A war between the United States and Russia or China is not unlikely, as "it can happen at any time," U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned during a speech recently.
The secretary's warning came as Russia and China, two of nine nuclear-armed nations, are increasingly aligned with each other. The White House has prioritized maintaining an enduring competitive edge over China while constraining a profoundly dangerous Russia.
During his speech to the U.S. Air Force Academy cadets on November 12, Kendall said his most fundamental objective as the head of the Department of the Air Force is to "instill a sense of urgency" about the need to prepare for the next war that "we may have to fight."
"War with China or Russia is not unlikely, it can happen at any time," he told the cadets, adding that China has weapons designed to defeat the U.S. forces in the Western Pacific Ocean, including Taiwan and the South China Sea, which are its high national priorities.
Last week, the commander of the U.S. military in the Indo-Pacific region, Admiral Samuel Paparo, warned his forces "must be ready" after China held the largest invasion rehearsal around Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing views as its territory, over the summer.
China's claims over islands, reefs, and maritime zones in the South China Sea conflict with those of other regional countries, but its disputes with the Philippines, the oldest treaty ally of the U.S. in Asia, have led to the most intense physical clashes and political tensions.
While Russia has demonstrated its willingness to use force against neighboring countries, it seriously considered employing nuclear weapons as it faced reversals in Ukraine, said Kendall. "The potential for nuclear weapon use became as real as I've ever experienced."
The secretary also warned the cadets that they will be assigned the task of preventing "the greatest imaginable catastrophe in human history" because Russia is increasing its reliance on nukes while China is establishing a nuclear arsenal comparable to the U.S. and Russia.
The thinking that nuclear powers would not go to war between themselves because they had not done so in the past is "very dangerous," he said, admitting that when the Soviet Union was dissolved, he was naive to hope this marked the end of the threat of nuclear conflict.
"The threat of nuclear war has returned, in what may be even more dangerous forms," he added, referring to other post-Cold War occasions that were closer to nuclear conflict.
In September, Kendall's deputy, Melissa Dalton, urged the nation to move at "full speed" to modernize its nuclear capability. "We face for the first time in our nation's history, two strategic competitors that are nuclear states with large and growing nuclear arsenals."
Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that it adjusted its nuclear deterrence strategy, including planning to deter "multiple nuclear-armed adversaries" simultaneously. Multiple states are prioritizing the role of nuclear weapons in their national security strategies, it warned.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia and the U.S. together have almost 90 percent of all nuclear weapons, with 5,580 and 5,044 warheads, respectively. China's nuclear stockpile is the third largest in the world with 500 warheads.
While war with Russia or China is not inevitable, deterrence, which remains the goal of the U.S., will succeed only if "we are ready for war," said Kendall, who told the cadets that they will help to ensure deterrence is successful and to achieve victory if it fails.
Newsweek has emailed the foreign and defense ministries in Moscow and Beijing for comment.