Once again, the Trump administration and its latest National Defense Strategy failed to mention the spread of nuclear weapons or proliferation. This follows a similar omission in its 2025 National Security Strategy. This is disappointing, but hardly surprising.
Although the United States has previously maintained fairly tough nonproliferation policies, for the last 16 years, it hasn’t had any at all; instead, Foggy Bottom has maintained a “case-by-case” approach to nonproliferation. The result has been a hodgepodge: no nuclear program for Iran, allowing South Korea to make nuclear fuels that could be turned into bombs, and a hazy set of policies that might apply to Saudi Arabia.
The unspoken assumption behind this à la carte approach is that we don’t need a nonproliferation policy, as the future spread and possible use of nuclear weapons is a lesser included threat to dealing with China and Russia. If we can deal with the nuclear threats Beijing and Moscow pose, we surely can deal with anything Iran or any of our allies might throw at us.
Some even argue that more nuclear weapons in more countries’ hands — particularly US allies’ hands — is a plus. This 1950s-esque argument spotlights the possibility that, if US allies were nuclear-armed, America could reduce its defense spending on their behalf (something that, historically, has actually never happened). It also optimistically presumes that more US friends armed with their own nuclear weapons would help America check Chinese and Russian nuclear threats.
Finally, there’s the cynical observation that, for all work related to nonproliferation, “you only need two people: one to count the number of countries and another person to wring their hands.”
Each of these views support doing nothing. They’re increasingly popular. They also are wrong.
Historically, the United States and other likeminded nations have a pretty solid record preventing other countries from getting nuclear weapons by extending nuclear security guarantees to them. The United States offered these guarantees to keep the number of nuclear-armed states down, along with the risks that such proliferation would otherwise produce security chaos and suck America into waging major wars.
We’ve already had a taste of what war threats proliferation can generate. In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, Russia came to the aid of Egypt threatening nuclear use and the United States had to call Moscow’s bluff. We had another sample of near-nuclear history in 1973, when President Richard Nixon went to DEFCON 3 to keep the Soviets from intervening against a nuclear-armed Israel. Again, in 1991, the possibility of Saddam going nuclear sucked over 30 countries’ military forces into the region.
Then, in 1994, the Clinton administration considered attacking North Korea to short circuit its nuclear weapons program. More recently, the United States came to Israel’s rescue after Israel began bombing Iran’s nuclear sites. Viewed through the lens of these events, the spread of nuclear weapons to small- and medium-sized nations is not a lesser included threat, but a high-risk factor for superpower conflicts. Although nuclear war did not break out in any of these cases, it was a real possibility at the time and well worth avoiding.
Will America’s current and planned offensive nuclear forces be sufficient to deter such wars in the future? Will the spread of more nuclear weapons demand more and different kinds of missile defenses for the US and its allies? Will our intelligence, command, control, and communications systems be able to cope with a crowd of poorly-equipped nuclear-armed nations?
The short answer is that we don’t know. We need time to get the answers, which is why creating an effective nuclear nonproliferation policy makes sense.
What might such a policy entail?
First, the United States and likeminded nations need to do more to get countries to live up to their promises not to get nuclear weapons. Towards this end, Washington should get as many nations as it can to agree in advance to penalties against any state that breaks its Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) pledges.
Second, Washington should wire brush the international nuclear safeguard system. The International Atomic Energy Agency and EURATOM inspections systems are egregiously infrequent and based on outdated calculations of how much material needs to be diverted to make a bomb. The current system’s assumptions are, in fact, off by as much as a factor of four.
Third, the United States and other exporters of nuclear reactors need to draw a clearer line between safe and dangerous nuclear activities that can bring countries, like Iran, within weeks of acquiring a bomb. Previous efforts to dissuade other countries from making nuclear fuel need to be revived.
Finally, the United States should hold China and Russia accountable for their nuclear misbehavior. Both countries complain about America’s “sharing” nuclear weapons with its allies in Europe and potentially Asia. Washington should call their bluff by demanding they scale back their own nuclear forward deployments and production activities.
Implicit to all of these proposals is taking a much tougher approach to the legally binding obligations spelled out in the NPT. It is easy to degenerate the dysfunction of multilateral efforts. It’s even tempting to think ignoring them is a policy. It’s not.
Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. He was deputy for nonproliferation policy in the Department of Defense (1989–1993), and is the author of China, Russia, and the Coming Cool War (2024).
