By abandoning many of the nuclear arms agreements negotiated in the last 50 years, the US has been sending mixed signals to North Korea, Iran and other states with the technical knowledge to create nuclear weapons.
Proposed agreements with India compound this quagmire and further undermine the global pact for peace represented by the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
At the same time, no significant steps are being taken to reduce the worldwide arsenal of almost 30,000 nuclear weapons now possessed by the US, Russia, China, France, Israel, Britain, India, Pakistan and perhaps North Korea. A global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the Cold War.
The key restraining commitment among the five original nuclear powers and more than 180 other countries is the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Its key objective is "to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology ... and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament."
In the last five-year review conference at the UN in 2005, only Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea were not participating -- the first three have nuclear arsenals that are advanced, while the fourth's are embryonic.
The US government has not set a good example, having already abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, binding limitations on testing nuclear weapons and developing new ones and a long-standing policy of foregoing threats of "first use" of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. These recent decisions have encouraged China, Russia and other NPT signatories to respond with similar actions.
Knowing since 1974 of India's nuclear ambitions, I and other US presidents imposed a consistent policy: no sales of nuclear technology or uncontrolled fuel to India or any other country that refused to sign the NPT.
Today, these restraints are in the process of being abandoned.
I have no doubt that Indian leaders are just as responsible in handling their country's arsenal as leaders of the five original nuclear powers. But there is a significant difference: the original five have signed the NPT and have stopped producing fissile material for weapons.
Indian leaders should make the same pledges and should also join other nuclear powers in signing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Instead, they have rejected these steps and insist on unrestricted access to international assistance in producing enough fissile material for as many as 50 weapons a year, far exceeding what is believed to be India's current capacity.
If India's demand is acceptable, why should other technologically advanced NPT signatories, such as Brazil, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Japan -- to say nothing of less "responsible" states -- continue to restrain themselves?
Having received at least tentative approval from the US for its policy, India still faces two further obstacles: an acceptable agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and an exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 45-country body that -- until now -- has barred nuclear trade with any nation that refuses to accept international nuclear standards.
The non-nuclear NSG members are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.
The role of these states and the IAEA is not to prevent India's development of nuclear power or even nuclear weapons, but rather to assure that it proceeds as almost all other responsible countries on earth do, by signing the NPT and accepting other reasonable restraints.
Nuclear powers must show leadership, by restraining themselves and by curtailing further departures from the NPT's international restraints. One-by-one, the choices they make today will create a legacy -- deadly or peaceful -- for the future.
Jimmy Carter is a former president of the US. Copyright: Project Syndicate
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS