Global & US Headlines
US Accuses China of 2020 Nuclear Test as New START Dies
On 6 Feb 2026, one day after New START lapsed, Washington publicly alleged Beijing carried out a covert, yield-producing nuclear explosion in June 2020 and demanded that any successor arms pact become a US-Russia-China agreement.
Focusing Facts
- New START’s caps on 1,550 deployed warheads each for the US and Russia expired on 5 Feb 2026 with no extension in force.
- US Under-Secretary Thomas DiNanno told the UN Conference on Disarmament that China conducted a ‘hundreds-of-tons’ test on 22 Jun 2020, using decoupling techniques to evade seismic detection.
- Pentagon estimates cited by DiNanno put China’s arsenal at ~600 warheads today and ‘over 1,000’ by 2030.
Context
History rhymes: arms-control frameworks also collapsed after SALT II died in 1979, sparking the 1980s Euromissile build-up before the 1987 INF Treaty restored limits. Today’s unraveling—INF (2019), Open Skies (2020), CTBT’s stagnation, and now New START—signals a systemic shift from bilateral US-Soviet guardrails to a multipolar, technology-driven era where hypersonics, AI and space defenses muddy deterrence calculus. The immediate accusations mirror 1963’s clandestine Soviet tests that goaded Washington into the Limited Test Ban, but this time neither side seems eager for new legal constraints. If a binding multilateral regime fails to materialize, the next century could see a diffusion of nuclear capability and automation similar to how the machine gun and aircraft proliferated after 1914—making miscalculation, not deliberate attack, the likelier path to catastrophe. The moment matters because once verification norms and mutual confidence are lost, rebuilding them—like the 1991 START talks that took 9 years—can take a geopolitical generation.
Perspectives
U.S. conservative and allied media outlets
e.g., Washington Times, The Jerusalem Post — Frame the expiration of New START as proof that China’s alleged secret nuclear tests and arsenal expansion demand an all-new, tougher treaty that includes Beijing and justifies a continued U.S. nuclear build-up. Lean heavily on un-verified U.S. intelligence claims while glossing over Washington’s own treaty withdrawals and modernization plans, thus advancing a narrative that supports higher defense spending and strategic leverage.
Disarmament advocates and UN-linked commentary
e.g., UNIDIR interview in Mirage News, Punch Newspapers analysis — Warn that the collapse of long-standing arms-control accords has plunged the global non-proliferation regime into its worst crisis in decades, urging renewed diplomacy, nuclear-weapon-free zones and youth activism as pathways back to restraint. May understate immediate security challenges posed by emerging powers and technology, reflecting the institutional interest of arms-control professionals in preserving multilateral forums and norms even when key states are non-compliant.
Chinese official perspective as reported by regional and international outlets
e.g., South China Morning Post, GMA Network — Dismiss U.S. testing allegations as "false narratives," insist Beijing acts responsibly and argue that the U.S. is the real driver of an arms race while China need not join negotiations until its arsenal approaches U.S.–Russian levels. Seeks to shield a rapidly growing but still smaller stockpile from intrusive verification, deflecting scrutiny by reframing the issue as U.S. hegemonic pressure rather than transparency or compliance with test-ban norms.