By Zachary Keck
Countless world leaders have gathered in the Netherlands for the third Nuclear Security Summit. U.S. president Barack Obama convened the first summit back in 2010 in an effort to rein in the supposed growing threat posed by the spread of nuclear weapons and materials. If the level of participation in these summits is any indication, this perception is broadly shared across the international community.
It is also wrong. By nearly any objective measurement, the world is winning the war against nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have spread far more slowly than anyone predicted, and today the threat of nuclear proliferation is at an all-time low. Moreover, the trend lines are all positive.
There are at least five reasons for nuclear optimism.
1) The Great Nuclear (Dis)Arms Race
During the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union engaged in a rapid and utterly pointless nuclear arms race. In 1950, the superpowers maintained just 304 nuclear weapons between them; by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, they possessed nearly 29,000 of them, a 9,439 percent increase. By 1986, the size of the superpowers’ combined arsenals had more than doubled to 68,000 warheads.
Source: nationalinterest.org
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