July 16 this year marked 80 years of the nuclear age. The first-ever nuclear bomb was tested in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The U.S. and USSR went on to conduct hundreds of atmospheric and underground tests, and the world produced close to 70,000 nuclear weapons. Today, nine countries possess nuclear weapons, including Russia, the U.S., China, UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Countries like the U.S. and Russia are modernizing their nuclear arsenals. China is also being drawn into the nuclear arms race. Meanwhile, Britain and France are reassessing their nuclear arsenals and deterrence postures. India keeps building its nuclear and missile arsenals, which is destabilizing for South Asia. India and Pakistan just came back from the brink of a conflict that the world feared could have turned into a nuclear conflagration. The SIPRI yearbook recently sounded the alarm bell on a hastening nuclear arms race where the global nuclear arsenal is being enlarged and upgraded. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has already warned that the world is much closer to nuclear catastrophe by declaring that the Doomsday Clock is now 89 seconds to midnight. The nuclear dangers are exacerbated by a decline in global arms control. It is pertinent both to take stock of where the nuclear arms race is heading and to analyse the trajectory of global arms control.
