The 2026 NPT Review Conference will be a litmus test of whether the international community can arrest, or at least manage, the drift toward nuclear disorder
Against the backdrop of the 2026 NPT Review Conference which began yesterday in New York, the global nuclear order appears to be at an inflection point-one where the certainties of post-Cold War restraint are steadily giving way to a far more contested and fragmented landscape.
What was once a system anchored in gradual reductions, normative commitments, and bilateral arms control is now marked by renewed competition, technological disruption, and the visible erosion of guardrails.
The world today possesses roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads, with a significant proportion operational and a worrying number maintained at high readiness levels. The slow numerical decline masks a deeper structural shift: the qualitative salience of nuclear weapons is rising once again.
The most striking feature of this transition is the universal impulse toward modernization. All nine nuclear-armed states are not merely maintaining but actively upgrading their arsenals.
United States and Russia, still dominant in numerical terms, are engaged in sweeping modernization cycles that span delivery systems, warheads, and command-and-control architectures.
China’s rapid expansion is particularly noteworthy, reflecting both its strategic ambitions and its growing discomfort with a historically minimalist posture. United States and Russia, still dominant in numerical terms, are engaged in sweeping modernization cycles that span delivery systems, warheads, and command-and-control architectures. Meanwhile, other nuclear powers are incrementally enhancing both capacity and capability, ensuring that nuclear competition is no longer a purely great-power affair.
Compounding this is the infusion of emerging technologies into nuclear thinking. Hypersonic delivery systems, cyber vulnerabilities in nuclear command and control, and the growing role of artificial intelligence are compressing decision-making timelines in ways that undermine traditional deterrence stability.
The nuclear domain is no longer insulated; it is increasingly entangled with conventional, cyber, and space capabilities, raising the risks of inadvertent escalation.
If modernization reflects continuity in state behaviour, the collapse of arms control frameworks signals a more profound rupture. The expiration of New START Treaty in February 2026 marks the end of legally binding limits between Washington and Moscow for the first time in over five decades. This is not merely a technical lapse, it is emblematic of a deeper political breakdown.
Parallel pressures on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the broader Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty framework further underscore the fragility of the existing regime.
With no successor arrangement in sight and with both sides retaining the capacity to rapidly expand deployed arsenals, the spectre of unconstrained competition looms large. Parallel pressures on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the broader Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty framework further underscore the fragility of the existing regime.
At the regional level, North Korea continues to advance its capabilities with little restraint, while Iran remains a pivotal uncertainty in West Asia. The possibility of proliferation cascades, whether in the Middle East or East Asia, can no longer be dismissed as theoretical. Moreover, the emerging geopolitical alignments have raised concerns about the diffusion of sensitive technologies, potentially accelerating both vertical and horizontal proliferation.
Equally significant is the subtle but consequential shift in nuclear doctrines across major and regional powers. Nuclear weapons are no longer viewed in isolation as instruments of last resort but are increasingly embedded within a broader spectrum of coercive statecraft that includes conventional precision strikes, cyber operations, and space-based capabilities. This integration reflects a growing belief that nuclear signalling can be calibrated and employed alongside other tools to shape adversary behaviour without necessarily crossing the threshold into full-scale nuclear exchange. In such an environment, deterrence becomes less about static balances and more about dynamic signalling, raising questions about how thresholds are perceived and, more importantly, misperceived.
This doctrinal evolution is particularly evident in the renewed emphasis on so-called “tactical” or low-yield nuclear weapons. States such as Russia have placed increased reliance on non-strategic nuclear systems, often justified as a means of offsetting conventional asymmetries, while the United States has explored flexible response options within its own deterrence posture. These developments are mirrored, in varying degrees, by other nuclear-armed states seeking credible escalation ladders that stop short of all-out nuclear war.
States such as Russia have placed increased reliance on non-strategic nuclear systems, often justified as a means of offsetting conventional asymmetries, while the United States has explored flexible response options within its own deterrence posture.
Pakistan’s development of short-range, low-yield systems signals Islamabad’s intent to seek deterrence not simply at the strategic level but also limited conventional incursions. Yet the very notion that nuclear use can be limited, controlled, or “manageable” introduces dangerous ambiguities, particularly in high-pressure crisis scenarios where signalling can be easily misread.
Compounding these risks is the growing normalization of nuclear rhetoric in contemporary conflicts. From overt threats to more subtle forms of signalling, nuclear weapons are being invoked with a frequency that would have been deeply unsettling in earlier decades. This trend places strain on the normative force of the nuclear taboo—the long-standing inhibition against nuclear use that has held since 1945. While the taboo has not collapsed, its erosion is evident in the willingness of states to publicly brandish nuclear capabilities as instruments of coercion. In a multipolar and increasingly volatile strategic landscape, such shifts risk lowering psychological barriers to use, thereby heightening the probability of escalation, whether deliberate or inadvertent.
Taken together, these trends point toward the gradual unravelling of the post-Cold War nuclear order. The movement is unmistakably toward a multipolar system characterized by competitive accumulation, doctrinal ambiguity, and weakened institutional oversight. Strategic stability-once underwritten by a mix of parity and predictability-is becoming harder to sustain in an environment defined by asymmetries, technological flux, and geopolitical distrust.
In this context, the 2026 Review Conference will serve as more than a routine diplomatic exercise; it will be a litmus test of whether the international community can arrest, or at least manage, the drift toward nuclear disorder. The challenge is not simply one of reviving old frameworks but of reimagining governance mechanisms suited to a far more complex and contested era. Absent such efforts, the world risks entering a phase where nuclear weapons, far from receding into the background, reclaim their centrality in international politics, with all the attendant dangers that entails.
This commentary originally appeared in Moneycontrol.
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Professor Harsh V. Pant is Vice President at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. He is a Professor of International Relations with King's India Institute at ...
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