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.