80 Years After Hiroshima, Nuclear Risks Are Rising

Eighty years after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, an alarming number of protracted crises are—or risk—pitting nuclear powers against each other. U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that he moved two nuclear submarines to “appropriate regions” in response to a social media message by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev may not have resulted in a disastrous escalation. But it was a timely reminder that the “ultimate weapon” is an ever-present factor in today’s volatile security environment.

Today, nuclear-armed adversaries are on different sides of conflicts and standoffs, from Europe to the Himalayas to the Korean Peninsula. And that’s just for now. Israel and the United States severely dented Iran’s nuclear capabilities with military strikes last June, but Iran could attempt to rebuild its program and race for a bomb. At a time when arms control talks around the world are adrift, it is essential to lower tensions between nuclear powers and construct frameworks to manage frictions between them.

The full article can be read on the Foreign Policy website.