Conventional prompt global strike: arms racing and strategic stability in a post-unipolar world

Some two decades after the US-led Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), advances in military technology and engineering have allowed the development of an array of advanced precision conventional weaponry that is increasingly prominent at the strategic level. This includes various new global strike capabilities (including antisatellite forces), significant improvements in antimissile defenses, as well as a host of more nebulous cyber capabilities. All of these technologies have implications for how we think about and manage nuclear weapons and major power relationships, and will create, in the words of Joshua Pollack (“Boost-glide Weapons and US-China Strategic Stability,” 22.2, June 2015, pp. 155-64), “a more complex set of interactions” within an already fragile nuclear order