I fear the lunatics have taken over the asylum, especially in the U.S. The world had been on a seemingly more rational path in terms of nuclear weapons, having steadily reduced the total number of nuclear weapons from more than 70,000 in 1986 to approximately 12,000 in 2024. While the Bush and Trump administrations had torn up most of the nuclear arms-related treaties in the 21st century, New START, which Obama and Medvedev negotiated in 2010, at least limited the number of weapons and launch vehicles the U.S. and Russia could deploy.
Now Mad King Donald, the pathological narcissist whose approval is cratering in the U.S. and globally, has decided he wants to abrogate New START too, officially ignoring President Putin’s completely reasonable proposal to extend the treaty for at least one year while the U.S. and Russia negotiate a new one. But Trump has developed illusions of omnipotence in his second term, bombing seven countries his first year back in power, including Iran. He has also kidnapped Venezuela’s Maduro and threatened numerous other countries. He says he is constrained only by his own mind and morality and not by international law and is egged on by the dumbest and most vile group of advisors–Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, J.D. Vance, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Dan Crain–ever to surround a U.S. president.
To behave this outrageously in the nuclear age reflects a complete indifference to the well-being of the world we inhabit, much as have his repeated assertions that global warming is a “hoax” and a “con job” or his idea that his puerile “Board of Peace” can replace the United Nations. The last thing the world needs today is a new nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Russia. We were very lucky to have survived the first one. All bets are off this time around. The modernization that all nine nuclear powers have been conducting is bad enough as they all endeavor to make their arsenals more efficient and more lethal. Now, instead of diplomacy, the U.S. is banking on its ability to outproduce Russia and win a nuclear arms race. There are also U.S. nuclear experts who believe the U.S. can fight and win a simultaneous nuclear war against Russia, China, and North Korea as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned on August 20, 2024 and Admiral Thomas Buchanan affirmed exactly three months later. No wonder U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned on June 10, 2025, in a fleeting moment of lucidity, that “we are…closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before” and Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Agency SVR acknowledged on October 20 of last year, “The world is now experiencing the most fragile moment for international security since World War Two.”
On top of that, Trump has his childish fantasy about building a Golden Dome above the United States to protect it from incoming missiles even though almost all experts know that it would be more like an exorbitantly expensive golden sieve that would be easily penetrated by America’s adversaries. But having someone so rash, impulsive, bellicose, ignorant, and delusional in charge of a vast and growing nuclear arsenal is a gamble that the human species can ill afford to risk–at least not if we want to see humanity survive into the 22nd century. So those of us who do hope for a peaceful and prosperous future cling to the sliver of a possibility that Trump will have a change of heart and agree at the last minute to extend the treaty and negotiate a new one. But we are not optimistic as the clock runs out on the New START Treaty and the world furthers its descent into madness.
Peter Kuznick is Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University and co-author, with Oliver Stone, of The Untold History of the United States.