If it starts, a nuclear arms race will be unstoppable

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.THE WORLD stands on the brink of a nuclear-arms race. If one can be avoided, a big reason will be this: currently, the first country to start such a race risks paying a terrible price.

Rogue states caught sprinting for a bomb face crippling sanctions and military strikes. Meanwhile, any halfway respectable country that flouts the Non-Proliferation Treaty—a legal ban on the creation of new nuclear-armed powers, signed by 191 states—risks becoming a pariah, with unknowable economic and diplomatic costs.Less happily, if a nuclear-arms race does get under way, it will carry on, like toppling dominoes.

That is not this columnist’s breathless judgment. It is the view of the world’s nuclear police chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi, soberly expressed on April 13th in an interview for Inside Geopolitics, a video show produced by The Economist.

As director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mr Grossi has the task of persuading countries not to break nuclear-arms curbs, and of sounding the alarm if they try. Asked whether he is worried about a nuclear-arms race, the veteran Argentine diplomat replies: “I really am.” Can he confirm reports that many countries are privately debating getting nuclear arms, whether that means Iran’s neighbours in the Persian Gulf, or American allies such as Germany, Japan, Poland or South Korea, who are no longer sure that they are protected by an American nuclear umbrella? “These discussions are being held,” he answers.Mr Grossi concedes that the existing non-proliferation regime has, over the years, failed to stop several countries from joining the club of nuclear-armed powers.