The ‘New’ Nuclear Age Is Not New

Words matter. A name shapes what we see and what we do not see. A recent example is the claim that we live in a ‘new nuclear age.’ But it is not clear what is new about this new age. ;Nine countries now have the bomb. Everything points to this number increasing. This is new, I suppose, since the number 9 is larger than 5 or 7. But the claim is that we have moved into a brand-new world and that the US needs to rethink every aspect of nuclear weapons.

But an 80-year-old weapon is not exactly new. It destroyed cities in 1945 and it still can in 2025. Nothing new here. Maybe it is the proliferation of the bomb to nine countries that is new. But the bomb’s spread is a quarter of a century old. India and Pakistan broke the taboo and tested a dozen weapons in 1998. Maybe a bomb in the hands of a rogue state is new. North Korea, the model of a rogue nation, tested their first atomic bomb in 2006, 20 years ago. So that is not new.

Overemphasising the amount of change is a characteristic of our age. Nothing is wrong with that. But when it overlooks what has not changed, we get into trouble. A new world is not disconnected from issues that have been around for a long time. Miss these and you leave out what is most important.

So, let us reframe the question. Instead of highlighting what is new, let us focus on what is not. How much has not changed in a multipolar nuclear world? The question highlights the problems that are not so much new – as they are ignored. Or maybe better said, have been chosen to be ignored.

Escalation prone conflicts are an example of what has not changed. They have been around for a long time. Hitler threatened escalation if Britain or France tried to stop him from taking over Europe.

And they are still with us. In the Cold War the US used nuclear rhetoric, alerts and missile launches to raise the threat of escalation. This was not confined to nuclear deterrence. In crises over Taiwan, Berlin and Cuba these moves became a new language, a grammar, for all escalation. Presidents Johnson and Nixon used them to signal Moscow and Beijing not to interfere in Vietnam. The Vietnam example did not work particularly well. But this author is not arguing it did. My point is that whatever you may think about this use of nuclear weapons, it is not new. Today, Putin threatens escalation in Ukraine with tactical nuclear weapons. He moves weapons into Belarus. Similarly, the Twelve-Day War with Iran was about preventing Tehran from getting a nuclear escalation option.

The Second Nuclear Age

Escalation prone conflicts are with us again and they will be for a long time to come. They are hardly new. Colin Gray and this author preferred the term second nuclear age to describe this world, to underscore the point that a lot has not changed, along with things that have. The term has even more going for it. ‘Second nuclear age’ re-positions the Cold War as Act I of a drama. We are now in Act II, a second nuclear age. This perspective provokes important questions, like why the drama was not ended after Act I, as it was supposed to with nuclear abolition and a non-proliferation regime. It spurs us to ask hard questions about the future. What will Act III be like? And another, will we make it – survive – to reach Act IV?

There is much more that is not new, but which is overlooked and important. We still live in a world where a sovereign country decides the legitimacy of its cause, the lengths it will go to get it and the risk it takes to get there. It will shock some, but Putin, Xi, Hamas and the mullahs in Tehran believe in the legitimacy and rightness of their cause. I bet this carries into any multipolar nuclear future as well. It is not new, indeed, it is very old.

The international order has been made up of nation states for 500 years. It is not likely to change in the next 20. Indeed, it appears to be strengthening. Nuclear weapons are baked into this order even more than in the Cold War because more countries’ security depends on them now.

‘New’ is the most overused word in journalism. But everything in the world is not new. We need to focus on that. An emphasis on the new should not come at the expense of the important. That is a dangerous way to look at the world. We are not moving into an altogether new nuclear age. We have been in an ‘old’ nuclear age for a long time. Now, the challenge is surviving it so we can make it to the later acts – if we can.

© Paul Bracken, 2025, published by RUSI with permission of the author.

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