THE increasing states’ reliance on nuclear weapons as instruments of national power and the rapidly eroding support for nuclear arms control in international politics have propelled the modernization of nuclear arsenals. The nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—have been advancing their nuclear arsenals. Nuclear saber-rattling by Indian, Israeli, Russian and American leadership has also contributed to nuclear optimism and narrowed the space of nuclear pessimism in strategic discourse. These developments sustain vertical proliferation and encourage horizontal proliferation internationally.

In the fourth nuclear age, South Asia has emerged as a trend-setting region. The South Asian nuclear-armed states—India and Pakistan—had a war from May 7 to 10, 2025. Though they refrained from using nuclear weapons rhetoric, they set the precedent that nuclear-armed states could have a Nuclear–Conventional Entanglement, i.e., the grey area where the same equipment, especially missiles, is designed to carry nuclear and non-nuclear (conventional) military capabilities. During the May 2025........

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