US Nuclear strategy in "very bad place" with China and Russia | Eastern NC Now

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke and David Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to align with Russia and to build up its nuclear arsenal present a unique strategic threat to the United States, according to one expert.

“China is actually building up its arsenal in ways that it wasn’t doing before,” said David Santoro, President of the Pacific Forum, a foreign policy think tank. “So, it’s becoming a much more capable nuclear-armed state.”

Santoro made the comments during a recent interview with EpochTV’s “China Insider” program, in which he said that there was no historical precedent for how the United States should proceed strategically against two near-peer nuclear adversaries.

“We don’t necessarily need to have a symmetric arsenal to the Russians and the Chinese,” Santoro said, “In fact, we’ve really never had that. Even during the Cold War, we did not have the exact same arsenal as the Soviets did. But what I will say is that this is the very first time that the United States is facing two very capable nuclear-armed states.”

“The other piece that we shouldn’t forget is that Russia and China seem to be increasingly cooperating at all levels, including at the strategic level. I don’t think they are engaging in any nuclear cooperation, but we’ll have to see what happens over the next few years and decades.”

Santoro’s comments echoed warnings made by political and military officials earlier in the year, who said that the Sino-Russian partnership presented an unprecedented strategic situation, and that the United States now faced an “epic” nuclear threat.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-nuclear-strategy-very-bad-place-china-and-russia-expert