NUCLEAR WEAPONSNuclear Weapons: The Global Outlook in An Unstable New Era
The stalled US–Iran negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program and President Donald Trump’s announcement of a US-Saudi nuclear agreement have put nuclear weapons back in the spotlight. But the threat of nuclear breakout has been growing for several decades.
‘I made one great mistake in my life – when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification – the danger that the Germans would make them.’ – Albert Einstein in 1954, about a letter he wrote to the President in 1939.
The stalled US–Iran negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program and President Donald Trump’s announcement of a US-Saudi nuclear agreement have put nuclear weapons back in the spotlight.
But the threat of nuclear breakout has been growing for several decades, driven by the same fear Einstein held in the 1940s. Today, the permanent five UN Security Council members – the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France – plus North Korea, India and Pakistan, have nuclear arsenals and sophisticated delivery systems. All are expanding or modernizing their arsenals. Prior to Israeli and US attacks in 2025 and 2026, Iran was on track to obtain nuclear weapons. Tehran may still be on this track.
Increasingly, other countries are questioning US commitment to extended nuclear deterrence: using nuclear weapons to defend other countries. Some of these countries could be contemplating indigenous nuclear capabilities.
The last of the US-Russia nuclear arms limitations treaties, ‘New START’, expired with no replacement in February.
So, for the first time in six decades, the world has entered an era without nuclear weapons constraints. Yet today’s international community lacks the resolve and inventiveness of the early Cold War years when a global grand bargain was struck: the then five nuclear weapons states would pursue disarmament, and countries without nuclear weapons would agree not to develop them in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear technology.
How Did We Reach This Moment?
Since the height of the Cold War, when the US and Russia held around 44,000 warheads each, the two powers led disarmament, arms limitation and non-proliferation efforts. The two powers and their allies built the global nuclear control architecture through regular reviews of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, adjacent agreements on testing and export controls placed on components, and expansion of the mandate of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
All benefited from strategic stability, transparency and risk reduction practiced by the Permanent Five, and non-nuclear states’ access to peaceful nuclear technologies.
