To prepare for this third nuclear age, Cooper recommends adapting the Cold War's classical paradigm of adversarial arms control for the contemporary landscape.

He surveys the history of nuclear arms control efforts, revisits strategic theory's view of nuclear competition dynamics, and interviews US nuclear policy practitioners about both the past and the emerging era. Cooper proposes relearning, reviving, and adapting classic arms control theory and negotiating practices to steer the world away from threatening and destabilizing nuclear arms races. In this unstable third nuclear age, legacy nonproliferation and disarmament instruments designed for outmoded conditions are ill-equipped to tame the complex dynamics of a multipolar nuclear arms race centered on China, Russia, and the United States. Great power nuclear competition is seemingly returning with a vengeance as the post-Cold War international order morphs into something more uncertain, complicated, and dangerous. The United States faces a new era of nuclear arms racing for which it is conceptually unprepared.

A reappraisal of classic arms control theory that advocates for reprioritizing deterrence over disarmament in a new era of nuclear multipolarity

Third war for armageddon