After New START: Ban The Bomb – OpEd

The New START treaty expired on February 5, 2026, marking what many see as a dangerous shift in global security. The last accord limiting U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals—together nearly 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons—ended. Commentators warned of a “strategic vacuum.” Arms-control experts spoke of lost safeguards, and diplomats called for renewed talks to avoid a new nuclear arms race.

These warnings are valid, yet they barely scratch the surface of a far more profound crisis.

The Treaty’s end did not just mark the expiry of a document. It shattered the illusion that we can manage nuclear peril without confronting its trustworthy source: the weapons themselves.

For decades, the world has answered nuclear danger with treaties, warhead tallies, and faith in reason. These steps have eased some threats, but they have also lulled us into a dangerous comfort—the belief that nuclear weapons can be tamed and woven into the fabric of global security.

But these weapons defy control and acceptance.

Now is the moment for more than another cycle of arms control. We need a bold, revitalized global movement to ban nuclear weapons outright—a vision championed by groups like ICAN and powerfully voiced by Buddhist philosopher and peace advocate Daisaku Ikeda.

Arms Control’s Structural Blind Spot

Agreements like SALT, START, INF, and New START have helped reduce nuclear arsenals, increase transparency, and prevent the worst assumptions between rival countries. At their best, they made relations more stable and lowered the risk of accidental war.

Yet arms control has always been narrow in scope. It treats nuclear weapons as legitimate instruments of power, obsessed with numbers, locations, and readiness. It labels them dangerous but necessary, rarely daring to ask if they should exist in the first place.

This blind spot is now clear. Treaties are political agreements that rely on trust, stability, and good international relations. When these break down, treaties fail. When treaties end or fall apart, the weapons remain—modernized, deployed, and part of military plans that assume they might be used.

The collapse of New START exposes this flaw in stark relief. With no binding limits, the world’s largest arsenals are unchained. But the greater danger is not just the absence of a treaty—it is the faith that treaties alone can shield us while nuclear weapons remain.

The Illusion of Deterrence

This belief is based on the idea of nuclear deterrence. Deterrence claims that nuclear weapons stop wars because using them would be disastrous. In this view, peace is kept not by trust or law, but by fear—the fear that both sides could be destroyed.

This doctrine is often praised as hard-headed realism. In truth, it is a perilous gamble, built on hope: that leaders will never falter, communication will never collapse, technology will never fail, and command systems will never crack under pressure.

History offers little reassurance. The Cold War was littered with close calls—false alarms, misread signals, technical glitches—where catastrophe was averted by sheer luck, not wisdom. Some claim the absence of nuclear war since 1945 proves deterrence works. It may simply mean we have been astonishingly fortunate.

Today, the dangers have only multiplied. Deterrence now unfolds in a world crowded with more nuclear-armed states, clashing strategies, simmering regional tensions, and shrinking transparency. New technologies—cyberattacks, artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles—accelerate decision-making and introduce new vulnerabilities into already fragile control systems.

Deterrence does not bring stability. It traps us in a cycle of crisis management, always teetering on the edge.

At its heart, deterrence rests on a moral paradox that no strategy can resolve. It claims to protect civilians by holding them hostage to annihilation. It seeks peace by preparing to shatter humanity’s most fundamental rules.

This contradiction has been quietly accepted, rarely challenged.Subscribe

The Human Reality Behind the Abstraction

Discussions of nuclear weapons often hide behind technical jargon—megatons, throw-weight, second-strike capability. Such language conceals the actual human agony these weapons inflict.

The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — the hibakusha — have spent decades reminding the world what a single nuclear detonation does to human bodies, communities, and ecosystems. Their testimony speaks of instant incineration, radiation sickness, long-term genetic damage, psychological trauma, and social marginalization that persists across generations.

Today’s nuclear weapons dwarf those of 1945. Even a so-called limited exchange could shatter the global climate, wipe out food supplies, uproot millions, and make any humanitarian response impossible.

No emergency plan can truly cope with nuclear war. The only real solution is to ensure it never happens.

The NPT: Non-Proliferation Without Disarmament

The contradictions of deterrence are embedded in the architecture of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), often described as the cornerstone of the global nuclear order.

The NPT created an unequal deal. Five countries—Russia, the USA, China, France, and the UK—were allowed to have nuclear weapons, while all others were banned from getting them. In return, these nuclear states promised to work toward disarmament.

This bargain was always fragile. It cemented a world of permanent nuclear ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots,’ letting some nations keep their arsenals while others were denied. For decades, non-nuclear countries have asked why they must show restraint while disarmament is forever postponed.

The familiar excuses focus on process: arms control is slow, security is fragile, trust must be rebuilt. Yet after all these years, nuclear weapons have not vanished—they have only grown more sophisticated.

The five ‘haves’, along with India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, now account for 12,331 nuclear weapons worldwide. Some countries in the Middle East, as well as South Korea, Japan, and Germany, might also want to join this so-called ‘prestigious’ nuclear club.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimates that roughly 9,614 warheads are in military stockpiles for use by missiles, aircraft, ships, and submarines. The remaining incendiary machines have been retired but remain relatively intact and are awaiting dismantling. Of the 9,614 warheads in military stockpiles, 3,912 are deployed with operational forces (on missile or bomber bases). Of those, approximately 2,100 US, Russian, British, and French warheads are on high alert, ready for use on short notice.

Article 6 and a Legal Obligation Ignored

The moral and legal core of the NPT lies in Article 6, which commits all parties: “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”

This is not an aspirational footnote. It is the Treaty’s central promise. Yet more than fifty years after the NPT entered into force, nuclear disarmament remains unrealised.

In its landmark 1996 Advisory Opinion, theInternational Court of Justice clarified the nature of this obligation. The Court unanimously strengthened Article 6, stating that states are required not merely to pursue negotiations in good faith, but also to bring them to a conclusion—negotiations that lead to nuclear disarmament.

This was a profound legal clarification. Disarmament was no longer a distant aspiration. It was a binding duty.

Nearly thirty years later, that duty remains ignored. Nuclear-armed states still cling to deterrence, lavish resources on modernization, and treat disarmament as an afterthought or empty slogan.

From Discriminatory Control to Universal Prohibition

The NPT’s failure to achieve disarmament has cleared the way for a new path—one rooted in humanitarian law and moral clarity, not just the old games of power.

This shift is evident in ICAN’s efforts and the birth of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Unlike the NPT, this Treaty draws no lines between nations. It declares all nuclear weapons unacceptable, no matter whose hands they are in.

Some dismiss this approach as naive or merely symbolic. Yet history teaches that hearts change before laws do. Chemical weapons were reviled before they were banned. Apartheid was shunned before it fell. Slavery ended not for strategy, but because people could no longer bear its moral cost.

Banning nuclear weapons is not the finish line for disarmament. It is the starting point where genuine progress can finally take root.

Daisaku Ikeda and the Ethics of Human Security

Few have addressed the ethical crisis of nuclear weapons as persistently as Daisaku Ikeda. As leader of the Soka Gakkai Buddhist movement, he spent decades insisting that nuclear arms reveal a failure of civilization—a technology racing far ahead of our moral growth.

Ikeda rejected the idea that security should rest on fear. He argued that absolute security grows from respect for life, open dialogue, and human connection. Nuclear deterrence, by contrast, normalizes the threat of mass destruction as routine policy.

Crucially, Ikeda emphasized that ordinary people must act. Disarmament cannot be left to governments alone. It demands public engagement, moral imagination, and the bravery to challenge old assumptions.

This idea aligns with ICAN’s humanitarian view, which sees security as protecting life rather than seeking power over others.

Just Reacting to New START Is a Dead End

With New START gone, calls for fresh arms-control talks will echo once more. These negotiations may ease immediate dangers and slow escalation. Still, without a steadfast resolve to eliminate nuclear weapons, they will only replay old patterns—offering fleeting limits while the core threat endures.

The world is awash in treaties. What we truly lack is the political will and moral courage to act.

When we focus only on treaties, nuclear policy becomes the domain of elite diplomats, sidelining non-nuclear nations, civil society, and those most vulnerable. This preserves a world where a handful of countries wield the power to threaten destruction, while the rest must simply endure the risk.

Toward a High-Sound Ban-the-Bomb Movement

Reviving a powerful ban-the-bomb movement does not mean abandoning diplomacy. It means transforming the conversation itself.

This movement must unmask deterrence as a perilous myth, lay bare the NPT’s unjust legacy, and demand nations honor their Article 6 commitments. It should also ignite hope—especially among young people—who will inherit these risks tomorrow.

To be ‘high-sounding’ is not to be loud or abrasive. It is to be unwavering, clear, and resolute.

Abolition as the Only Real Exit

The end of New START is not a minor setback to be patched with another deal. It is a stark warning that the old approach to nuclear weapons has reached its limit.

For over seventy years, humanity has lived under the shadow of self-destruction. Our survival owes less to wisdom than to sheer luck.

Relying on luck is not a strategy.

The vision championed by ICAN, Daisaku Ikeda, and countless peace advocates points to a different future—one where security is rooted in hope, not fear, and survival is not a matter of restraint alone.

A world free of nuclear weapons is not a distant dream. It is the bare minimum required for humanity’s long-term survival.