The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon

by Ankit Panda

The world is entering a new nuclear age. Nuclear weapons are returning to the fore of international statecraft in ways unseen since the Cold War. With major powers like Russia issuing threats of nuclear strikes, China and North Korea continuing to grow their arsenals, and new prospects for proliferation from the Middle East to East Asia, the world has been thrust into a new era of heightened nuclear risk.

In this incisive book, international security expert Ankit Panda explores the enduring and emerging factors that are contributing to this new nuclear age. From strained great power ties to complex multipolar dynamics and the precipitous decline of arms control, he shows how our coexistence with the bomb is becoming more complicated and perilous. The prospect of nuclear escalation is again shaping how political decision-makers and military establishments around the world think and act. But unlike the peril of the Cold War, a greater number of nuclear players and a plethora of new technologies, including AI and exotic new weapons, make the search for stability far from straightforward. Managing the risks of a nuclear confrontation, he argues, will require new urgency and thinking to pull us back from the precipice of global catastrophe.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Audiobook, History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 2025

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an era of unpredictable politics and those at the helm, Ankit Panda explores the nuclear age and its new advancements. The central theme of the piece is that this is no longer a two-horse race, as it was in the Cold War, and that those in possession of nuclear weapons are both powerful and elusive to international understanding. As Panda takes the reader through a number of key concepts and political analyses, one impactful thing emerges from the text; this new nuclear age is full of uncertainty and there is no idea what is to come in the years ahead.

While there was a time when two powerful nations—the United States and USSR—held nuclear weapons, this is no longer the case. Both through acquisition and intel interception, Ankit Panda predicts that there are now ten nations who possess nuclear weapons and would be willing to use them. China has come onboard and has tested a number of weapons in the years since the Iron Curtain fell, making sure they are known to have weapons, though not keen to flex that muscle. India and Pakistan—neighbours and sometimes enemies—both possess weapons and have flex their muscles with one another in the past, to the point that they skirmishes might cause an explosion of might in the wrong situation. Then, there are the less known and more worrisome countries of Iran and North Korea, whose leaders are fickle when it comes to passing along information or letting the world know what sits in their arsenal. Panda posits that these two are perhaps the most problematic countries in the new era.

Panda ensures the reader understands the history of nuclear weapons and how they were once used as a deterrent to war, though now have become more a show of might. He explores how each country likely got possession of weapons and their current headspace in the international community. While there is no guaranteed understanding of what will happen, Panda has great insight and places these threats in a current geopolitical playground for the reader to see. Russia’s current role in Ukraine can be explained by the fact that it has its finger on the trigger of nuclear weapons. This also explains America’s eunuch response, alongside its Russia-sycophantic leader. India and Pakistan seem stable, but their ongoing issues could turn nuclear if the situation merits. Even the off-putting North Korea cannot be trusted not to go rogue, as they are the state with the most recent outside testing. An odd muscle flex, like an awkward teen on the beach. All the while, China sits in the weeds and waits to see what is needed.

Panda looks forward to what the new age might hold and where things could be headed. With the nations in possession of nuclear weapons technology, could the world be headed towards some cataclysmic situation? Panda is not sure, though it all comes down to communication and stability. He posits that the new era is filled with the most unknowns and there is no way of knowing what is to come. He does mention that it is imperative that other countries do not come into possession of such weapons or the technology to build them. Doing so could create not only a shift in the country, but also ensure more unknowns at a time when predictability is essential to global peace.

Ankit Panda is an international security expert and shows his mettle in this piece. Not only is the reader presented a clear and concise understanding of the situation at hand, but there is a clear pathway to where things are headed. Panda explores this in easy to comprehend chapters, with are chock full of examples and historical references. The reader can follow the arguments easily and will likely see the perspective on offer. There is little time to wonder, as Panda is clear in his arguments and knows how to be persuasive. While the book was short for the subject matter at hand, it was clear and made sure to address many of the needed arguments for the reader to leave with informed intel for their own positions. I am eager to see what else Ankit Panda has written and how to learn more about this subject, as time permits.

Kudos, Mr. Panda, for an eye-opening read.

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[Murtaza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book on nuclear weapons and missiles.

[Noah A. Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Panda provides a well-written and sweeping survey of the challenges (new and old) that define today’s nuclear environment. The closest thing to an argument is Panda’s observation is that things look pretty complex and bleak, but the evidence, anecdotes, and logic he brings to bear make it a convincing one.

[Marko Beljac · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful and highly readable short primer on contemporary nuclear weapons developments, but one based on problematical assumptions. I felt the strong point here was the specific case examples toward the end of the book – Iran and North Korea, the latter especially. There can be found good summations of both case files, and the author’s own investigations over the years regarding both. Those investigations have shed much light. The technical aspects were also strong, especially regarding the technical specifications- and possible strategic consequences - of emerging technologies such as hypersonic glide vehicles and artificial intelligence. What I found problematical was the too ready acceptance of Wohlstetter’s notion that nuclear deterrence is “delicate.” This is actually a controversial concept, and accepting it at face value does not make for good analysis. It is by no means obvious that nuclear deterrence is “delicate.” This is a problem because the “delicate balance of terror” clearly underpins the thesis – central to the entire book – that we have entered a “third nuclear age.” I was always sceptical of the idea – prominent during the George W Bush administration – that the world had entered a “second nuclear age” after the cold war. The second nuclear age was first – on my understanding – coined by Paul Bracken and it specifically referred to nuclear proliferation in Asia. One cannot define a historical era for all humanity based on the fixations of the US strategic establishment. The idea of a third nuclear age seems to me similar. You can see this in Panda’s book – for the most part other actors, especially Russia and China are nefarious, and the US is responsive. Washington rarely gets the ball rolling, and is a responsible nuclear custodian. You can see this clearly in the section on space security, which is completely contrary to the historical record. From the Clinton administration onward, the US consistently blocked Russian and Chinese initiatives for space arms control out of a desire for “space dominance” itself part of a broader strategy of “full spectrum dominance.” The United States is not the world, and the self interested concerns of the strategic establishment in the US do not make for a nuclear age. How many quotes from a Chinese, Russian, Indian and so on strategic analyst do you find concerning a new nuclear age of the type specified in this book? Objectivity demands such quotes, but Panda gives us none. For what it is worth I think that we are still in the one and same nuclear age. That idea has a universal acceptance the world over.

[Asif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Behavioural economists have shown that human beings are exceptionally poor at reasoning about extremely low-probability events. The availability heuristic, for instance, refers to the propensity of individuals to reason about the probability of a given event based on how many similar instances they might recall. Because we have had zero interstate nuclear exchanges since 1945, even well-informed thinkers about the possibility of nuclear war may be tempted to treat the probability of such an event as essentially zero. Predicting how a nuclear war might begin requires imagination or thinking about the unthinkable Even poring over the historical records of the many nuclear near misses from during the Cold War and after might tell us little about how we might avert future nuclear wars that may emerge from entirely unforeseeable circumstances.

The core concern brought up in this book is that underpinning this new nuclear age is that humanity is about to begin to observe the effects of nuclear deterrence in an unprecedented environment. Not all that defines this new, third nuclear age is actually new, but the precise mix of dynamics at play represents complexity beyond that which we have observed in the past. Over the relatively short 75-plus years of history since Trinity, nuclear weapons and the threats they posed to mankind were largely only observed under conditions of intense, bipolar superpower competition and under a more unipolar world (where regional nuclear states nevertheless experienced crises). This new nuclear age, in a real sense, may represent the final opening of Pandora's box when it comes to nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence.

The author ends this book by stating that a puzzle, however, continues to be the plentiful evidence of imprudent, impulsive leaders with access to nuclear weapons and a long list of nuclear "near misses" from during and after the Cold War, and still no mushroom clouds over cities exploded in anger in a war. There is a real sense that luck has saved humanity more than a few times: from ensuring that the crew on the Soviet B-59 submarine during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 did not release their nuclear-armed torpedoes to allowing for de-escalation in 2019 between India and Pakistan after an Indian pilot was shot down but lived, allowing for a prisoner exchange and an off-ramp away from a broader war.

[Erin Cook]

I read this one very slowly because it is bleak and also not my area. Which meant I started it during the recent India/Pakistan flare-up and finished it amid whatever this Iran-Israel/US thing ends up being. That pace and background make it extra obvious what a tough gig it is to write up a contemporary take on where we're at globally. Lots of respect for hitting that balance.

[Tor Kinsarvik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written and comprehensive overview of the history of the nuclear bomb, current challenges, and possible ways forward.