The last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between the world’s two most potent nuclear powers expired this week. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), signed between the United States and Russia in 2009, built on previous arms limitation and reduction agreements signed from the 1970s onwards. Cumulatively, these efforts reduced the American and Russian nuclear arsenals from a peak of around 70,000 warheads to just over 10,000 today – a more than 85% decrease.
The failure of Moscow and Washington to negotiate a successor to New START follows the 2019 withdrawal of both from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty that banned a class of weapons considered destabilising. More broadly, this recidivism is symptomatic of a worrying trend in the way countries – nuclear and non-nuclear powers alike – increasingly view nuclear weapons instrumentally.
Nuclear-armed states are enlarging and modernising their arsenals, in 2024 alone spending more than $100 billion – more than $11,000,000 per hour. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute projects that the post-Cold War trend of a gradual reduction in the number of nuclear weapons will soon reverse as the rate of dismantlement is outpaced by modernisation and new deployments.
Perhaps most concerningly, the taboo on nuclear weapons appears to be unravelling, with countries in Northeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East mulling whether they should acquire the bomb. In some cases, analysts openly advocate for proliferation.
The underlying argument – that nuclear weapons provide the ultimate security guarantee – isn’t new. A popular counterfactual on the Ukraine war is that Russia wouldn’t have invaded had Kyiv retained the nuclear weapons it inherited following the Soviet Union’s dissolution. But while the deterrence justification might appear rational when zoomed in on a specific context, it is nonetheless fundamentally flawed when looking at the bigger picture.
The nuclear age emerged during extreme bipolarity, enabling teams of Soviet Americanists and US Kremlinologists to devote enormous resources to studying each other’s doctrines, red lines and strategic thinking. Having only one adversary to contend with meant that establishing deterrence and preserving strategic stability was relatively straightforward, at least in a structural sense. Yet the world still came perilously close to nuclear war on multiple occasions, whether through miscalculation, brinkmanship or false alarm.
We’re now entering a new nuclear age characterised by messy multipolarity, which complicates things exponentially. More nuclear powers mean more pathways to escalation, more opportunities for miscalculation, and heightened risk of accidents. And structural complexity is only part of the story. Add in the destabilising effects of artificial intelligence, Russia’s nuclear sabre‑rattling, India–Pakistan border skirmishes, and the prospect of resumed nuclear testing, and the picture becomes even more sobering.
It’s no wonder that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists last week wound the Doomsday clock forward to 85 seconds to midnight – the closest it’s ever been.
A 2024 analysis estimated the annual probability of nuclear use at between 0.25% and 2.5%. This might sound low, but as one analyst notes, “a risk of one percent per year would accumulate to worse‑than‑even odds over the lifetime of a child born today.” Mathematically speaking, so long as nuclear weapons remain the sine qua non of great power status, it’s only a matter of time before this probability becomes an inevitability.
So what can Australia do?
Australia’s agenda has support in Southeast Asia, and countries like Indonesia and Vietnam would be acceptable neutral third parties in the eyes of key nuclear players the US, Russia and China.
A necessary first step is rebuilding Australia’s expertise, which has atrophied over recent decades. Establishing a national nuclear institute, as ANU academic Brendan Taylor has proposed, would enhance Australia’s ability to navigate this new nuclear age. “If we’re going to take nuclear issues seriously again,” Taylor argues, “we’ll need more people who understand them.”
As in the past, Australia’s reliance on US extended deterrence shouldn’t prevent it from being an effective non-proliferation advocate, nor from supporting initiatives that reduce nuclear risk. To that end, the government’s conflict prevention agenda looms as a potentially promising vehicle.
Confidence-building measures and other forms of preventive diplomacy are key elements of conflict prevention that are particularly salient in the nuclear context. The gradual building of strategic trust through dialogue is the foundation upon which arms control agreements are built.
Through this framework, Australia could work with regional partners to try and broker dialogue between nuclear powers as a way of reinvigorating the global nuclear arms control regime. There are signs Australia’s agenda has support in Southeast Asia, and countries like Indonesia (with its strong non-aligned tradition) and Vietnam (which will chair this year’s Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference) would be acceptable neutral third parties in the eyes of key nuclear players the US, Russia and China. Both have also signed and ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Australia’s alliance with the US would preclude an intermediary role. However, Australia could still play an important part behind-the-scenes through the provision of planning and logistics assistance, as well as funding (not unlike its backing of the Pacific Island Forum’s trade negotiation capacity).
Of course, to begin with this type of endeavour would need to be lower-level and discreet. Expectations over the short term would also need to be realistic given current geopolitical tensions. But given the alternative – accepting a world where the risk of nuclear annihilation continues to compound – every avenue is worth pursuing.
Australia can’t magically solve the problem, but its actions can help slow the doomsday clock. In an age where every second counts, that matters.
