American imperialism:
Recommended listening: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnE2HTfDivQ
Talking about Trump’s impacts, he said, “This not a transition, it is a rupture.” Speaking on American imperialism (without explicitly calling it that) to “Middle Powers” such as Canada, he said “We are either at the table, or we on the menu.”
Recommended reading concerning pending dictatorship: Robert Kagan’s interview at https://www.npr.org/2026/02/04/nx-s1-5699388/is-the-u-s-heading-into-a-dictatorship
Nuclear Weapons
Trump is proposing to increase the military budget from $1 trillion this FY 2026 to $1.5 trillion next year. The largest single component in this will probably be his ill-conceived Golden Dome. In the Alice in Wonderland upside down world of nuclear weapons policies, defense is offense and offense is defense. Unrealistic ballistic missile defenses have always the enemy of nuclear disarmament, starting with Edward Teller’s lies to Reagan that kept him from signing a nuclear weapons ban treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986.
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) expired yesterday (Feb 5), the first time the word is without any arms control treaties since the mid-1970s. The US and Russia are now likely to upload more warheads since the 1,550 numerical cap is now gone. Multiple warheads is regarded as particularly dangerous and destabilizing, inviting preemptive strikes and use them or lose them scenarios.
Today (Feb 6) the Trump Administration accused China of conducting a hydronuclear test in 2020, just above the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’s no yield threshold. This may be a prelude to the US resuming testing.
Plutonium pit production:
DOE’s “special assessment” was scheduled for completion mid-December 2025 — It is still not publicly available. Sen. Warren and Rep. Garamendi demanded its release on January 9.
Projected costs of NNSA’s plutonium pit production program is now thought to exceed the entire cost of the Manhattan Project, which had to produce plutonium and design and build a pit from scratch.
LANL Director Thom Mason publicly claimed that LANL is now exceeding plutonium pit production goals but would not discuss numbers.
Accelerating Arms Race
Is it Time for a Nordic Nuke? Johannes Kibsgaard January 26, 2026
Moscow’s “Oreshnik” strike on January 9, 2026 is best understood as strategic signaling designed to shape what NATO will and will not do. Russia’s use of nuclear-capable delivery systems in the Russo-Ukrainian War underscores a returning logic: nuclear weapons as instruments of coercion and risk manipulation, not only city destruction. RAND Europe’s 2025 scenario analysis similarly includes a coercive diplomacy pathway in which Russia might threaten or conduct a limited nuclear strike to compel political concessions or sanctions relief.
The strategic implication for the Nordic countries is uncomfortable. Given Russia’s nuclear posture and the hollow nature of extended deterrence, Nordic countries should consider a cooperative nuclear hedge, operationally integrated with NATO. The aim is a firmly democratically controlled arrangement that still carries a deterrent edge sufficient to discourage any Russian adventurism.