We’re counting down again

The world is worls is looking to the skies again – not metaphorically, but strategically. As nuclear powers abandon disarmament while enforcing it on others, the non-proliferation regime is fracturing. If the system meant to prevent catastrophe no longer holds, the question is no longer how close we are to midnight, but who, if anyone, is still keeping time.

We are looking to the skies again.

Not metaphorically, but in the same way the world did at the height of the Cold War – waiting, watching, calculating risk in minutes rather than years. The language has returned: escalation, deterrence, red lines. So too has the underlying fear – that a single decision, miscalculation, or misreading of intent could tip the balance into something irreversible.

This is the context in which nuclear non-proliferation must now be understood. Not as a stable framework of global governance, but as a system quietly unravelling under the weight of its own contradictions.

The symbolic centre of this system – the Doomsday Clock – asks a deceptively simple question: how close are we to catastrophe? But the more pressing question today is not how close we are, but who, if anyone, is still holding the mechanisms together.

Because the answer increasingly appears to be: no one.

The modern non-proliferation regime rests on a fundamental trade-off. Under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), non-nuclear states agree not to acquire nuclear weapons. In return, nuclear-armed states commit to eventual disarmament and to facilitating peaceful nuclear cooperation.

This was never a perfect bargain. But it was, for decades, a functional one. Today, that bargain has fractured.

The five recognised nuclear-weapon states – China, France, Russia, the UK and the United States – are not reducing their arsenals. They are modernising them. Expanding them. Diversifying them. At the same time, they continue to insist that non-nuclear states remain bound by non-proliferation commitments, subject to monitoring, inspection and restriction.

This asymmetry is not new. What is new is the degree to which it is no longer even rhetorically concealed.

The institutions designed to manage this imbalance – particularly the so-called P5 Process – have drifted into stagnation. Once intended as a forum for transparency, risk reduction, and gradual building of trust, it now produces little of substance. Meetings are infrequent. Dialogue is shallow. Outcomes are minimal.

More importantly, the basic premise has eroded:” that these states are acting in good faith towards disarmament.

Without that premise, the entire structure begins to look less like a cooperative framework and more like a cartel – a closed system in which a small number of states maintain a monopoly on nuclear capability while denying it to others.

Nowhere is this contradiction more visible than in the case of Iran. For years, Iran’s nuclear program was governed by a negotiated framework, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that attempted to balance competing interests: its right to develop nuclear energy, and the international community’s interest in preventing weaponisation. That framework imposed limits, monitoring, and verification mechanisms in exchange for sanction relief and diplomatic normalisation.

Then the United States withdrew from that agreement in May 2018.

The consequences were predictable. If one party abandons the terms of a deal, the incentive for the other to comply disappears. Iran’s subsequent expansion of uranium enrichment – beyond previously agreed levels – did not occur in a vacuum. It followed the collapse of the very framework designed to constrain it.

Yet the response has not been to rebuild that framework. Instead, it has been escalating: sanctions, sabotage, and ultimately direct military action.

This raises a fundamental question. If compliance with non-proliferation agreements does not guarantee security, but non-compliance guarantees punishment – what rational incentive remains for states to stay within the system?

The answer is increasingly unclear.

“The question is no longer how close we are to midnight – it is whether anyone is still trying to turn the hands back.”

What emerges instead is a new, more dangerous logic: that security is not achieved through agreement, but through capability. That the lesson of recent conflicts is not restraint, but deterrence.

This is where realist international relations theory reasserts itself. The ‘security dilemma’ describes a situation in which one state’s attempt to increase its security – through armament or alliance-building – makes other states feel less secure, prompting them to respond in kind. The result is a spiral of escalation, driven not necessarily by aggression, but by mutual fear.

This dynamic is now visible at the nuclear level.

Nuclear states are expanding their arsenals in response to each other. Non-nuclear states observe this expansion while being told to remain disarmed. Trust erodes. Suspicion grows. The system begins to feed itself.

What makes the current moment particularly volatile is the absence of effective mechanisms to interrupt this cycle. During the Cold War, crisis management infrastructure – backchannel communications, arms control treaties, regular diplomatic engagement – acted as a form of stabilisation. These mechanisms did not eliminate risk, but they reduced the likelihood of miscalculation.

Today, many of those channels have weakened or disappeared.

Arms control agreements have lapsed or been abandoned. Dialogue between major powers has diminished. The idea that negotiation is the primary route to de-escalation has been replaced, in many, by a preference for coercion. The latest example is Trump’s warning that he would “wipe out (Iran’s) entire civilisation” if it did not yield.

This approach rests on a fundamental misreading of the Iranian regime. It assumes that pressure will produce concession, that escalation can force compliance. But for a state whose political identity is rooted in resistance against the United States, survival is not achieved through compromise but through endurance. Coercion does not moderate behaviour; it reinforces it. What is being interpreted in Washington as irrational defiance is, in Tehran, strategic consistency.

The result is a system with fewer brakes and more accelerants.

In this context, the Doomsday clock takes on a different meaning. It is often interpreted as a measure of objective risk. But in reality, it is a reflection of collective judgment – an attempt by experts to assess not just capabilities, but intentions, behaviours, and systemic stability.

The danger is not only that more states may seek nuclear capability. It is that the norms and expectations surrounding their use, limitation, and control are weakening.

When nuclear-armed states engage in open conflict, threaten escalation, or abandon negotiated constraints, they do more than increase immediate risk. They reshape the expectations of the international system. They signal that rules are conditional. That agreements are reversible. That power, rather than principle, determines outcomes.

The deeper issue, then, is not simply proliferation. It is the absence of a credible centre of authority. The institutions designed to manage nuclear risk – treaties, diplomatic forums, international organisations – derive their legitimacy from the willingness of powerful states to operate within them. When those states act outside or against those frameworks, the institutions do not collapse immediately. But they hollow out.

What remains is a system that still exists on paper, but no longer functions in practice. This is why calls for de-escalation increasingly go unheeded. It is not that the language of diplomacy has disappeared. It is that it no longer carrying the same weight. Without enforcement, without trust, and without consistent commitment from those with the most power, the system cannot compel behaviour. It can only request it.

The non-proliferation regime is not yet dead. But it is no longer stable.

The upcoming NPT Review Conference will likely reaffirm familiar principles: commitment to disarmament, the importance of non-proliferation, and the need for cooperation. But reaffirmation is not the same as action.

The central question is whether the states that hold nuclear power are willing to restore the credibility of the system they built.

That would require more than rhetoric. It would require renewed commitment to arms control, reactivation of meaningful dialogue, and the willingness to accept constraints on their own behaviour. At present, there is little evidence of that. Instead, we are left with a system in which the rules are increasingly contested, the incentives misaligned, and the mechanisms of restraint weakened.

And so we return to the image we began with: a world looking to the skies, measuring distance not in miles, but minutes. The clock is still ticking. The question is no longer how close in seconds we are to midnight. It is whether anyone is still trying to turn the hands back.