To Stop the Nuclear Arms Race, States Like the US Should Pursue Domestic Peace

The Pact for the Future, adopted by world leaders at the high-level United Nations Summit of the Future in September, ambitiously calls for a world free of nuclear weapons and a recommitment to disarmament during a time when all nuclear states are undergoing nuclear modernization efforts and tensions that could indicate the beginning of a new arms race. Meanwhile, the Fragile States Index notes indicators of weakened domestic human security factors within these states. Yes, states are proliferating and modernizing their arsenals in response to rivals doing the same, but where did this cycle start, what magnifies it, and how does it impact the people within these countries?

Peace comes not only through the protection from outside threats, but by fostering individual security through strong health, educational, and justice institutions. While states invest in deterrence, human security needs go unmet, and civilians develop mistrust in the government and other countries.

The United States has seen a decline in social cohesion and an increase in state fragility over the past decade, and the fractionalized population is on even greater display this year with the upcoming election. State fragility is also evident in an increase in political violence—demonstrated by two assassination attempts of a former president—democratic backsliding, an attempt to overturn an election, extreme gerrymandering, and restricting voters’ access to the ballot box.

Spending on non-defense programs and instead investing in the civilian sector decreases unemployment rates and contributes to economic security for the public.

Looking at only high-level, international interactions misses domestic factors that contribute to countries feeling less inclined to participate in diplomatic, arms control solutions, or having more isolationist practices. In 1997, Scott Sagan published a piece called, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” explaining the lack of attention to the “domestic politics model.” Today, amid a potential start of an arms race and a massive change in the global order, these factors are once again ignored.

Diplomacy and arms control is hard between countries when the people in those countries cannot decide what to do about it.

The decline in social cohesion isn’t just reflected in levels of trust that U.S. civilians have of other U.S. civilians. If you don’t trust your next-door neighbor, you sure aren’t primed to trust someone from a different country. Low levels of social trust make a populace more vulnerable to influence using “othering” rhetoric about international enemies and even allies. So, while U.S. citizens experience insecurity and instability at home, a policy that gives the illusion that the nation is strong placates grievances. Research shows that the public’s support for defense spending and a willingness to use force is related to low social trust.

While projecting power to internal and external audiences through nuclear modernization, the United States ignores insecurity at home.

According to a report by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the cost of a strong military also includes the forgone investments into human security:

Decades of high levels of military spending have changed U.S. government and society—strengthening its ability to fight wars, while weakening its capacities to perform other core functions. Investments in infrastructure, healthcare, education, and emergency preparedness, for instance, have all suffered as military spending and industry have crowded them out.

Project 2025, written by many former Trump administration advisers, calls for an expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal in order to “deter Russia and China simultaneously.” Countering China, and using it as a “pacer” is not only touted by the Trump campaign. The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review calls on modernization in order to deter China and its growing nuclear forces. However, even if China did reach the high end of projected growth in nuclear force, it would not be close to the 3,700 nuclear weapons that the United States has in its arsenal. The United States is undergoing a $1.2 trillion effort of nuclear modernization over the coming decades in order to keep its deterrent force strong.

From 1974 to 1987, an increase in defense spending worsened unemployment rates among Americans, but was specifically harmful to Black Americans and women. When non-defense spending increased, unemployment rates reduced. During this time, the United States was significantly proliferating its nuclear arsenal in the Cold War, and the strategic spending percent of the defense budget went from 11% to 16%. This was because the shift in spending toward a nuclear buildup necessitated hardware and technical spending rather than personnel spending.

The current budget for U.S. Nuclear Forces is $75 billion a year, however the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate for the 2023-2032 period of $756 billion is $122 billion more than the year before’s estimate of $634 billion for the 2021-2030 period. There are many other ways that the United States could spend this money than on a weapon that should never be used, but universal early childhood education (“Pre-K”) is estimated to cost $20-46 billion per year, and there would still be a few billion to spare.

Spending on non-defense programs and instead investing in the civilian sector decreases unemployment rates and contributes to economic security for the public.

In a preliminary study conducted at the Nonproliferation Education and Research Center at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, it was found that a weak security apparatus—one of the indicators in the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Global Fragility Index—was associated with a low state sentiment score in the 2005-2022 Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conferences. A state’s sentiment score increases as it gives examples of its own fulfillment of its obligations under the treaty but decreases as the state blames other states for not fulfilling their obligations. In a way, it measures a state’s own sense of responsibility in the process or its willingness to blame other member states for the degradation of the system.

The findings demonstrate a relationship between domestic institutional factors and how states behave at the international level. Specifically, states that have political insecurity have a lower confidence in the NPT process. They express less confidence in other member states by calling out misactions, and do not express how they contribute directly through their own policy to uphold the nonproliferation regime.

When U.S. institutions are weakened, leaders may continue to evade responsibility by blaming all institutional issues on outside actors through scapegoating. Some scholars argue that the pursuit of a nuclear weapons program provides a unique opportunity to divert a political legitimacy crisis, such as in the case of Iran, and that activities such as the testing of nuclear weapons are so salient, they show a deliverable that gains a party in power prestige.

Global power politics does not exist in a vacuum. While understanding dynamics between states is important, state fragility is a lens through which to understand the origins of broiling tensions that prevent the pursuit of diplomatic arms control solutions. The United States is not the only state seeing a decline in social cohesion indicators; however, it is necessary to turn inward and stabilize domestic human-security factors before we can address rivals, competitors, the axis of evil, or whatever label makes us feel more secure. Addressing instability within the country will make the United States more legitimate in its claims, and institutions will have more capacity to handle outside threats as the populace is more secure.