Beyond Traditional Treaties: The Future of Nuclear Governance

On Feb. 4, 2026, the New START Treaty ended without any incentive for renewal. On February 28, 2026, the U.S. and Israel initiated strikes on Iran, citing a lack of progress in the nuclear talks. This year has witnessed prominent incidents related to nuclear security, where states become more incentivised to develop their own nuclear capabilities and other nuclear states resist such direction. Additionally, global developments prove that traditional nuclear frameworks appear to be losing significance, with some states going further by resorting to violence to ensure their nuclear hegemony.

This development raises questions about the possibility of global shifts from traditional arms control treaties to a new nuclear arms control regime. A new phase of informal signalling and strategic forecasting could emerge, raising concerns about whether this form is sufficient to verify compliance. Such a potential new nuclear arms control regime could be unpredictable in terms of its application, effectiveness, the number of states willing to follow through, and more broadly, the path forward to ensure the world is not dragged into a nuclear war.

Traditional nuclear arms control treaties drafted since the Cold War period are becoming increasingly incoherent with global arsenal developments and the rapidly changing world order. Many nuclear powers have emerged alongside the U.S. and Russia, most notably China, which refuses to join any arms control framework, citing doubts about the United States’ underlying intentions behind restricting other countries’ nuclear advancements and insisting on transparency. Beijing views such transparency requirements as a way to expose vulnerabilities of other countries rather than enhance collective security.

On the Washington side, there have been efforts to lure China into an arms control framework. U.S. President Donald Trump described a potential future framework for nuclear governance as a “new, improved, modernised treaty that can last long into the future.” He expressed his interest in expanding any future nuclear control framework to be conducted in the future to include any nuclear power, particularly China. By the same token, Russia has displayed reluctance to fully comply with nuclear arms obligations, citing similar reasons regarding its right to develop arms capabilities to protect its national security, while sharing China’s doubts regarding American intentions.

It is considered a part of the U.S. The approach aims to expand nuclear capacity to power AI and data centres while maintaining hegemony in nuclear weapons. It is also partially linked to the American-Sino global competition. So, including China in any arms control framework could leverage the U.S. position. However, Beijing is unlikely to join formal arms control negotiations while its arsenal remains far smaller than those of the U.S. and Russia.

The potential nuclear arms control regime would likely expand its monitoring scope to include unconventional disruptive technologies (EDTs), such as missile defences, long-range conventional strike weapons, cyber, and counterspace capabilities, as well as the detection of AI-enabled command systems. In addition, the new regime would seek to address the accelerating arms race, particularly given the growing connection between nuclear power and AI-driven data centres. It could also introduce restrictions on its use in AI-driven operations amid the ongoing artificial intelligence and digitisation hegemony race.

However, an informal non-treaty form would be insufficient to verify compliance, as it would lack binding mechanisms, which opens the doors for the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (P5) and other nuclear regimes to increase their nuclear capacity. It would also face significant challenges in limiting the quantitative nuclear arms capabilities per country and in unifying the limitations across different nuclear domains.

An informal nuclear arms control regime replacing binding traditional treaties would incite emerging nuclear states to further enhance their nuclear programmes. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and Iran will more likely be nuclear aspirants.

A non-binding framework directly links to nuclear proliferation, as emerging nuclear states and states that seek to acquire nuclear capabilities will be encouraged to build a nuclear arsenal to protect their national security amid the increasing threats, and while they witness the nuclear states lifting binding constraints on their own nuclear power.

Under the circumstances of two nuclear states striking a non-nuclear one, states will perceive their vulnerability and start developing their own nuclear arsenal. The increase in the number of new nuclear-armed states is inevitable; nevertheless, globally inaccessible nuclear technology and materials could delay such progress.

Iran will be motivated to rapidly advance its nuclear programme and increase its uranium enrichment, notably after the U.S.-Israel strikes amidst their nuclear talks have amplified the necessity to acquire nuclear weapons to protect national security. Similarly, Saudi Arabia would want to develop its nuclear arsenal, as the war exposed the limited benefits of the mutual defence pact with Pakistan, which turned out to be more of a political solidarity pledge rather than a collective defence pact.

For India, the country has been striving to increase and develop its nuclear capabilities through bilateral efforts. Hence, it will most likely escalate the pursuit of multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), hypersonic weapons, and ballistic missile defence systems (BMDs) through agreements with other nuclear states, such as Russia. While Poland, Türkiye, Japan, and South Korea would move forward from only acquiring civilian nuclear programmes to advancing nuclear weapons, as they will find themselves threatened.

Motivated by the same fears, states hosting other states’ nuclear weapons or the ones endorsing possible use of nuclear weapons on their behalf as part of defence alliances, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), will aspire to develop their own with the ambitions to use it both as a technological charging capability and as a defence measure. This will be encouraged by the non-existence of a formal framework restricting their aspiration.

Such developments would also affect the Russia-Ukraine war parties, as Russia would have nuclear deterrence leverage. The erosion of arms control increases the stance of nuclear threats in the conflict, reinforcing Ukraine’s structural disadvantage as a non-nuclear state facing a nuclear-armed one. Also, the security guarantee as a prerequisite for the peace agreement between the two countries will be flawed with the ability of Russia to implement nuclear escalation threats.

Consequently, the decline of conventional nuclear arms treaties, coupled with an increased direction of emerging nuclear states to develop their own arsenal, further undermines the credibility and effectiveness of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The treaty’s core accord is that the non-nuclear-weapon states will not develop nuclear weapons in exchange for the nuclear-weapon states making progress towards nuclear disarmament.

Under these circumstances, a stretchy new nuclear arms regime and AI-generated nuclear weapons are more likely to evolve, pivoting the development of automated proactive nuclear detection techniques. Exploring new verification technologies, such as cryptographic verification methods and preemptive detection techniques, is considered a suitable option to limit unchecked nuclear proliferation.

First, to address the confidentiality concerns that hinder the verification process of each state, Perry and Zhukov developed a secure cryptographic tracking system called “Warhead Passport” that allows countries to prove compliance with nuclear arms treaties, whether formal or informal, without disclosing classified data about their nuclear weapons.

This “Warhead Passport” would have a secure digital log that the nuclear state logs and updates regularly, using special mathematical codes, with the records of its weapons movement, storage, maintenance, and dismantlement. The Passport would include important details, such as the location of the facility, warhead status, operation performed, and personnel responsible. The other countries won’t have access to all this information, but the system will use these codes to show them that the nuclear state follows the treaty rules.

The system incorporates a Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (ZkSNARKs) mechanism that allows the sharing of data related to the compliance of the treaty, for instance, if the warheads have been moved legally or if the number of warheads is in accordance with the treaty limit, without exposing sensitive information. Such a system would encourage nuclear states to uncover the true number and movement of their warheads while protecting the vital information connected to their national security.

Second, a study by Allisson and Herzong developed a model of calculating the gaps between proliferation-enabling techniques and detection-enhancing techniques called the Relative Advantage Index (RAI) to address the pre-emptive detection concern. The RAI, defined as “the difference between a proliferator’s capability to evade detection and the international community’s detection capability”, is an analytical framework beneficial for illustrating risks for futuristic policy choices to mitigate the weaponisation of nuclear technologies.

The same study introduced what’s called a Frontier Detection Acceleration Initiative (FDAI) to explore the epistemic uncertainties AI brings to nuclear proliferation. Building on this study’s contributions, the FDAI initiative could be valuable in identifying proliferation-enabling technologies (PETs) and detection-enhancing technologies (DETs) through the RAI analytical calculations and, therefore, introduce preemptive methods for nuclear states and international monitoring organisations to address nuclear insecurity.

Third, confidence-building transparency measures (CBMs) may be of greater significance than traditional arms control in the future. Moving forward, in light of the declining effectiveness of treaties such as the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), CBMs may become highly influential in containing and monitoring the development of nuclear weapons for both civilian and military purposes, while reducing the tensions between nuclear states.

Military-to-military communication channels and integrating nuclear disarmament dialogues into larger security cooperation platforms continue to constitute a vital application to the CBMs. Lastly, if countries tend to engage in new bilateral or multilateral frameworks, they should take into consideration local data protection regulations, which must be clearly defined to avoid opening the door for subjective interpretation.

In sum, a new nuclear arms regime will require detection tools to evolve at the speed of technological advancements. Verification methods will inevitably shift towards containing the threat of AI-driven destabilising systems integrated with nuclear command systems. Such measures could most likely regulate possible conflicts driven by nuclear competition.

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