The looming threat of nuclear proliferation

No longer is the threat posed by nuclear weapons even tenuously contained by mutually agreed rules and accepted norms.

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Instead, it is returning with a vengeance, pushing us all to the edge of the abyss.For the first time since the end of the Cold War, nuclear arsenals are growing, and the weapons themselves are becoming more lethal, more diverse, and more vulnerable. Arms-control talks have stalled, and most agreements have expired or been so hollowed out as to have lost all credibility. Worse, nuclear rhetoric is becoming ever more threatening, and nuclear-armed states more brazenly confrontational.

Just consider several worrying developments seen in 2025: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber rattling over Ukraine; US President Donald Trump's threat to resume nuclear-weapon tests, and China’s strategic nuclear missile buildup, the world’s largest since the 1960s. And, most ominously, war nearly erupted between two nuclear-weapon states—India and Pakistan—in May.

These trends are completely out of step with the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the objective of which was to free the world from the constant threat of self-annihilation. The NPT requires all parties to renounce nuclear weapons and to subject their nuclear activities to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection. It also obliges five recognized nuclear-weapon states at the time of its signing—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—to get rid of their weapons and achieve nuclear disarmament.

With 191 states party to it, the NPT is almost universal. But four of the five exceptions—India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—are nuclear-weapon states (the fifth is South Sudan). The first three refused to join before developing nuclear weapons; North Korea initially joined but later withdrew amid accusations that it had violated the treaty—and now openly proclaims its growing nuclear ambitions.