From Risk to Resilience: Imagining a Sustainable Global Nuclear Order

The risk of a nuclear weapon being used is higher today than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis over 60 years ago. Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling and China’s dramatic nuclear modernization are not only drivers of this risk, but also symptoms of a global nuclear order in disrepair. Today’s leaders can reduce these risks by reaffirming enduring principles that have proven useful in the past and taking concrete steps to deescalate. However, in the long term, the only way to prevent a nuclear catastrophe is to move toward a more sustainable security architecture. NTI’s new paper, Navigating Disruption in the Global Nuclear Order: Managing Risks and Shaping a New Way Forward, dives into how we got to this critical point and what leaders should do about it.

How did we get here?

For decades, the global nuclear order rested on a stable foundation of shared norms, agreements, and understandings designed to prevent the use and/or spread of nuclear weapons. The resulting architecture, combined with prudent judgment—and good fortune—has thus far helped avert nuclear catastrophe. However, the world looks quite different today than it did when much of the global nuclear order was constructed, and the dynamics that define our current geopolitical reality have proven too much for the system to bear. Namely:

• The shift to a multipolar climate, marked by growing competition among nuclear powers (that are all, to different degrees, modernizing or expanding their arsenals), has complicated traditional understandings of nuclear deterrence and arms control rooted in the bipolar Cold War era
• A spate of emerging and disruptive technologies—such as artificial intelligence and cyber capabilities—has challenged core assumptions about strategic stability and escalation
• The conflict in Ukraine and the loss of confidence in security guarantees in Europe, and elsewhere in the world, have made nuclear weapons more tempting for some non–nuclear-weapon states
• Non–nuclear-weapon states have become increasingly impatient with the lack of progress on disarmament, deepening the divide between the nuclear “haves” and “have-nots.”

How can leaders manage the immediate risks?

In this challenging and uncertain environment, NTI’s new paper highlights how global leaders can avoid the worst-case outcomes by using a combination of new approaches and time-tested measures updated for modern conditions.

Key among the new tools and approaches is ensuring participation and engagement from a broader array of states—those with nuclear weapons and those without—in nuclear risk reduction and disarmament. Nuclear conflict would have potentially global impacts, so it stands to reason that all states have an interest and a role to play in reducing nuclear risks.

Managing today’s risks will also require leaders to develop more flexible mechanisms and agreements, especially in response to emerging technologies, which are advancing and interacting at unprecedented speed. In some cases, new technologies and capabilities will be more widely dispersed among countries; addressing the security challenges they present will require new channels of diplomacy that go beyond traditional U.S.-Russian dialogue or the five nuclear-weapons states recognized by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It will also require greater engagement and cooperation with the private sector; while governments have had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, the same is not the case when it comes to artificial intelligence or assets in outer space.

In the interim, leaders must recommit to valuable guiding principles from the past to mitigate immediate risks. These include the famous Reagan-Gorbachev statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” If backed by practical measures to reduce risks, such statements help to reinforce the critical taboo against nuclear use and reduce the salience of nuclear weapons. These principles represent the baseline shared existential interests of states and humanity and should underpin nuclear policy and decision-making for as long as the weapons exist.

While these tools, approaches, and principles can act as a band-aid in the near term, leaders must in parallel begin building towards a stronger, more sustainable global system.

What is required to transform the global nuclear order?

The report underscores a critical truth: relying on the gamble of nuclear deterrence is fundamentally unsustainable. As long as nuclear weapons exist, there will always be a risk that they will be used—whether intentionally or by accident or miscalculation. On top of managing the risks inherent to the prevailing security system, it’s also time to build toward an alternative—one that does not rely on the threat of annihilation.

This will require many lines of effort, including:

• Designing a new security architecture, along with the political, institutional, legal, and technological requirements needed to eliminate reliance on nuclear weapons
• Deepening understanding of the global effects of nuclear use to strengthen the case that everyone has an interest in reducing the risk of nuclear use
• Examining norms, principles, and legal strategies that have been effective in managing other existential threats like climate change
• Developing compelling narratives that highlight the relevance and urgency of nuclear risks for the public and empower citizens to hold leaders accountable
• Promoting respectful and inclusive dialogue in all the above.

Present instability and challenges in the global security environment should highlight the importance of pressing ahead with this new vision, not deter us from starting. In the paper’s foreword, NTI Co-Chair and CEO Ernest J. Moniz and NTI President and COO Joan Rohlfing write that it is a “step along the way toward a more resilient security architecture that greatly reduces the threat posed by nuclear weapons.” That journey, they note, “needs to be pursued with urgency.” By crafting a strategy to strengthen the global nuclear order based on these findings, NTI is committed to driving progress on just that.