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Since the late 1960s, the United States and its allies have supported a robust nonproliferation regime to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. It has been remarkably successful. Eighty years after the Manhattan Project, just nine countries possess nuclear weapons, despite early Cold War predictions that dozens of states would nuclearize in the coming decades. But that regime is collapsing—ironically because of the behavior of a radically changed West.

In recent years, three incidents have dramatically demonstrated the irreplaceable value of nuclear weapons The first is U.S. President Donald Trump’s failure to follow through on his very public “fire and fury” threat against North Korea in 2017. This was followed by Russia’s successful blunting of Western assistance to Ukraine since 2022 via nuclear threats and the recent Israeli and U.S. airstrikes on Iran.

Since the late 1960s, the United States and its allies have supported a robust nonproliferation regime to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. It has been remarkably successful. Eighty years after the Manhattan Project, just nine countries possess nuclear weapons, despite early Cold War predictions that dozens of states would nuclearize in the coming decades. But that regime is collapsing—ironically because of the behavior of a radically changed West.

In recent years, three incidents have dramatically demonstrated the irreplaceable value of nuclear weapons The first is U.S. President Donald Trump’s failure to follow through on his very public “fire and fury” threat against North Korea in 2017. This was followed by Russia’s successful blunting of Western assistance to Ukraine since 2022 via nuclear threats and the recent Israeli and U.S. airstrikes on Iran.

Countries with nukes command enormous deference and near-immunity from Western intervention, while those without are open to Western coercion. The obvious takeaway for illiberal and anti-Western countries everywhere, especially small rogue states, is to sprint for nukes, as North Korea did, or face airstrikes, as Iran has.

A similar lesson applies, albeit less forcefully, to already nuclearized illiberal states such as Russia, China, and Pakistan: Do not negotiate deep nuclear arms control with the West because nuclear threats work. The West will at least partially back down in the face of nuclear threats, even when they are obviously bluffs. (Russian President Vladimir Putin’s routine nuclear........

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