By Manlio Dinucci
Voltaire.net
November 4, 2025
It should come as no surprise that Russia has spent so much money miniaturizing nuclear power plants and equipping its delivery systems with them: 9M730 Burevestnik missiles and Status-6 Poseidon torpedoes. The United States is dispersing its nuclear technology by providing Australia and South Korea with nuclear-powered submarines, and by supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles. But in this arena, the Pentagon is technically outmatched.
US President Donald Trump hailed the agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping as a major success. The United States will reduce the tariff on major Chinese goods by 10%, bringing it down to 47%. In exchange, China will resume purchasing US soybeans and postpone for one year the restrictions on rare earth mineral exports to the US. In reality, this is a limited and precarious trade truce.
Significant was the statement made by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi before the meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. He warned that "a multipolar world is emerging," urging an end to "the politicization of economic and trade issues, the artificial fragmentation of global markets, and the use of trade wars and tariff battles." "The frequent withdrawal from agreements and the failure to uphold commitments, while blocs and cliques enthusiastically form, have subjected multilateralism to unprecedented challenges," Wang asserted, without naming specific countries but clearly referring to the United States.
During the meeting, President Xi Jinping emphasized, "China and the United States should be partners and friends. This is what history has taught us and what reality demands." The United States' position is demonstrated by the fact that, just minutes before the meeting with Xi Jinping, Trump stated he had ordered the Pentagon to launch nuclear weapons tests "on an equal footing" with China and Russia. In reality, China has not tested nuclear weapons since 1996, and Russia has not tested them since 1990. And although the United States has never ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which prohibits the detonation of such weapons, past presidents have adhered to the Treaty.
On Truth Social, Trump claimed that Beijing currently ranks third in the world in terms of nuclear weapons, after Russia and the United States, but that "within five years it will be on par with us." Trump fails to mention that China maintained a limited nuclear arsenal for decades, consisting mostly of medium-range defensive weapons unable to reach the United States, and that it began producing long-range nuclear weapons after the United States threateningly deployed nuclear weapons on its border.
At the same time, Trump gave South Korea the green light to build a nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying nuclear missiles. The submarine will be built in the United States at a shipyard purchased by a South Korean company in 2024. Australia, too, through the AUKUS agreement with the United States and Great Britain, will be able to acquire nuclear-capable attack submarines clearly aimed at China and Russia. In Europe, Ukraine is receiving, via NATO under US command, weapons with increasingly long ranges capable of striking targets deep inside Russian territory. Soon, weapons of this type could be manufactured directly in Ukraine through "joint production" agreements with NATO defense industries. Ukraine could thus possess weapons with dual conventional and nuclear capabilities directed against Russia.
It should come as no surprise that, in such a situation, Russia is producing and testing newly designed nuclear delivery systems: the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, capable of striking heavily fortified targets at any distance, and the Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater vehicle, capable of autonomously reaching enemy shores and triggering a radioactive tsunami with the underwater detonation of a high-yield nuclear warhead. A weapon analogous to the Russian Poseidon is likely also being developed by China.
This article was originally published on Voltaire.net.