The first nuclear weapon was tested just under 80 years ago, and the fact that the size of the nuclear club remains in the single digits is a testament to decades of careful diplomacy through the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). President Donald Trump‘s reckless and illegal strikes on Iranian nuclear sites now threaten to blow up the results of that painstaking work. Trump’s aggression is more likely to lead to what scholars call a “proliferation cascade” than it is to stop Tehran’s nuclear program.
The NPT has two main components. First, it requires signatories without nuclear weapons to promise not to build them, and to allow inspections and monitoring of peaceful civilian nuclear activities. Compliance can unlock technical assistance, financial backing, and information sharing to help countries harness the power of nuclear energy and other applications for the benefit of their citizens.
The second, much less discussed, component required the five signatories already in possession of nuclear weapons at the time the treaty was signed (the U.S., USSR, U.K., France, and China) to work towards abolition of these terrible weapons. They were to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race” with the ultimate goal of “general and complete disarmament.” Nuclear-armed countries, of which there are now nine, have basically abandoned this central feature of the treaty, much to the consternation of the other signatories.
According to Jon Wolfsthal, the director of Global Risk at the Federation of American Scientists and a former staffer on the National Security Council, “perhaps 40 additional states are technically advanced enough to build nuclear weapons if they chose to do so.” These include American allies like Japan, Germany, and South Korea. That neither they nor rich autocracies like Saudi Arabia have moved to join the nuclear club is due to the trust built via presidency-spanning U.S. leadership, which created the sense that the NPT’s provisions would be applied fairly, and that countries which submit to inspections and negotiations won’t be arbitrarily attacked by states with nukes.
Because the nuclear-armed countries have now gone decades without serious disarmament efforts, that trust was already wobbly. And Trump has basically just destroyed it.
You’ll find no apologies for the odious Iranian regime here. It has destabilized the Middle East with pointless adventurism and provocation while engaging in some of the worst domestic political repression in the world. But this is now twice that the U.S. has pulled the rug out from under Tehran. First, the U.S. under Trump arbitrarily reneged on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, obliterating years of diplomacy and sending us down the path we find ourselves on today. This is to say nothing of the ongoing hypocrisy about Israel’s undeclared and growing nuclear arsenal.
Perhaps even more egregiously, President Trump hoodwinked Iran into a negotiation process only to bow to Israeli pressure and conduct airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. Even as he was offering Tehran a two-week window to reach an agreement and leaving the door open for fresh talks, the president had already made the decision to launch a surprise attack. Israeli airstrikes even wounded one of Iran’s lead nuclear negotiators.
Even if you think those talks would have failed due to Iranian intransigence, it is hard to imagine anything more damaging to the future of nuclear diplomacy than a nuclear-armed country using purposeful misdirection to leave an NPT signatory defenseless against a sneak attack and targeting negotiators. Why would any country considering building these weapons ever trust the United States again? Why would they put their faith in the procedures of the NPT if they can simply be discarded by the world’s military hegemon whenever it likes?
Without the incentives of the NPT, fear and coercion are the only things keeping countries from building nuclear weapons. That simply won’t be enough if leaders decide they have more to gain from building nuclear weapons than they have to lose from the political fallout. They will ask whether they want to be North Korea, which is effectively insulated from U.S. attack by its nuclear arsenal, or Iran, which is now virtually defenseless against American coercion. At least a few are likely to conclude that they will be safer and more secure in the long run by joining the nuclear club, which could in turn lead their rivals to make the same calculation.
A world with a growing number of nuclear powers is less safe and more prone to almost unimaginable catastrophe. That has been the driving principle of America’s successful nuclear policy for decades, and with one capricious order, President Trump has inadvertently made the nightmare of a proliferation cascade much more likely.
David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in Slate, The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris and Bluesky @davidfaris.bsky.social.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own
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