Opinion | Multipolar arms race takes ballistic missile threat to new levels

Name: Trump jokes about building nuclear missiles
Uploaded: 2025-08-31T12:30:08.000Z
Description: Trump jokes about building nuclear missiles

Cold War-era bilateral arms control treaties simply won’t work as more states emerge with deterrent capabilities, complicating calculations

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

The Iron Dome, Israel’s air defence system, intercepting ballistic missiles fired from Iran, over Tel Aviv, Israel, on June 17. Photo: EPA-EFE

Nigel Li

Published: 8:30pm, 31 Aug 2025Updated: 8:20am, 1 Sep 2025

War is just one press of a button away, and the likelihood of that happening – even if accidental – is not insignificant. The advancement of ballistic missile capabilities has opened up new battle spaces. Just as during the Cold War, today’s adversaries can hold each other’s populations hostage under the threat of nuclear war.

As we mark 80 years since the second world war ended, it is becoming easier to fathom our world at war again. However, while it may be true the “long peace” was more an exception than the norm, the current trajectory of returning to a historical norm of perpetual conflict can be reversed.

The logic of war remains the same but the nature of war – and the scale of suffering we can inflict – has radically changed.

The ballistic missile threat is very much alive. Russia recently lifted a self-imposed ban on the deployment of nuclear-capable intermediate-range missiles. Washington is developing missile delivery systems in the Asia-Pacific through the Aukus pact with Australia and Britain. China tested its DF-31AG intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean in September last year. North and South Korea continue to test-launch ballistic missiles, with Seoul firing its first submarine-launched missile in 2021.

These do not bode well for the global strategic environment.

An absence of direct confrontation between the great powers does not mean we are at peace. Since the atomic bomb and the adoption of ballistic missiles as a means of delivering destruction, the nine nuclear-weapon states have relied on instilling fear to avoid confrontation. We call this “deterrence” and we believe it will hold. But we forget that it only takes one mistake or misperception of intentions for deterrence to fail.

Trump jokes about building nuclear missiles

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x