Non-proliferation and multilateralism are now under strain.
Posted: 17th July 2025
In recent months, two nuclear-armed states, India and Pakistan, came to the brink of war; and two nuclear-armed states, the United States and Israel, bombed a third country, Iran, with the express aim of ensuring it could not weaponise its nuclear programme. Both crises were de-escalated, though in neither scenario has the underlying conflict been resolved. In the Middle Eastern case, de-escalation came only after hundreds of people had died. Managing the nuclear threat has been central to the multilateral system since its founding at the end of the Second World War. But both non-proliferation and multilateralism are now under strain. These recent episodes are a warning: the systems that for decades have protected us from nuclear war are at risk amid growing insecurity and a trend towards exceptionalism. In August, the world will mark 80 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The catastrophic nature of the weapon was clear even before those bombings. That is why the debut resolution of the UN General Assembly, which met for the first time in London in January 1946, called for the elimination of atomic bombs, verified through inspections, and for international scientific exchange to ensure nuclear energy was used only for peaceful purposes.