In the Pacific Ocean, the Marshall Islands stand as a stark testament to the human and environmental cost of nuclear ambition. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests at Bikini and Enewetak, displacing entire communities, contaminating land and water, and leaving generations of islanders with elevated cancer rates, birth defects, and lasting ecological devastation. The largest detonation, the 15-megaton Castle Bravo, vaporized entire islands and spread radioactive fallout across 7,000 square miles. Decades later, these communities continue to suffer from contamination, inadequate healthcare, and socio-economic displacement. Yet the Heritage Foundation’s recent proposal for a U.S. nuclear buildup discusses the expansion of the arsenal as if it were just another policy spreadsheet, with almost no acknowledgment of the human or ecological stakes.

To call for tripling the U.S. nuclear arsenal in the same breath that the Doomsday Clock sits at 89 seconds to midnight – the closest it has ever been – reveals a startling detachment from the broader realities of global security and existential risk. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists did not advance the clock because of too few warheads, but because of escalatory policies, modernization races, and breakdowns in arms control.

The Heritage Foundation proposes an arsenal of roughly 4,625 operationally deployed warheads by 2050, nearly tripling the number currently covered under treaty limits and encompassing strategic and non-strategic weapons. The report frames this buildup as essential for survival, but the language is strikingly casual – as if the engines of global annihilation were mundane figures on a ledger. The Heritage Foundation's recommendation is delivered with an almost bureaucratic detachment – as if ordering 3,000 extra warheads were a matter of supply-chain logistics, rather than a step with profound consequences for diplomacy, nonproliferation, and the future of humanity. There is no recognition that each additional warhead or delivery system ratchets up tension worldwide, increases the risk of miscalculation, and undermines decades of arms control progress. This is not theory; it is a direct escalation of existential risk.

More so, why the oddly specific tally? It reveals the sleight of hand. Heritage admits this figure is a “ballpark,” contingent on shifting assumptions about Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, or even Pakistan. By bundling every conceivable adversary into the equation, the report inflates threats to justify expansion – a form of strategic overreach masquerading as prudence. This precision without precision exposes the recommendation as political theater, not strategic necessity. It leans on recycled Cold War tropes – deter, assure, hedge against uncertainty.

According to SIPRI Yearbook 2025, the rapid development and application of an array of technologies is radically “redefining nuclear capabilities, deterrence, and strategic stability”. Advances in artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, space assets, missile defense, and quantum technology are creating potential sources of instability, accelerating decision-making in crises, and increasing the risk of miscalculation or technical accident. In this context, the old numerical formulas of deterrence – counting warheads – are increasingly inadequate.

Source: SIPRI Yearbook 2025

Nevertheless, the United States has already signaled its intent through multiple modernization programs. The B-21 Raider bombers are poised to replace the B-2 stealth fleet, promising a more flexible and survivable nuclear strike capability. The Columbia-class nuclear submarines will ensure a second-strike capability well into the 2080s, while the W87-1 life-extension program is designed to replace the aging W78 for the Sentinel ICBM. Forward-deployed nuclear submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific, along with low-yield options, send a clear signal to potential adversaries: the United States intends to maintain overwhelming strategic dominance. Even at the height of the Cold War, strategic logic did not demand 4,600 warheads – so why now, in an age of asymmetric threats, cyber warfare, and multipolar deterrence? The underlying assumption that “more = better security” is both outdated and dangerous.

Russia and China, the report’s named adversaries, have expanded their arsenals largely in response. Russia maintains roughly 6,000 warheads, investing in Sarmat ICBMs, hypersonic glide vehicles, and nuclear-capable submarines. Meanwhile, China, with approximately 500 warheads, is rapidly expanding silo and mobile missile programs, aiming to double its arsenal within the next decade. North Korea, too, has tested ICBMs capable of reaching the continental United States and continues to expand fissile material production. Iran, responding to U.S. strikes on uranium enrichment sites and the withdrawal from the JCPOA, has accelerated its nuclear program. Heritage presents these expansions as unilateral threats while conveniently ignoring the provocation embedded in U.S. policy itself. More U.S. warheads do not enhance security; they invite reciprocal escalation.

Furthermore, arms control frameworks intended to mitigate these risks are already strained. The New START Treaty, which limits deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 and delivery systems to 700 per side, expires in February 2026. While Putin has offered a one-year extension, the United States has yet to respond formally. Heritage’s vision of a 4,625-warhead arsenal would bypass these treaty limits entirely, undermining transparency and verification mechanisms that reduce the risk of miscalculation. Other agreements, such as the INF Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty, have collapsed, leaving little structural constraint. Even the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), designed to curb proliferation, remains ignored by nuclear-armed states. The cornerstone Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) faces strain, as withdrawal threats and clandestine programs erode its authority. Therefore, without robust enforcement and verification, there is a real risk that Heritage’s proposed expansion could inadvertently accelerate the very arms race it claims to deter. Calls for hedging against “unknown future threats” often mask political aversion to restraint. A credible deterrent is not one you cannot bind or review – it is one that survives scrutiny, treaties, and diplomacy. What seems safe in 2050 may look reckless in 2075.

In addition to that is another crucial factor: financial implications. Funding new warheads, delivery systems, submarines, bombers, and nuclear laboratories – diverts resources from public goods that tangibly enhance security, such as healthcare, climate mitigation, and development initiatives. Life-extension programs alone, including the W93 and Columbia-class submarines, lock in decades of production and constrain future policy flexibility. Instead of reducing risk, these investments embed the United States in a perpetual cycle of nuclear expansion, benefiting the military-industrial complex while leaving global stability in jeopardy. Heritage focuses on deployed numbers but skirts the real costs: how do you maintain, test, refurbish, and safety-certify thousands more warheads?

The human and environmental stakes are equally profound, yet entirely overlooked by Heritage’s realpolitik, numbers-driven approach. The Marshall Islands’ legacy demonstrates that nuclear testing is not abstract. Contaminated soil, irradiated water, and displaced populations persist decades after the last detonation. Thyroid cancers, leukemia, birth defects, and socio-economic dislocation continue to afflict communities exposed to fallout. Any renewed testing, even for life-extension purposes, would risk repeating these harms, with contamination spreading far beyond designated test sites. Environmental degradation, intergenerational health impacts, and loss of biodiversity are consequences seldom factored into Heritage’s casual calculations. Despite filing lawsuits against all nine nuclear-armed states in 2014 in an attempt to hold nuclear powers accountable through courts, the procedural rulings left the Marshall Islands without legal recourse, demonstrating how international law offers little practical accountability for powerful nuclear states, even in the face of clear historical harm.

The United States cannot lecture other nations on non-proliferation while pursuing a nuclear fantasy that guarantees more testing, environmental devastation, and global insecurity. Strategic inflation with no clear threshold, casual normalization of existential risk, historical ignorance, and ethical vacuity converge in Heritage’s vision. In a world already teetering on an existential edge, building 4,625 warheads is not a show of strength, but a failure of imagination, ethics, and responsibility.

Shehrbano Asif holds a Bachelor's degree of Strategic and Nuclear Studies from the National Defence University, Islamabad, Pakistan.