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 build-up, the world’s largest since the 1960s. And, most ominously, war nearly erupted between two nuclear-weapon states — India and Pakistan — in May.
No longer is the threat posed by nuclear weapons even tenuously contained by mutually agreed rules and accepted norms. 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.
