THE hallmark of the fourth nuclear age is an alarming, anarchic nuclear landscape. This anarchy is intensifying because New START expired in February 2026, the nuclear non-proliferation regime is losing credibility, vertical nuclear proliferation is rising, pundits in latent nuclear weapon states are debating the costs of acquiring nuclear weapons versus restraint, new technologies are entering military systems and nuclear saber-rattling continues.
The United Nations’ Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, in his keynote address to the UN General Assembly meeting commemorating the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons on September 29, 2026, warned, “Nuclear arsenals are being expanded and modernized. The rattling of nuclear sabers is growing louder. Advances in technology are increasing the odds of mistake and miscalculation.” The following day, Russia formally warned NATO through a diplomatic memo that it would be ready to resort to nuclear weapons if the Western alliance attempted to cut off Kaliningrad. The most alarming question is how quickly nuclear saber-rattling can progress from rhetoric to complete shunning of the nuclear taboo?
Russia stopped implementing New START in February 2023 because it objected to the continuing US assistance to Ukraine. The United States stopped implementing the treaty in response. On February 5, 2026, the New START officially expired, ending over five decades of legally binding bilateral limits on US and Russian strategic nuclear forces.
The nuclear non-proliferation regime (NNPR) is shaped by a vast ecosystem of treaties, multilateral regimes, sanctions laws, export controls and other tools designed to dissuade and prevent more states from crossing the nuclear weapons threshold. The numerous developments signal that the twentieth-century NNPR is increasingly ineffective because more nuclear-armed states are emerging, destructive technologies are being fabricated and integrated to increase the lethality of nukes, nuclear doctrines are being recalibrated in a multipolar strategic environment, the nuclear taboo is losing credibility and the risks of accidents and inadvertent nuclear use are rising.
The four multilateral export control arrangements—the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement, the Australia Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime—are becoming ineffective because they do not address emerging technologies and do not engage capable states outside their exclusive membership. Moreover, states apply NNPR norms selectively, which erodes credibility; for instance, the India-US nuclear deal, signed in 2005, led the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to grant India a waiver in 2008. The development and integration of emerging or destabilizing technologies into military systems will continue to shape the nuclear landscape. In multipolar competition, the proliferation of these technologies intensifies nuclear anarchy in the international strategic environment because it accelerates a new arms race with revolutionary weapons that challenge the existing deterrence paradigm and propel us to the edge of the abyss.
One of the specific reasons for the edge of the abyss is the increasing significance of nukes in nuclear-armed states’ strategic calculations and the risk of nuclear weapons use because of increasing conventional wars between nuclear-armed rivals (India and Pakistan), nuclear-armed state aggression against the latent nuclear-weapon state (Israel and US aggression against Iran) and nuclear-armed state frustration in protracted asymmetrical warfare with a conventionally weaker state supported by a nuclear-armed coalition (Russia’s entanglement in protracted asymmetrical war with Ukraine).
The nuclear weapons states’ aggression against the non-nuclear weapon states has intensified the debate in the latent nuclear weapon states over the costs of acquiring nuclear weapons versus restraint. Allies’ and partners’ trust in US extended deterrence is diminishing. Notably, apart from Iran, the most plausible states that might seek the bomb in the near future are US allies or security partners, which makes the potential trade offs between nonproliferation and alliance management more acute. It seems unnatural that states such as Japan, South Korea, etc., continue to stick to their policies of not having their own nuclear arsenals, particularly after they see what happened to Ukraine and now to Iran.
The general impression was that once Iran agreed to comply with the NPT in letter and spirit and took concrete steps to ensure that it would not pursue nuclear weapons, the US would respond with sanctions relief and the release of frozen funds. However, President Trump denied that he would give concessions in return for Tehran’s nuclear concessions. On September 28, 2026, he wrote on Truth Social, “This is untrue. I offered them NOTHING” in reciprocity for Tehran’s nuclear restraint.
Such statements certainly strengthen the nuclear optimists’ argument that Iran could exit the NPT and pursue nuclear weapons, which would have a domino impact in the Middle East. The leaders in countries like Germany, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey and even Japan openly discuss and debate the value of a national nuclear deterrent. For instance, on August 28, 2026, a Gallup Korea Poll found that 65% of South Koreans support domestic nuclear armament.
Germany has initiated a strategic dialogue with France and the United Kingdom to pursue nuclear deterrence. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has been discussing a European nuclear umbrella with the United Kingdom and France. Last week, Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi once again urged his government to urgently debate acquiring nuclear weapons amid growing nuclear threats from China.
The alarming variable in the contemporary anarchic nuclear landscape is vertical proliferation or a nuclear arms race, because it makes limited nuclear employment more plausible. Therefore, strategic thinkers are revising nuclear doctrines to focus on practical nuclear warfighting strategies for defense rather than on deterrence stability, which in turn shapes and guides nuclear-armed countries’ nuclear force structures, deployments and postures. To conclude, the anarchic nuclear landscape is heightening nuclear dangers in international politics.
—The writer is Vice Chancellor of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
