Maleeha Lodhi

IN an increasingly lawless world in which the global order is fragmenting, countries have to navigate an uncharted geopolitical terrain in a very unpredictable environment. Powerful states and regional powers are using coercive power to try to bend other states to their will. The threat or the use of force has become an option of first resort for them and the principal means of ‘resolving’ disputes. Attacks by stronger countries on the sovereignty of their adversaries or weaker states have become all too frequent. Some of these aggressive actions are disingenuously called pre-emptive wars. Israel’s war on Gaza, its attacks on Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Qatar, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, US bombardment of Iran and India’s military action against Pakistan all testify to the increasing use of force and violation of international law.

This new era of escalation and growing insecurity has renewed thinking among countries about nuclear weapons. Iran and Ukraine were attacked by nuclear powers. An NPT-member state, Iran was bombed by two nuclear-weapon states. This has encouraged more countries to see nuclear weapons as a guarantor of security. The lesson security-challenged countries may have drawn from recent events is that without nuclear weapons they are more vulnerable to external aggression and attacks on their sovereignty.

The annual 2025 SIPRI report highlights the potential for more countries to consider developing or hosting nuclear weapons. This at a time when the nuclear arsenals of nuclear-weapon states are being enlarged and upgraded and arms control efforts have come to a halt. President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that the US will resume nuclear testing seems a response to Russia’s claim to have tested a long-range, nuclear-powered cruise missile. But it is a dangerous move that will further erode a fraying nonproliferation regime. In the annual resolution on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty adopted by the UN General Assembly’s First Committee last week, the US was the only country to vote ‘no’ — for the first time.

A newly published book by Serhii Plokhy is a timely assessment of the nuclear issue and why countries have sought the bomb. The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival is a tour de force of the history of nuclear weapons development and the geopolitics behind it, focusing on what motivated countries to acquire them. It is a cautionary tale about the perils of weapons that can annihilate all humanity. Plokhy writes that since the American acquisition of the bomb, the nuclear arms race never really ceased except in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the US and Soviet Union agreed on disarmament measures and several countries were persuaded or forced to give up their nuclear programmes. That lull ended in 1998 with nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan. Israel acquired a nuclear weapons capability decades earlier, in the late 1960s/ early ’70s with significant French and some British help. By 2006, North Korea also joined the nuclear club. Meanwhile, Iran continued its nuclear programme.

If fear is a key motivation to go nuclear more countries may be encouraged by today’s turbulent world.

With nuclear-weapon states upgrading their arsenals and no arms limitation efforts to restrain them, Plokhy argues the world is in a more dangerous place than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis because an uncontrolled arms race raises the chances of nuclear war, by accident or otherwise. He says a new threat emerged with Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s nuclear installations and Russian leaders threatening to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. Although he doesn’t mention this, Israel and America’s attack on Iran’s nuclear sites takes that threat to another level.

Plokhy is concerned with drawing lessons from the first nuclear arms race that can help stop or control the next one. The crux of his book lies in assessing why some countries built the bomb while others gave up trying to acquire one. This is a question long discussed in the rich literature on the subject with motivating factors ascribed to prestige, security, power projection, domestic politics and leaders’ ambitions. Plokhy’s core argument is that whatever the combination of motives, the fear factor is decisive — “fear of nuclear attack by another state or of superior conventional forces possessed by an adversary”. Thus states’ “concerns about their security, represented by the emotion of fear, is paramount for understanding why they go nuclear”. Fear, he says, can generate different reactions, some irrational, others grounded in actual security threats.

Fear has produced paradoxical effects in nuclear history, both fuelling the arms race and making it more manageable and predictable. Fear of the nuclear balance of terror among adversaries led to arms control and reduction agreements during the Cold War. What worries the author is that in today’s unregulated global nuclear environment, fear can ignite a more dangerous phase of the arms race. He offers prudent advice. “We have to relearn how to manage our fear, recall how dangerous nuclear brinkmanship can be and recognise how important it is not to become a victim of nuclear blackmail and encourage the adventurism of nuclear rivals.”

What about the factors behind South Asia’s nuclear trajectory? Pakistan’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability was unambiguously security-driven. Two key developments shaped the decision. First, the Indian intervention in Pakistan’s dismemberment and military defeat in 1971. The second turning point was India’s 1974 nuclear explosion. The never-again thinking that followed 1971 — and fear of more Indian aggression — led to the strategic conclusion that Pakistan could only rely on itself for its security. Feroze Khan, author of the seminal book about Pakistan’s nuclear quest, Eating Grass, explains that “Pakistan’s humiliation [in 1971] laid the foundation for a shift in the once peaceful nature of the nuclear programme” to one aimed at acquiring the bomb.

India’s motivation to go nuclear was driven less by security and more by its quest for great-power status and prestige, as George Perkovich and others have also pointed out. Khan says it was also about competition with China, which motivated both India’s 1974 and 1998 tests. The 1962 Sino-Indian conflict acted as added incentive.

Given the current global turbulence and surge in regional rivalries, Plokhy’s book ends with a stark warning. The world may see 40 additional nuclear-armed countries which would dramatically increase the threat of intentional or accidental use of nuclear weapons. A sobering thought for a deeply troubled world.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.