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nuclear war
Will a New Nuclear Arms Race Make Us More Secure?
Now that the last nuclear arms control treaty regulating US and Russian nuclear weapons has expired, it is possible that these two superpowers could double their arsenals in one to two years, even as China, North Korea, and France also increase their arsenals.
Apr 01, 2026
It is widely thought that the February 5 expiration of New START, the last arms control agreement capping US and Russian nuclear weapons, could usher in a dangerous and highly destabilizing new nuclear arms race. Since the Cold War peak of over 70,000 nuclear weapons in 1986, arms control treaties have reduced the number to approximately 12,200 today—still equivalent, however, to 145,000 Hiroshimas. Many of these decommissioned weapons remain in storage where they can be readily redeployed, making it possible to double Russian and US arsenals in one to two years.
If a new nuclear arms race begins between the US and Russia, the US could “upload” 800 bombs and cruise missiles stored at military bases back onto B-2 and B-52 bombers in a matter of weeks. The number of warheads on submarines could be increased by 400 to 500 by placing additional warheads on each missile and reusing the launch tubes that were closed under New START. Finally, by placing additional warheads on half of its intercontinental ballistic missiles and reloading silos on standby, it could double its ICBM warheads from 400 to 800. Similarly, hundreds of decommissioned Russian warheads could be uploaded onto its bombers, ICBMs, and submarines.
Moreover, both the US and Russia are modernizing their nuclear weapons and new, terrifying systems are being developed. Although their arsenals are much smaller, the other seven nuclear weapon states are also modernizing, and China is rapidly expanding its arsenal. France has also just announced it will increase the size of its arsenal. Several nonnuclear states are considering acquiring nuclear weapons, which would further proliferation and greatly complicate the global situation.
The development of nuclear weapons in space and dual-use technology add to the unpredictability, and the loss of verification and information exchange provided by arms control agreements contribute to greater uncertainty, misunderstanding, and worst-case thinking.
A nuclear war would be utterly catastrophic.
So, will a new nuclear arms race make us more secure?
Given the current very tense and fragile geopolitical environment and questions about the stability of the leaders involved, it is entirely possible that a conventional conflict could escalate into nuclear war. Indeed, the Russians have threatened to use nuclear weapons in the context of their war in Ukraine and they have also lowered their “nuclear doctrine” threshold for using nuclear weapons.
The book Nuclear War: A Scenario and the film A House of Dynamite both offer chilling but realistic scenarios whereby incoming ICBMs would be responded to by massive second-strike retaliation. In just over an hour, life as we know it would be shattered worldwide.
The other grave concern is accidental nuclear war; Published accounts offer multiple examples. Warnings of a nuclear attack have been triggered by a faulty 46-cent computer chip; the mistaken insertion of a training tape into a computer; moon-rise; nuclear submarine collisions; the launch of a weather rocket; and many others. There are also cyber threats that barely existed during the Cold War. Equally worrying is the slippery slope of AI, which could lead to its integration into US, Russian, and Chinese nuclear weapon systems, stimulated by competition, mutual insecurity, and the extremely short decision-making time frame. As Gareth Evans, co-chair of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, warns in his latest article: “The fact that we have survived for eight decades without a nuclear weapons catastrophe... is just sheer, dumb luck.”
A nuclear war would be utterly catastrophic. Scientific evidence has shown that a nuclear war would cause a “nuclear winter” where smoke and soot from hundreds of burning cities would loft into the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight, darkening the sky, chilling the Earth, creating massive crop failures and extreme famine for every country in the world for up to 10 years after an all-out nuclear war. Millions of deaths from the explosions and radiation would be followed by billions of deaths from starvation. It would also significantly deplete the ozone layer, threatening animal and plant life. Recently, it has been shown that even a “limited” war between India and Pakistan could cause a nuclear winter that could kill over 2 billion people.
As Jonathan Schell writes in The Fate of the Earth: “The machinery of destruction is complete, poised on a hair trigger, waiting for the ‘button’ to be ‘pushed’ by some misguided or deranged human being or for some faulty computer ship to send out the instructions to fire. That so much should be balanced on so fine a point—that the fruit of four and a half billion years can be undone in a careless moment—is a fact against which belief rebels.”
Indeed, in January, the Doomsday Clock set annually by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was moved to its closest point to midnight in its history—85 seconds. The Bulletin’s president and CEO, Alexandra Bell, concludes: “The Doomsday Clock’s message cannot be clearer. Catastrophic risks are on the rise, cooperation is on the decline, and we are running out of time. Change is both necessary and possible, but the global community must demand swift action from their leaders.”
Unfortunately, little remains of the broad-based anti-nuclear activism that was prevalent during the Cold War. Nevertheless, there is considerable public concern. A YouGov poll from May 2025 conducted in the US and five European countries shows that 41-55% of respondents think another world war is likely within the next 5 to 10 years and 68-76% believe that, if one occurs, it would involve nuclear weapons. Furthermore, 25-44% believe that it would result in the deaths of most of the world’s population.
If those who are worried about nuclear war were to become involved in a vigorous public debate to educate and activate those who aren’t aware of the magnitude of the threat (including those in power), to urge leaders to re-engage in significant, new arms control negotiations and agreements, they could surely make a difference, as they did during the Cold War, for this most existential of all threats.
As Schell notes: “Every person is the right person to act. Every minute is the right moment to begin.”
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Nuking Iran Would Mean Stepping Beyond the Brink of Evil
There may be no recovery from such an action; indeed, “recovery” is only possible before such an action occurs: before the nuclear missile hits.
Mar 26, 2026
This is the first sentence of a column I cannot write... of a “war” I cannot win. There’s just no way to condense the psycho-spiritual devastation of an unleashed nuclear bomb into words. All I can do is ask a question that has no answer: What is the opposite of Armageddon?
Can a collective human embrace be larger, more intense and powerful than collective suicide? Is “peace” a force in its own right, or just a brief moment of quiet while humanity reloads?
OK, no answers, just a bit of context with which to ponder the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran (and throughout the Middle East). Lawrence Wilkerson—retired US Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell—put it this way in a recent interview with Democracy Now: “This is a war with long legs and I think Trump has completely misinterpreted it. The only one who has interpreted it correctly is Bibi Netanyahu and I think he’s ready to use a nuclear weapon, should it become as bad as it looks right now.”
One alleged reason why we’re waging a war on Iran is because it has nuclear “capability,” which we need to obliterate for our own safety. Apparently, only the boss countries—the world leaders, the conquerors and colonizers—can be trusted to have nukes. USA! USA! This club also includes Israel, which in fact possesses a large number of nuclear warheads and may actually use one if the war it started comes back at it with too much ferocity. In other words, if Iran’s retaliation is too successful: “...winning against such insatiable enemies could provoke a cornered Israel to turn the war nuclear,” according to the publication Jacobin. “A Trump adviser recently warned that Israel might use a nuclear weapon against Iran.”
I don’t believe it’s possible to turn a nuclear assault into a verbal abstraction: “Gosh, Iran was just nuked.” If that happens, we’ve just inflicted hell on all of humanity. We’ve stepped—collectively—beyond the brink of evil.
Let’s take a moment to let this sink in. The Iran war could go nuclear. Here’s where things get incomprehensible: horrifically unimaginable. The human race has far more skill at murder than it has at understanding, conflict resolution... sanity.
The Jacobin piece continues:
Israel has a large nuclear arsenal, officially undeclared, of over 100 warheads that it built with the help of the French and hid for a decade from the Americans. It can be deployed by submarines as well as long range missiles and is considered by Israeli planners to be the "Samson option," named after the last biblical judge of Israel who tore down the columns of the temple of an ancient fertility God to destroy the Philistines. It may resort to using this weapon if it feels it is existentially threatened.
Samson brought the temple down on himself as well, as I imagine you know. Could an ancient story be more relevant to the present moment?
This is where I lose any sense of what to say. First of all, I don’t believe it’s possible to turn a nuclear assault into a verbal abstraction: “Gosh, Iran was just nuked.” If that happens, we’ve just inflicted hell on all of humanity. We’ve stepped—collectively—beyond the brink of evil. There may be no recovery from such an action.
Indeed, “recovery” is only possible, in all likelihood, before such an action occurs: before the nuclear missile hits. Recovery has to start happening right now—and it is, or so I hope. Something’s happening. More than 3,000 No Kings Day protest rallies are planned around the country on March 28. Protest is not enough, of course, but it’s yet another beginning. Let this be the match that lights the candle.
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Will Trump Break the Nuclear Taboo?
In addition to the widening of the war on Iran to the whole Middle East and beyond, this conflict risks deliberate use of nuclear weapons.
Mar 12, 2026
President Donald Trump has been on quite a roll. Since just the beginning of the year, he has kidnapped the Venezuela president, threatened to invade Greenland and Colombia, and has in just the last week dragged the US—and seemingly much of the Middle East—into a new war by joining with Israel to attack Iran, something that even the biggest hawks among recent US presidents have managed to avoid. That’s on top of bombing seven countries in 2025.
The 2024 campaign promises of a peace president who will end the forever wars have evaporated, only to be replaced by unrestrained use of military force and a seeming disdain for diplomacy. As the US comedy show "Saturday Night Live"put it, Trump, along with his United Nations-replacing Board of Peace, got “bored of peace.”
Breaking international law seems to be a feature, and not a bug, of Trump’s actions, consistent with his admission that he is expressly not guided by international law, norms, traditions, or common decency, but by “my own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Trump’s power-drunk top advisors are just as out of control. Secretary of War Pete “kill them all” Hegseth stated that his goal is to "unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy" and to "untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country." At the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State “little Marco” Rubio bemoaned the end of the era of colonialism and called for returning to “the West’s age of dominance.” Deputy chief of staff Stephen “Genghis” Miller declared, “We live in a world…that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
It would be the ultimate expression of Trump's unbounded power for him to break the one remaining international taboo—which, despite far too many close calls, has persisted for more than 80 years—detonating a nuclear weapon.
In addition to hegemonic actions in the conventional military realm, Trump has been escalating when it comes to nuclear weapons. He rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invitation to extend the New START treaty for another year, making possible an unconstrained nuclear arms race alongside an ongoing modernization race. He has also announced that the US will resume nuclear testing. Even without the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and tensions with China, these actions and threats would be destabilizing and dangerous.
Trump is the mean and out-of-control bully on the global playground. Except that this bully has the sole authority to launch thousands of nuclear warheads.
It would be the ultimate expression of Trump's unbounded power for him to break the one remaining international taboo—which, despite far too many close calls, has persisted for more than 80 years—detonating a nuclear weapon. There are many indications that, despite the US and Israel’s ability to bomb Iran at will, this war may not be going well for them. But that need not be the pretext for using a nuclear weapon. In Trump's mind, the more unprovoked, outrageous, and unnecessary something is, the better. Given his fragile ego and rapidly deteriorating mental powers—going off on bizarre rants about poisonous snakes in Peru or the White House drapes—the more unhinged he is, the more he thinks it demonstrates his dominance.
Since the end of the Cold War, many people who pay attention have worried about an accidental or a miscalculated stumble into nuclear war. But with Trump breaking every taboo domestically and internationally, demonstrating that he is above the law and can do as he pleases at every turn, the ultimate taboo waiting to be broken is the nuclear one. This may in fact be part of the reason why Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping have muted their response to the attacks on Iran. They know how dangerous Trump is, and they don't want to provoke him.
There are now reports from Air Force veteran Mikey Weinstein, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, that his organization has received calls from more than 200 soldiers on over 50 military bases, that “have one damn thing in freaking common… the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new ‘biblically-sanctioned’ war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘end times’ as vividly described in the New Testament book of Revelation.” The commander of one combat unit told non-commissioned officers “that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that President Donald Trump was ‘anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.’”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned in June that we were “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.” We might be a lot closer than even she realized.
This piece was first published in Arabic by Al Jazeera.
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