extension of the New START arms control agreement and beginning strategic stability talks with Russia announcing that the United States would seek to return to the Iran nuclear deal and rejoining the Paris climate accord. Last year’s leadership change in the United States provided hope that what seemed like a global race toward catastrophe might be halted and-with renewed US engagement-even reversed.
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