Let us be clear-eyed about the obstacles we face. Let us be realistic about the difficulties ahead. But let us not succumb to cynicism or resignation. The stakes are too high. The consequences of failure are too terrible to contemplate, writes Nelson Wong.
This is a moment of profound peril. The crisis we are witnessing is not merely another chapter in the long history of international tensions; it represents a fundamental rupture in the architecture of global security that has, however imperfectly, preserved our world from nuclear catastrophe for nearly eight decades.
At the time of this writing, the smoke from waves of aerial bombardment still rises over Iran, following the joint US-Israeli operation that has opened a new and dangerous chapter in Middle Eastern conflict. The New START Treaty, the last remaining pillar of US-Russian strategic arms control, has teetered on the edge of extinction. The language of nuclear threats, once confined to the darkest corridors of Cold War thinking, has returned to mainstream political discourse.
We must ask ourselves: How did we arrive here? And more importantly, where do we go from here?
The assault on Iran and its implications for non-proliferation
Let us first consider the implications of the US-Israeli operation against Iran for the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, rests on three pillars: non-proliferation, the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and disarmament. But beneath these formal pillars lies an implicit understanding that states which foreswear nuclear weapons will not have their security threatened by those which possess them. This is the grand bargain of the non-proliferation regime.
The attack on Iran shatters this understanding. Iran, whatever one’s views on its government or its nuclear programme, was a party to the NPT. It was engaged in negotiations with the United States. It was, according to multiple intelligence assessments, not in possession of a nuclear weapon. And yet it was attacked.
What message does this send to other states that may feel threatened? The message is unmistakable: reliance on international law, on treaties and on diplomatic engagement provides no guarantee of security. The only reliable guarantee, it would seem, is the possession of a nuclear deterrent of one’s own.
The non-proliferation regime does not exist in a vacuum. It depends on a broader security environment in which non-nuclear states can reasonably expect that their forbearance will be matched by security guarantees from the nuclear powers. When those guarantees prove hollow, when non-nuclear states see that the price of vulnerability is invasion while the price of nuclear pursuit is at least deterrence, the regime begins to unravel.
I am not suggesting that every non-nuclear state will now rush to acquire nuclear weapons. The technical and economic barriers remain substantial. But the normative barrier—the sense that nuclear weapons are illegitimate, that their pursuit carries unacceptable costs—has been severely weakened. In a world of weakening norms, the long-term prospects for non-proliferation are grim.
The New START impasse and the future of arms control
The crisis in the Middle East is unfolding against the backdrop of another crisis—the expiration of the New START Treaty between the United States and Russia. This treaty, which limits the deployed strategic nuclear forces of both countries to 1,550 warheads each, is the last remaining agreement constraining the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.
The United States has made clear that it will not seek to extend New START without the participation of China. There is a certain logic to this position. China’s nuclear arsenal is growing, both in size and sophistication. Its strategic modernisation programme proceeds apace, and if arms control is to be meaningful in the twenty-first century, it must eventually encompass all major nuclear powers.
But the American position, however logical in principle, is problematic in practice. By making New START extension conditional on Chinese participation, the United States has created a situation in which the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. We risk losing a functioning, verifiable arms control agreement in pursuit of a broader arrangement that may take years, if not decades, to achieve.
China, for its part, has raised legitimate points about the incomparability of its strategic potential with that of the United States and Russia. The United States and Russia possess approximately 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads. China’s arsenal, while growing, remains an order of magnitude smaller. To demand that China should accept the same limits as the United States and Russia is to ignore this fundamental asymmetry.
Russia, meanwhile, insists that any expansion of the negotiating framework must include the United Kingdom and France. Here too, there is logic. If we are to move beyond bilateral US-Russian arms control to a truly multilateral framework, all nuclear-armed states must eventually be included. But the inclusion of the European nuclear powers raises its own complications, particularly given their role in NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements.
So we find ourselves at an impasse. With the expiration of New START, no replacement is in sight. For the first time since 1972, there may be no agreement limiting the world’s largest nuclear arsenals. This is a recipe for unconstrained competition, for miscalculation, for escalation.
Strategic stability in a divided world
The challenges we face go beyond specific treaties or particular conflicts. We are confronting something more fundamental: the breakdown of the conceptual framework that has governed strategic relations for decades.
Strategic stability, as historically understood, rests on two pillars: crisis stability and arms race stability. Crisis stability means that no state has an incentive to launch a first strike in a crisis, because it knows that retaliation would be devastating. Arms race stability means that no state has an incentive to build up its forces, because it knows that the other side would match any increase.
These concepts emerged from the Cold War experience of US-Soviet confrontation. They presupposed a bipolar world, with two dominant nuclear powers engaged in a relationship of mutually assured destruction. They presupposed a shared understanding of the rules of the game, even between adversaries. They presupposed a willingness to communicate, to negotiate, to reach agreements that would manage the competition and prevent it from spiralling out of control.
None of these conditions hold today.
We have moved from a bipolar to a multipolar nuclear order. China’s rise as a nuclear power, however measured, changes the strategic calculus. So too does the proliferation of nuclear capabilities in other states including India, Pakistan, North Korea, and potentially others. The old dyadic model of strategic stability no longer captures the complexity of a world with multiple nuclear actors, each with different doctrines, different force structures, and different threat perceptions.
We have also moved from a world of shared rules to a world of contested norms. The United States and Russia no longer agree on the basic parameters of strategic stability. The United States has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Open Skies Treaty. Russia has suspended its participation in New START and has conducted exercises involving tactical nuclear weapons. The infrastructure of arms control, painstakingly built over half a century, is crumbling.
We have moved from a world of communication to a world of confrontation. Diplomatic channels that once allowed for crisis management are dormant or non-existent. Military-to-military contacts have been severed. The back channels that enabled discreet communication during the darkest days of the Cold War have largely disappeared. In their absence, the risk of miscalculation, of misperception, and of escalation, grows exponentially.
The attack on Iran exemplifies these dangers. It was justified, in part, by claims of an “imminent threat”, the same kind of claims that have led to disastrous wars in the past. It was undertaken without apparent consideration of second- and third-order effects: How will Iran respond? Will it accelerate its nuclear programme? Will it seek to close the Strait of Hormuz, with catastrophic consequences for the global economy? Will it retaliate through proxies, expanding the conflict across the region? For the Middle East, these are existential questions.
The role of scientists and public forces
In this dark landscape, what can be done? Specifically, what can we, as scientists, public intellectuals, and as citizens concerned about the future of our planet, do to support the non-proliferation regime and to prevent the slide toward strategic chaos?
First, we must speak truth to power. Scientists have a special responsibility in this regard. We understand the technical realities of nuclear weapons, their destructive power, their effects on human health and the environment, the impossibility of containing their consequences within national borders. We must make these realities known to policymakers and to the public. We must challenge the sanitised language of nuclear strategy, the talk of “escalation dominance” and “credible deterrence”, and remind people that these abstractions refer to weapons that can end civilisation.
Second, we must rebuild the bridges that have been burned. Scientific cooperation has historically been one of the most effective means of maintaining communication between states which are adversaries. The Pugwash Conferences, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, and countless other scientific exchanges kept dialogue alive during the Cold War when official channels were frozen. We need similar initiatives today, between American and Russian scientists, between Chinese and Western scientists, and between scientists from nuclear-armed and non-nuclear states.
Third, we must support and strengthen the institutions that underpin the non-proliferation regime. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation, the various UN disarmament bodies, these institutions are underfunded, understaffed, and often underappreciated. They need our advocacy and our expertise. They need us to defend them against attacks from those who would prefer a world without constraints.
Fourth, we must engage the public. Nuclear issues have largely disappeared from public consciousness since the end of the Cold War. Most people under age forty have never known a world in which nuclear weapons were a central concern of daily life. This is both a blessing and a danger. A blessing because people are not living in constant fear of annihilation. A danger because public indifference allows governments to pursue nuclear policies without democratic accountability. We must reawaken public awareness of nuclear risks and build the political will for meaningful action.
Finally, we must think creatively about new approaches to strategic stability. The old models are inadequate for the challenges we face. We need new concepts, new frameworks, and new agreements that reflect the multipolar reality of the twenty-first century. This will require intellectual humility, a recognition that no single country or group has all the answers. It will require dialogue across divides, between nuclear haves and have-nots, between adversaries and allies, between different cultural and strategic traditions. And it will require patience, the understanding that building a stable nuclear order is the work of generations, not of a single negotiation or treaty.
Conclusion
This is a time of gathering darkness. The attack on Iran has dealt a blow to the non-proliferation regime from which it may not easily recover. The expiration of New START threatens to unleash a new nuclear arms race. The broader framework of strategic stability, built over decades, is crumbling before our eyes.
But darkness is not the same as despair. History shows that nuclear dangers can be managed, that arms races can be halted, that treaties can be negotiated and implemented. The world that emerged from the Cold War was not inevitable. It was built by people, by scientists, diplomats, activists, ordinary citizens who refused to accept that nuclear annihilation was our destiny.
We are their heirs. We stand on their shoulders. And we must now take up the work that they began.
Let us be clear-eyed about the obstacles we face. Let us be realistic about the difficulties ahead. But let us not succumb to cynicism or resignation. The stakes are too high. The consequences of failure are too terrible to contemplate.
In the end, the choice is ours. We can accept the slide toward strategic chaos, toward a world of unchecked nuclear competition and ever-present risk of catastrophe. Or we can fight for something better, for a world in which nuclear weapons are progressively eliminated, in which security is based on cooperation rather than threat, in which our children and grandchildren can live without fear of annihilation.
