Going back to the core motive behind U.S. military campaigns against Iran—intensifying from 2025 into full-scale war in 2026—and, more broadly, to the enduring regional confrontations involving Israel, the central objective has been to prevent nuclear proliferation, as a nuclear Iran would emerge as a dominant regional power, threaten U.S. allies, and exert control over critical energy routes, thereby undermining the regional balance of power. In 2012, Kenneth Waltz argued that “more may be better,” suggesting that a nuclear Iran could, in fact, enhance regional stability by restoring the balance of power, counterbalancing Israel’s nuclear monopoly, keeping conflicts limited below the threshold of escalation, and inducing greater strategic caution. In this view, nuclearization could ultimately accomplish Iran’s security imperatives, reducing incentives for revisionist behavior. Can the same argument still be made – and could Iranian nuclear proliferation contribute to stabilizing the region by addressing the underlying imbalance of power and security dilemma?
Today, the escalation of conflict in the Gulf region has not evolved into the next “World War,” but into a system of world wars, conditioned by multipolar structures, characterized by diffuse, asymmetric, and interconnected conflict linking multiple regional crises and theaters of war, while engaging great power competition both directly and indirectly. The robust structural mechanisms theorized by Kenneth Waltz yield different expectations today as the structure shifts toward multipolarity, carrying new implications for the future of deterrence strategies and system-wide proliferation.
The Schelling-type nuclear stability Waltz implies, holds if the logic of strategic and general deterrence is operationally maintained, leaders are risk-averse, and second-strike capabilities are preserved—conditions most clearly met in a bipolar structure, where symmetry in doctrine, firepower, and adversary relationships provides a clear and simplified basis for political calculation and reciprocity under mutually assured destruction. By contrast, multipolarity increases strategic complexity: heterogeneous doctrines, numerous dyads, and shifting alignments create a more competitive environment with stronger first-move incentives, erode mutual understanding of second-strike capabilities and intentions, and increase the risk of misperception, producing an asymmetric environment in which deterrence expectations shift toward immediate signaling to better assess resolve.
To begin, the ongoing crises of the past decades have gradually eroded the reliability of general deterrence in preventing conflict and maintaining nuclear stability. General deterrence refers to a situation in which an attack is deterred before it even occurs, emphasizing the credibility of the defender’s threat. Because nuclear weapons are highly destructive and costly, maintaining general deterrence relies on an overwhelming retaliatory capability. When general deterrence is strong, attempts at immediate deterrence are less likely to arise and, if they do, are more likely to fail.
In the case of the U.S. attack on Iran, its overwhelming power and general deterrence—as illustrated in its initial operation Midnight Hammer—enabled it to act with strong resolve, imposing punishment at a relatively low cost of retaliation from Iran. However, the subsequent escalation of the conflict has undermined the reliability of general deterrence expectations as a whole. Iran’s asymmetric capabilities, both quantitatively (through a smaller arsenal) and qualitatively (through alternative tools such as drones), have been able to inflict significant costs on the U.S. and its allies by targeting countervalue assets, including civilian infrastructure.
In this war, for example, Iran has been able to absorb severe losses and, despite a military defeat, has maintained and enhanced its strategic and political posture, particularly through its leverage over the Strait. In any ceasefire negotiations today, Iran would likely hold a position of considerable bargaining advantage, capable of extracting concessions from the United States—whether in the form of reparations, regional arrangements (e.g., Lebanon), or commercial agreements. At this stage, there appears to be no direct penalty that can be imposed on Iran without imposing greater costs on the United States itself. On the other hand, the U.S. has revealed not power but strategic incompetence, deviating from its original objectives of preventing proliferation, consolidating regional control, and enhancing security, while ultimately heightening Iran’s incentives to pursue nuclear capabilities. Immediate deterrence, rather than general deterrence, has become central, as each round of interaction signals both high costs and strong resolve, progressively revealing the expected costs and commitment of the United States.
Asymmetric power, as illustrated in the case of Iran, appears to increasingly undermine the durability and credibility of general deterrence in the system, while reinforcing the importance of immediate, battlefield-level deterrence that can be achieved even with a smaller tactical arsenal targeting countervalue assets. The sufficiency of asymmetric power, rather than large arsenals and overwhelming deterrent capability, has gradually been recognized and leveraged by many rising powers, like China, North Korea, Pakistan, and increasingly Russia, as well as other emerging states, as a more cost-effective means of achieving credible deterrence regionally.
The shifting expectations of deterrence, particularly through asymmetric nuclear capabilities, undermine one of the most stabilizing dynamics of the past century: the stability–instability paradox. As Kenneth Waltz argues, nuclear weapons do not eliminate conflicts; rather, they render them more manageable political instruments, limited below the threshold of escalation. Yet the erosion of general deterrence and the transition toward what Kenneth E. Boulding calls “stable war”—a system of continuous conflict among multiple actors with no transition to peace—signal a breakdown in the core stabilizing mechanisms of nuclear deterrence: credibility, superior capability, and clear communication of intentions. As these weaken, escalatory barriers to conventional conflict erode, and the constraints on territorial conquest embedded in the stability–instability paradox collapse, increasingly evident today.
Asymmetric forces undermine the credibility of general deterrence, open new vulnerabilities for great powers and new opportunities for rising states, intensify competitive interactions through immediate signaling, and make conflicts more prone to risky and potentially unlimited escalation. The return to a more primitive and unstable strategic environment thus makes nuclear weapons the cheapest means of achieving strategic autonomy. Acquiring nuclear weapons is much less costly than maintaining a full-scale conventional military, which only a few major powers actually possess. Following its political survival despite the massive destruction of critical military and industrial infrastructure—including missile systems, air defenses, command centers, strategic facilities, and much of its naval assets—Iran’s cheapest and most viable option is now increasingly to pursue full-scale nuclear capability.
Systemic conditions of instability in which nuclear weapons become a cheap means of security are highly dangerous and signal profound effects of structural change on the strategic environment. Multipolar structural conditions not only alter the logic of deterrence, but in doing so, enable proliferation by unlocking structural barriers to the development of nuclear capabilities, making nuclear weapons both accessible and necessary.
Based on the model of Nuno Monteiro and Alexandre Debs, nuclear proliferation occurs under four main conditions: (1) a state faces a significant security threat; (2) its relative power is sufficient to avoid provoking, or at least to survive, a preventive strike; (3) the expected benefits outweigh the costs; and (4) it lacks a credible security guarantee from an ally—whether through extended deterrence, technological sharing, or restraint. Applying this model across cases, they find that alliance is the most decisive factor in explaining proliferation and non-proliferation outcomes. Paradoxically, however, the conditions that make proliferation most desirable often coincide with those that make it most difficult: states facing acute threats are frequently too weak to deter or survive a preventive strike (condition 2) and lack allied protection (condition 4). Proliferation, therefore, becomes feasible only when a state combines vulnerability with sufficient capability to deter or withstand preventive action.
Following this model, a first implication is that the structural undermining of general deterrence—driven by asymmetric forces, system fragmentation, multi-front crises, competition, and rising uncertainty—weakens the core condition for non-proliferation: the provision of extended security guarantees by allies. States such as South Korea, Japan, or Taiwan, which have long relied on U.S. security commitments, may increasingly fear abandonment and thus become more inclined to consider nuclear proliferation, as seen historically in cases such as France or Pakistan. France challenged the credibility and reliability of U.S. guarantees yet possessed sufficient capability to pursue independent nuclearization; Pakistan, facing a major threat from India and only a loose U.S. commitment, similarly had enough relative power to withstand preventive pressure—conditions Iran may not previously have met, but may increasingly approach today.
Indeed, weaker states facing strong incentives to proliferate but lacking allied protection may, under multipolar conditions, find proliferation more feasible, as the capacity of major powers to impose preventive pressure is weakened. The second implication is that the erosion of extended deterrence, combined with the rise of asymmetric capabilities, reduces the effectiveness of preventive constraints within the system. Iran’s political survival despite significant military pressure suggests it may now advance to later stages of proliferation. This strategic failure by the U.S. sends a dangerous signal: even if materially paralyzed for the coming years, the regime has consolidated its power and reframed military endurance as victory—strengthening its long-term incentives to pursue nuclear capability.
More broadly, the gradual decline of patterns of alliance commitments and alliance-based constraints points toward a system increasingly conducive to proliferation. Alliances have historically been the most important reason not to pursue nuclear weapons. However, the erosion of these arrangements confounds a deeper structural effect: proliferation outcomes have not depended solely on alliance commitments themselves, but on the broader structural conditions that enabled great powers to exercise effective general deterrence and control the strategic environment. What is often omitted in discussions of proliferation is the structural context in which it occurred, leaving little basis for understanding how it would unfold today beyond those conditions.
A central feature of the nuclear order is that, since the bipolar system was structured around the United States and the Soviet Union, nuclear proliferation has almost never occurred outside of nuclear sharing. In most cases, proliferation has either been enabled through nuclear sharing or actively constrained by great powers within their spheres of influence. In the subsequent unipolar period, this dynamic persisted due to the already established system of strategic deterrence and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which left the United States as a primus inter pares—a near hegemonic power. Proliferation thus occurred under permissive structural conditions in which great powers could both enable and constrain it—whether under easy deterrence, where sharing reinforced security, or elusive deterrence, where proliferation had to be actively contained or countered. What is often understood as the inherent stability of nuclear deterrence is, in fact, a structural artifact of bipolarity and unipolarity.
The structural implication of multipolarity—where no single major power or alliance structure can exert control over proliferation—is, for the first time, the emergence of a novel form of structurally driven, autonomous and strategic proliferation, independent of alliance networks or bipolar/unipolar systems.
The structural enabling of proliferation under multipolarity is already reflected in the transformation of the international system through the erosion of arms control and non-proliferation regimes. Key agreements have collapsed or weakened: the end of New START in 2026 removed constraints on U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals; the demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019 reintroduced destabilizing land-based missiles; and withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty in 2021 undermined information transparency and confidence. At the same time, the Non-Proliferation Treaty faces declining legitimacy, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has collapsed, and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s regulatory capacity has been weakened. Broader governance mechanisms have also eroded, with the breakdown of the U.S.–Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue in 2022, the failure to adopt a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, and the stagnation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
These developments are not isolated, but reflect systemic adaptation to changing structural polarity, widening asymmetries in capabilities, and the emergence of new technologies—from hypersonic systems and tactical nuclear weapons to AI-related risks—combined with the exclusion of key powers such as China from regulatory regimes. Alongside the collapse of governance mechanisms, the erosion of the nuclear taboo and no-first-use commitments has intensified nuclear signaling and threats, shifting away from what was once an almost superstitious restraint against invoking the “n-word”.
This structural culmination unfolds in a post–arms-control environment ill-prepared for multipolar nuclear competition, where militarization is rapidly intensifying. A growing number of states now possess the industrial and technological capacity to develop advanced nuclear capabilities, including countries such as Australia, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Japan, and Brazil. Others, including Poland, Turkey, Algeria, South Africa, Argentina, and Indonesia, are increasingly capable of acquiring basic nuclear weapons and regional delivery systems.
At the same time, global militarization has reached its highest level in decades. Military spending is at a historic high, approaching $3 trillion, and has increased for more than ten consecutive years, rising by over 40% since 2016. Several states, including Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Israel, and Russia, have expanded their defense budgets by more than 100%. Japan bears one of the largest increases, with a historic 61% increase since 1958. The United States has proposed a historic 50% increase, bringing its defense budget to $1.5 trillion for 2027 compared to 2026 levels. France has accelerated its military spending plans, bringing forward a doubling of its budget to 2027, three years ahead of its original 2030 target, while Germany is preparing to build Europe’s largest army, with €150 billion invested by 2029.
This return to a more primitive strategic environment is, unsurprisingly, bringing us closer to midnight. The Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, now stands at 85 seconds to midnight—the closest it has ever been to global annihilation since its creation in 1947, when it was set at seven minutes to midnight. Amid the ongoing climate crisis, risks of biotechnology misuse, and the growing threat posed by artificial intelligence, the transition toward multipolarity further exacerbates the most critical variable: nuclear war. By reshaping the logic of deterrence, conflict dynamics, and the conditions under which proliferation becomes structurally enabled, it is not merely transforming the security environment—it is eroding the very foundations of nuclear restraint.
Further Reading on E-International Relations
