How Significant Is China's Nuclear Arsenal Right Now?

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Russia and China declared that their friendship has no limits. So if you're the United States, you have to say, what if they join up together? It increases the pressure to increase your arsenal in order to confront both. But then the danger is that each of the others will say, wait a minute, we can't have the United States with a much bigger arsenal we need to build up to. You start to create the dynamics of an arms race.

China’s arsenal of nuclear weapons has swiftly expanded; it is now roughly the size of Russia’s and America’s. That will make for a different—and far trickier—landscape of three-way deterrence. We ask what to expect as a mountain of Hollywood’s intellectual property heads for the public domain. And our correspondent checks in on America’s friendliest and most bearded sport. For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer