The fragile architecture of global nuclear governance is under unprecedented strain as 2026 unfolds. With the New START treaty now expired and a critical NPT Review Conference approaching, the international community confronts a landscape where arsenals are growing, delivery technologies are advancing, and the diplomatic tools designed to prevent catastrophe are rapidly dissolving. From Tehran’s accelerating enrichment program to Pyongyang’s expanding missile capabilities, the forces pushing against non-proliferation far outweigh those reinforcing it.
The Collapse of the Last Bilateral Arms Framework
On February 5, 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty officially lapsed, ending more than half a century of continuous bilateral nuclear arms agreements between Washington and Moscow. The treaty, originally signed in 2010 and extended once in 2021, had capped each side at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on 700 delivery systems. Its expiration, as the UN Secretary-General warned in a formal statement, represents “a grave moment for international peace and security.” Moscow proposed a one-year voluntary continuation of the treaty’s deployment limits, but President Trump rejected the offer, calling instead for a modernized agreement that would include China in trilateral negotiations — a condition Beijing has repeatedly refused.
Beyond its numerical caps, New START provided something arguably more valuable: a verification regime that included short-notice on-site inspections and biannual data exchanges. These mechanisms built mutual confidence and transparency between two adversaries holding roughly 86 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. Russia suspended compliance with these provisions in 2023, citing Western military support for Ukraine, and Washington responded by withholding its own data-sharing obligations. With neither inspections nor data exchange functioning for nearly three years before the treaty’s formal death, the practical collapse preceded the legal one. Security analysts now warn that without any constraining framework, both nations could deploy hundreds of additional warheads within a matter of years, as each side is compelled by worst-case assumptions about the other’s intentions.
A Global Inventory That Continues to Expand
The scale of the challenge becomes clearer when examining the current state of global nuclear arsenals. According to the SIPRI Yearbook 2025 published in June, nine states collectively possessed approximately 12,241 warheads at the start of 2025, of which roughly 9,614 were in active military stockpiles available for potential deployment. Russia and the United States account for the overwhelming majority, with estimated inventories of approximately 5,459 and 5,177 warheads respectively. France maintains around 290, the United Kingdom holds 225, India possesses an estimated 180, and Pakistan fields roughly 170.
What distinguishes the current moment from previous decades is not merely the size of these stockpiles but the qualitative transformation underway across multiple nuclear powers. China’s arsenal has experienced the most dramatic growth, surging past 600 operational warheads — a roughly 20 percent increase in a single year. The Pentagon’s annual report on Chinese military developments projects that Beijing will exceed 1,000 warheads by 2030, representing a fundamental shift in the strategic balance. This expansion encompasses new silo fields, mobile launchers, and a growing fleet of ballistic missile submarines, all indicating that China is transitioning from a minimal deterrent posture toward something far more ambitious. Every nuclear-armed state is simultaneously investing in modernization programs — not merely maintaining existing warheads but developing entirely new delivery platforms designed to overcome evolving missile defense systems.
Emerging Technologies Reshaping Strategic Calculations
The proliferation challenge extends well beyond warhead counts. Advances in delivery technology are fundamentally altering the strategic calculus that underpinned Cold War stability. Hypersonic glide vehicles, capable of maneuvering at speeds exceeding Mach 5 while evading existing missile defense architectures, have been identified by Congressional Research Service analysts as a transformative threat to traditional deterrence models. Russia has already deployed its Avangard hypersonic system, while China tested its own platforms, and the United States is racing to field comparable capabilities.
Equally destabilizing is the development of Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles, or MIRVs, by states that previously relied on single-warhead missiles. North Korea’s newest solid-fueled Hwasong-20 ICBM, unveiled at a military parade in October 2025, appears designed to carry multiple warheads — a capability that would dramatically multiply Pyongyang’s strike potential. Meanwhile, the integration of artificial intelligence into nuclear command-and-control systems introduces another layer of risk. AI-enabled early warning and targeting systems could compress decision-making timelines during a crisis from minutes to seconds, leaving virtually no room for human judgment or diplomatic de-escalation. These technological trajectories are eroding the strategic stability that arms control frameworks were built to preserve, yet no existing treaty addresses them.
Iran and North Korea: The Sharpening Proliferation Edge
Two states operating outside the recognized nuclear order present the most acute near-term proliferation risks. Iran’s nuclear program has accelerated sharply despite sustained economic sanctions and military strikes against its infrastructure. By mid-2025, the IAEA confirmed that Tehran had stockpiled over 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — alarmingly close to the 90 percent threshold required for weapons-grade material. Analysts at the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control estimate that Iran could now produce enough fissile material for five nuclear devices within approximately one week, making its breakout timeline the shortest in the program’s history. Advanced centrifuges operating at the deeply buried Fordow facility further complicate any military or diplomatic effort to constrain Tehran’s capabilities.
North Korea has pursued its own aggressive expansion with equal determination. A comprehensive assessment by 38 North published in January 2026 documented Pyongyang’s five-year effort to develop thirteen new nuclear and missile systems. The regime has expanded its enrichment facility at Yongbyon, tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile to date, and signaled plans to complete new missile production factories. Kim Jong Un has characterized the current period as critical for achieving a fully operational nuclear deterrent capable of striking the continental United States. With Russian technical assistance reportedly supporting elements of Pyongyang’s program, the intersection of North Korea’s ambitions with broader great-power competition makes diplomatic solutions increasingly elusive.
The NPT’s Approaching Stress Test
Against this backdrop, the Eleventh Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is scheduled for April 27 through May 22, 2026, in New York. The conference convenes every five years to assess implementation and negotiate shared commitments, but the track record offers little cause for optimism. The 2015 conference collapsed without a consensus document, and the 2022 review ended in similar failure when Russia blocked the outcome over language related to Ukrainian nuclear facilities.
The central fault line remains Article VI, which obligates nuclear-weapon states to pursue negotiations toward disarmament. Non-nuclear states have grown increasingly frustrated by what they view as a two-tiered system in which they are expected to forgo nuclear weapons while the recognized nuclear powers modernize and expand their own arsenals with impunity. This frustration drove the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017, which now counts a majority of the world’s nations as signatories or states parties according to ICAN, yet remains rejected by every nuclear-armed state. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed nearly three decades ago, still has not entered into force because key states — including the United States, China, and North Korea — have refused to ratify it. Without functional verification mechanisms attached to these instruments, the non-proliferation regime rests on increasingly shaky foundations.
Why Disarmament Rhetoric Rings Hollow
The gap between stated commitments to disarmament and actual state behavior has never been wider. Every nuclear-armed government simultaneously professes support for the long-term goal of a world without nuclear weapons while pouring billions into next-generation warheads and delivery platforms. Russia has repeatedly invoked the possibility of nuclear use in the context of its war in Ukraine, lowering the rhetorical threshold in ways that alarm strategic stability experts. The International Atomic Energy Agency, often cited as the cornerstone of verification, faces persistent challenges in securing the transparency required from nuclear-weapon states to verify any meaningful disarmament commitments.
The fundamental problem is structural rather than rhetorical. Non-proliferation efforts have achieved genuine successes — the number of states with nuclear weapons remains in single digits, far fewer than the dozens once predicted. But those successes are predicated on a bargain in which nuclear-weapon states pledge to eventually disarm. As long as the world’s most powerful militaries are racing to build more sophisticated nuclear capabilities, that bargain erodes. States like Saudi Arabia and Japan, both possessing advanced civilian nuclear infrastructure and facing volatile regional security environments, will inevitably reconsider their non-nuclear postures if the broader regime continues to weaken.
Navigating an Uncertain Nuclear Future
The convergence of treaty expiration, arsenal expansion, technological disruption, and regional proliferation threats makes 2026 one of the most consequential years for nuclear governance since the end of the Cold War. The path forward requires acknowledging uncomfortable realities. Multilateral disarmament remains a distant aspiration rather than an actionable policy objective in the current geopolitical climate. Bilateral arms control between Washington and Moscow, while diminished, remains the most realistic mechanism for constraining the two largest arsenals — if political will can be mustered. Engaging Beijing in some form of strategic dialogue, even short of formal treaty negotiations, would represent meaningful progress.
The April NPT Review Conference will serve as an immediate barometer of whether the international community can muster even minimal consensus on reinforcing existing commitments. Failure there would compound the damage from New START’s expiration and send a signal to aspiring nuclear states that the rules-based order governing the world’s most destructive weapons is in terminal decline. Technology-specific negotiations addressing hypersonic weapons, AI integration, and cyber vulnerabilities in nuclear command systems are urgently needed but remain largely absent from multilateral agendas. The choices made by policymakers in the coming months will shape whether the nuclear order bends or breaks under the weight of its accumulated contradictions.
Original analysis inspired by Harsa Kakar from Global Security Review. Additional research and verification conducted through multiple sources.
