The first series of Atomic Anxiety Fellows Blogs were focused on the issue of atomic anxiety and how it manifests in the world today. They are currently being collated into a short edited collection – Atomic Anxiety Volume One – that will be available online soon.
For the second series of Atomic Anxiety Fellows Blogs, we’re going to look at the issue of reinvigorating nuclear disarmament. In this opening post, Rhys Crilley outlines the broad contours of why we should reinvigorate nuclear disarmament today, and how we might go about doing that…
Is now the time for nuclear disarmament? Many might say it is not.
Indeed, every state that possess nuclear weapons is either increasing or modernising their nuclear arsenals. More and more states too, from South Korea to Saudi Arabia, via Poland and Japan, are expressing an interest in developing their own nuclear weapons.
The direction of travel for our contemporary nuclear moment seems to be one of rearmament, arms racing, and conflict, not one of disarmament, cooperation, and peace.
In this context, amidst a third nuclear age characterised by a changing global order, increasing tensions and conflict, the collapse of arms control, and disruptive new technologies, the logic of nuclear deterrence appears intuitive.
When some unstable, unhinged world leaders have nuclear weapons, other states need them to stop themselves coming under attack. Or so it goes.
Such thinking locks the world into a stasis of nuclear possession, and for some people this is a stabilising feature that has caused peace between the great powers. Nuclear weapons are understood to be the only thing that stop nuclear weapons from being used, therefore some states need them. Some thinkers think that maybe everybody else needs them too.
But whether one accepts and agrees with the idea of nuclear deterrence or not, it’s hard to view the actual practice of nuclear weapons policy today as internationally stabilising and generative of peace.
So what should we do? Just keep calm and carry on building ‘better’ nuclear weapons and more of them until stability and peace somehow come back to the fore of international relations?
No. At a time of a deteriorating security environment we must reinvigorate efforts for nuclear disarmament, and there are several reasons why.
Nuclear weapons pose an existential risk to the planet and everyone who lives on it. Research shows that billions of people will die from even a ‘small’ nuclear war involving 100 nuclear warheads – which is less than 1% of the total number of nuclear weapons in existence today.
Nuclear weapons are immoral. They are weapons of mass destruction, and their use would have horrific humanitarian impacts. The detonation of a single nuclear weapon would likely break the laws of armed conflict around the distinction between military and civilian targets, proportionality, military necessity, and limiting human suffering.
Nuclear weapons have not led to the stability and peace their proponents have promised, and there is a clear risk of accidental detonations, miscalculation and escalation in times of crisis, whilst the legacy of nuclear production, testing, and use still causes harm to people and the environment today.
Nuclear weapons are wasteful – of vast sums of money, and of attention and focus from the global community currently facing a plethora of overwhelming challenges like climate change, trade, AI, and more.
How then can we go about reinvigorating nuclear disarmament?
This is a question that people are increasingly asking, whether they be longstanding advocates of disarmament, or those who traditionally work in the field of nuclear deterrence and arms control. And this question of how to reinvigorate nuclear disarmament is what the 2026 Atomic Anxiety Fellows will explore in their upcoming blog posts.
None of us think this is an easy, simple task, and we will no doubt have different views on the desirability, feasibility, process, strategy, responsibility, timeline, ways, means, and ends of achieving nuclear disarmament.
But nonetheless, over the next few months we aim to publish a variety of insights into how to reinvigorate nuclear disarmament, and in my view there are several ways we might go about this.
First, by reminding the world that beyond the nuclear weapon states, a global majority of states support nuclear disarmament. And that even in times of conflict there is large scale cooperation to work towards disarmament through initiatives such as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Second, by building bridges between people who have different viewpoints on nuclear weapons – including those who support deterrence – and by sharpening our theories of change for nuclear disarmament that can then inform practice.
Third, by breathing new life into the multilateral nuclear policy fora that exist to contribute towards the goal of nuclear disarmament, such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Conference on Disarmament, the First Committee, the UN Security Council, the P5 Process, and more.
Fourth, by bringing back nuclear arms control efforts, developing and implementing effective risk reduction measures, and improving verification and irreversibility scientific techniques.
Fifth, by harnessing people power and creating public pressure for nuclear disarmament through communication, media, and culture.
Of course, there are likely to be other ways to reinvigorate nuclear disarmament, not to mention many obstacles in the way. From the wars and conflicts that involve nuclear weapon states and rage on today in Ukraine and the Middle East, through to the impact of AI, the authoritarianism rampant in many nuclear weapon states, the lack of trust between state leaders and countries, and the political, military, economic, and societal embedding of nuclear deterrence as a primary source of security in several countries.
Reinvigorating nuclear disarmament today seems counterintuitive but it is not. The malaise of our current moment cannot be broken by a world that only rearms, attempts to deter, or even prepares to win a nuclear war.
The upcoming Atomic Anxiety Fellows blogs will help us think about what reinvigorating nuclear disarmament can look like, how it can be done, and how we can tackle the obstacles that lie in our way.
Rhys Crilley is a UKRI Future Leaders fellow and Reader in International Relations at the University of Glasgow, where he leads the Atomic Anxiety in the New Nuclear Age project. He is the author of the award winning book Unparalleled Catastrophe: Life and Death in the Third Nuclear Age.
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