Nuclear Roulette – 80 Years on the Brink

On March 5th, 1970, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the bedrock nuclear arms control treaty, came into force under international law. And the world, for the next 55 years, had hope that we might come to our senses, and realize that the only path to true security was the elimination of such weapons from the face of the earth. 

We now sit in a moment where that arms control regime is rapidly spinning out of control.

It was inevitable this day would come – the nuclear arms control regime was always destined to fall apart so long as the nuclear-armed nations chose to retain their weapons. As long as the world allowed special status to be conferred upon nations that held the ability to destroy civilization as we know it, if not all human life, it was only a matter of time before more and more individual nations would seek the presumed “protection” of nuclear arms.

And that is why nuclear physicists and military leaders the world over are now sounding the alarm. From The Atlantic magazine’s entire August issue, to the July 2025 issue of the monthly Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, to the most recent July 2025 gathering of “The Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War” in Chicago, we are seeing the urgency of reconnecting with an existential issue that has fallen off the radar in the public square.

What is desperately needed now is for the nine nuclear armed nations of the world to finally act under article VI of that treaty and immediately begin to “negotiate in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race, and nuclear disarmament, as well as a treaty on general and complete disarmament”.