FILE – In this image from video on June 10, 2024, and released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Russian troops prepare a missile launcher for joint Russian-Belarusian drills intended to train the military to use tactical nuclear weapons. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File) President Trump has approved a landmark, 30-year civil nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, reportedly without the “gold standard” restriction that has long barred U.S. partners from enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium — the two pathways to a bomb.
The irony is hard to overstate. The same administration that went to war with Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program may now hand Riyadh a foothold toward the very capability it bombed Tehran to deny.
Lawmakers have called it out. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass) and colleagues have demanded the administration hold the line. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) asked why a president waging war to stop Middle East proliferation would turn around and facilitate it for the sake of a lucrative contract.
Whatever the deal’s final shape, it lands at a moment when the architecture of nuclear restraint is failing — and when much of the arms control community’s attention is drifting toward the virtually unattainable goal of total abolition of the world’s nuclear arsenals.
In February, the last remaining U.S.-Russia arms control agreement, New START, expired. For 15 years, it imposed legally binding limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals and established inspections and data exchanges designed to reduce the risk of catastrophic miscalculation — even though much of that verification system had already stopped functioning in the treaty’s final years. Its expiration leaves the U.S. and Russia without any binding limits on their strategic forces for the first time in more than half a century.
Then, in May, the latest review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — the cornerstone of global nonproliferation and disarmament efforts — ended, again, without consensus on a final document.
At precisely the moment the world is without the protection of functioning arms control agreements, the United States is helping launch yet another country’s journey toward a nuclear program. It’s an irresponsible, reckless idea. But it also makes me wonder: Where is the arms control advocacy community that’s supposed to be raising the alarm?
Some organizations are doing what they should. The Arms Control Association, where I serve as a senior adviser, the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Federation of American Scientists remain deeply engaged in negotiated, practical risk reduction.
On the other hand, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has built real global momentum behind the rhetorically appealing Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, now signed by 95 countries and ratified by 74.
But, unsurprisingly, none of the world’s nine nuclear-armed states have joined that treaty. That doesn’t diminish its moral force, and it doesn’t mean its supporters oppose practical measures — many explicitly back both. The problem is emphasis. At a moment when binding limits are disappearing, inspections have collapsed, dialogue among major powers has eroded and a new arms race is accelerating, far more of the movement’s energy needs to go toward rebuilding the machinery of nuclear risk reduction.
In 1983, as chairman of the national executive committee of Physicians for Social Responsibility, I traveled to Leningrad with colleagues from the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Among our founders was Moscow cardiologist Dr. Eugueni Chazov, who warned that nuclear war would be “the final epidemic”.
We all wished the world might one day eliminate nuclear weapons entirely, but we never considered that a practical road map to keeping the world safe. Our immediate mission was practical: build public support for negotiated limits on arsenals, restrictions on testing, rigorous verification, better communication between adversaries and safeguards against accidental war. Those efforts helped make a dangerous world measurably safer.
Today’s environment is similarly precarious. Russia and the U.S. are directly or indirectly engaged in hot wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The U.S. and Israel are fighting Iran directly. India and Pakistan spent four days last year in intense confrontation. China is expanding its arsenal faster than any other nuclear power while pressuring Taiwan. North Korea keeps advancing its nuclear and missile programs.
Could there be a worse time for Washington to help launch a new nuclear-capable state in the most combustible region on earth? Reestablishing binding arms control agreements could not be a higher priority. Yet, too much of the abolition movement remains fixed on the admirable but presently unattainable goal of total disarmament.
As a physician, I’m disappointed that Physicians for Social Responsibility and especially, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, have been distracted by the quest for abolition at a time when not a single member of the “nuclear club” would consider rolling back its arsenal. No one is better positioned than doctors to explain the consequences of deploying nuclear weapons in war, or why there could be no meaningful medical response in the aftermath.
We need to coalesce around urgent, attainable goals: restoring verifiable limits on U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals, rebuilding inspections and transparency, preserving the global testing moratorium, strengthening military-to-military communication, keeping artificial intelligence out of nuclear command and launch decisions and building toward a framework that eventually brings China to the table.
None of these guarantees a world free of nuclear weapons. All of it would make the nuclear-armed world we actually live in safer.
Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician, is senior adviser to the Institute for Global Policy at Columbia University and a senior adviser to The Arms Control Association. He was founding director of Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness.
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