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Walking a fraying nuclear tightrope

At this perilous moment, a recommitment to nuclear arms control is nothing short of a moral imperative. We’ve done this work before; we can do it again.

Politico, September 25, 2024 , By Joel H. Rosenthal

As leaders gather in New York for the U.N. General Assembly this week, we find ourselves in a world without a single treaty limiting the number of strategic nuclear weapons.

Let me be clear: In an increasingly volatile geopolitical environment, there’s no nuclear ceiling — and worse, there’s no plan to establish one.

At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. had approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads to the Soviet Union’s 40,000 — numbers driven by the strategy of deterrence, which was normalized as the doctrine of “mutual assured destruction.” And despite these seemingly astronomical arsenals, arms control agreements like the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START) managed to temper competition.

Today, however, we’re walking a fraying nuclear tightrope…………………………………………… https://www.politico.eu/article/walking-nuclear-tightrope-geopolitics-un-general-assembly/

September 26, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized