The landmark 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference is attended by 191 state parties. Few international agreements have such near-universal support. Nuclear armed Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea are shameful reservations. Simply put, the NPT is about preventing nuclear war by encouraging disarmament, curbing proliferation, and promoting peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology. So far, at least, it has helped stop another nuclear disaster. “Other” is the operative word. The 77th anniversary of the first such disaster was marked on August 6 in Hiroshima, where an estimated 140,000 civilians died or were condemned to an agonizing death on one day in 1945. To put that in perspective, about 10,000 civilians have lost their lives. in Ukraine in less than six months. Western public opinion, lulled by the end of the Cold War, seems to have lost sight of the immeasurable horrors of nuclear war. There are no Greenham Commons these days, even though new rocket developments are proliferating. If recent events puncture that complacency, it won’t be a bad thing. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sounded the alarm last week at the opening of the NPT conference. “Today, humanity is only one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” he warned. “We’ve been extremely lucky so far. But luck is not strategy. Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions that culminate in nuclear conflict.” Western public opinion, lulled by the end of the Cold War, seems to have lost sight of the immeasurable horrors of nuclear war Russia is portraying Guterres’ view in frightening fashion. Having previously seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, in southern Ukraine, he uses it as a fortress from which he fires with impunity. The UN nuclear watchdog says a disaster is imminent. In launching his invasion, Vladimir Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on alert and issued a blunt threat. Any attempt by the West to intervene, he said, “will lead to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history.” Whether he’s bluffing or not, Putin’s nuclear blackmail has undoubtedly prevented immediate US and NATO intervention in Ukraine and thus prolonged the war. Now there is concern that China may adopt similar tactics regarding Taiwan. Anti-nuclear activists say the NPT commitments must be respected and strengthened, and most countries agree. However, the treaty faces problems. In practice, all five recognized nuclear-weapon states – the US, Russia, China, France and Britain – are in breach of their Article VI Treaty commitment to pursue disarmament “in good faith”, thus setting an admirable example. Instead, a multilateral nuclear arms race is accelerating, unconstrained in the case of the US and Russia by bilateral Cold War arms control treaties rejected by Putin and Donald Trump and promoted in the case of China by neo-imperialist ambitions. “All nuclear-weapon states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals, and most are sharpening their nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military strategies,” the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in its authoritative annual report. The US and Russia, while claiming to support further reductions in nuclear weapons, still maintain 3,708 and 4,477 nuclear weapons respectively. China has 350, France 290 and Britain 225. Beijing’s arsenal is projected to more than double in the next decade. And it’s not just about Armageddon. Growing stockpiles of so-called tactical or battlefield weapons and new hypersonic missiles make “limited” nuclear war more likely. Hypocrisy and double talk are not limited to the big players. Like Israel, India and Pakistan, Britain and France are modernizing their arsenals. President Emmanuel Macron, in true Napoleonic style, wants to expand France’s nuclear shield to cover all of Europe. In a joint statement last week, Britain, France and the US described the NPT as “irreplaceable” and “vital”. They said they were making “sustained efforts” to meet their Article VI obligations. Last year, however, Boris Johnson’s government relaxed Britain’s no-first-use doctrine to allow for a UK nuclear response to a non-nuclear attack. Ministers also increased the cap on the Trident warhead stockpile and reduced publicly available information. “Both decisions have led many to question the government’s commitment to disarmament,” a House of Commons research paper quipped. While extolling the virtues of cooperation, the joint statement criticized Russia for its “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and reckless attacks that endanger nuclear reactors.” He continued: “We condemn those who would use or threaten to use nuclear weapons for military coercion, intimidation and blackmail.” Fair enough. But that criticism sits uncomfortably alongside the stark restraints of Stephen Lovegrove, the UK’s national security adviser, who has warned that a “rapid escalation into strategic conflict”, meaning nuclear war, could very easily result from the current showdown between the West and Russia and China. To make matters worse, the rogue North Korean regime is expected to conduct a geopolitically (and physically) destabilizing underground nuclear test soon. But there are also glimmers of hope. The latest negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear program have resumed. Plus 86 countries have now signed the symbolic, yet important, 2021 treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Why does the world seem to be teetering ever more precariously on the brink of another nuclear catastrophe? There are many factors. Increased insecurity, rising nationalism, weak and stupid leaders, vested commercial interests. However, as much as anything, the reawakened specter of nuclear annihilation is the product of a defining phenomenon of the 21st century: the increasingly anarchic refusal of states to uphold international law and the UN-endorsed, post-1945 world order. They just won’t follow the rules, even if they do follow them to each other.