CHINA NOT SUBJECT TO NUKE LIMITS: Russia, the U.S. and other nuclear nations — Britain, India, Pakistan, etc. — are signers of the Reagan-era inspired New START treaty. That puts a ceiling on the total of warheads and launchers a signer can deploy.

But China has never signed on to the treaty, which means, according to Rod Martin and his guest author, Antonia Graceffo, that the CCP’s current nuke buildup can go as far as Beijing can afford.

That fundamentally changes the nuclear calculus that has obtained since the 1980s, including most immediately the need for the U.S. to deploy that “Star Wars” missile defense system Reagan called for decades ago.

It may well prove to be that Reagan’s greatest contribution was not winning the Cold War and bringing about the Soviet Union’s demise, as historically important as that was, but rather his defying the near-unanimous reaction among the “expert” class that it would be impossible to intercept an incoming ballistic missile. America has THAAD and Patriot anti-missile missile systems today because Reagan ignored the experts.