We are living through the most dangerous time in over a half-century when it comes to nuclear weapons and the prospect of them being used during an armed conflict. Nuclear treaties are unravelling. Rulers like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, who lead the two nations with around 87 percent of the world’s nuclear inventory, are ratcheting up global tensions. The U.S. is set to spend $1.7 trillion on nuclear modernization over the coming decades. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised alarm around the use of nuclear weapons. A nuclear-armed Israel is regularly attacking Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen. India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed nations, were recently in armed conflict over Kashmir and are constantly at odds. China is rapidly militarizing and bolstering its nuclear stockpile.

At the same time, there is hope and resistance to a nuclear-armed world. The majority of nations, especially those from the Global South, have ratified the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which broadly bans all aspects of nuclear weapons production, stockpiling, testing, and threats. Survivors of nuclear attacks, nuclear testing, and uranium mining — from Japan to Kazakhstan, from Marshall Islands to the U.S. Southwest — continue to boldly speak out and demand reparations and nuclear abolition. Across the world, thousands of people are plugged into regional and global antimilitarist networks and initiatives to confront a nuclear challenge that demands internationalist solidarity from us all.

What are the most urgent dangers around nuclear weapons today? What does an anticolonial stance toward nuclear weapons look like? What should be the concrete aims of a global movement against nuclear weapons?

Truthout posed these and other questions to three organizers and scholars from around the world working to advance nuclear abolition. Sara Haghdoosti is the Iranian-American executive director of Win Without War, a national grassroots organization advocating for a progressive U.S. foreign policy. Leila Hennaoui is an associate professor in international law at Hassiba Benbouali University of Chlef in Algeria, who has written about the Global South and nuclear colonialism. Achin Vanaik is a member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace in India. He is a retired professor from the University of Delhi and the author of several books.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Derek Seidman: When you all look at the world today, what worries you the most about nuclear weapons?

Leila Hennaoui: These are very dangerous times. The nuclear threat is the greatest since the Cold War. Russia has talked about using tactical nuclear weapons. A sitting Israeli minister casually suggested a nuclear strike on Gaza.

Nuclear armed states not only refuse to move forward with disarmament, but are actually modernizing and expanding their arsenals. There are talks of resuming nuclear testing. Russia has stepped back from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

All this is unprecedented. Nuclear rhetoric is being normalized, and that really worries me. Instead of normalizing the nuclear threat, we should talk about repairing harm and redirecting resources.

Achin Vanaik: The idea with tactical nuclear weapons is that nuclear weapons could be used in battle without mass annihilation. This undermines the already irrational deterrence logic that says nuclear weapons must not be used.

The U.S. also abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 and has moved toward a nuclear shield, which aims via space interceptors to do no less than protect the whole territory of the U.S. from any possible nuclear attack. This accelerates the nuclear arms race because a country with a nuclear shield can consider a first strike on its nuclear opponent. There’s also the militarization of outer space.

The danger is greatest in South Asia. India and Pakistan are two nuclear powers in ongoing conflict that have had conventional wars. Pakistan, a much smaller country than India, has stated it would consider using tactical nuclear weapons if faced with economic strangulation, which is arguably what the Indian government has done by illegally suspending the Indus Waters Treaty. The likelihood of future armed conflict creates a situation where these two countries initially say they won’t use nuclear weapons, but then progress to a situation where they very seriously consider it.

Sara Haghdoosti: The rising threat of authoritarianism makes nuclear war far more likely. We’re seeing so many cavalier threats about the use of nukes, from Trump to Putin and from India to Pakistan. It’s deeply alarming. We’re seeing the old systems we had to help contain the threat of nuclear weapons crumble around us.

If the New START Treaty [which is an arms reduction between the U.S. and Russia, and the last remaining arms control treaty between them] expires next year, we could enter a new arms race. There’s also a new set of challenges around nuclear weapons with AI being integrated into some of their data control systems.

What are the costs of nuclear weapons for society? And who actually benefits or profits from nuclear weapons?

Hennaoui: For nuclear armed states, the economic costs are enormous. Budgets for nuclear weapons and modernizing stockpiles are huge. This swallows trillions in resources that could go to hospitals and schools and social programs.

While nuclear weapons may drain public resources in the North, for us in the South they cost us lives, health, and water. In my country, Algeria, the French conducted nuclear testing in the Sahara that left radioactive contamination that still impacts us today. It’s the same in Kazakhstan and the Marshall Islands. There’s uranium extraction in Niger or Namibia or the Navajo nation in the U.S.

We need to reject nuclear apartheid, where a handful of nations hold permanent nuclear rights while the rest of the world is denied them. That’s the first principle.

The health burden is intergenerational. In Algeria, we still have birth defects and cancer from France’s nuclear testing. Nuclear arms impact humanity both north and south, but it’s us in the south, the poorest, who have no say around nuclear weapons, who pay the highest price.

Haghdoosti: Everyone thinks about the detonation of nuclear weapons, but they have a huge impact at home that gets erased, from the legacy of nuclear testing, to workers without enough protections, to the environmental impacts on local communities.

In the U.S., we’re spending over a trillion dollars on nuclear weapons over the next decade. Much of that is going into the pockets of weapons manufacturers. Nukes are really good business for them. Weapons manufacturers lobby Congress and make big campaign donations, and then many of them get contracts. It’s a legalized form of corruption.

Hennaoui: Nobody wants new nations acquiring nuclear weapons. This kind of horizontal proliferation benefits nobody. But vertical proliferation, or modernization of current arsenals, benefits the leaders of military and security bureaucracies. Nuclear weapons, sadly, are seen as symbols of prestige and power, and these bureaucracies and militaries guard their control over secretive nuclear infrastructures that eat up vast areas of the budget.

What should be the short-term and long-term aims for a progressive antinuclear politics?

Hennaoui: The short-term priority should be strengthening the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). It’s a great tool that we already have, but it needs to be empowered. There must be funding for its programs, such as victim assistance and environmental remediation.

We need to continue stigmatizing and campaigning against nuclear weapons. We need public pressure, especially in P5 countries (China, France, Russia, U.K., U.S.). In a volatile area like the Middle East, we have proactive organizations that have drafted weapons of mass destruction free zone treaties that they bring to diplomats. We should support efforts like this.

We should always strive to change the logic of security. The deterrence logic should be dismantled, combined with reparative justice and the relocation of resources for human security.

Haghdoosti: One short-term solution is diplomacy. The best case study here is the nuclear deal with Iran. It worked until Trump ripped it up.

You can’t fight successfully to get rid of nuclear weapons by only focusing on nuclear weapons. We have to connect that struggle to the struggle against expanding militarism and racist nationalism.

In the long term, we need to push for leaders who aren’t focused on deterrence, which we know doesn’t work. We need new strategies to work towards peace. People need to trust their common sense here. Yes, we have too many nuclear weapons, and we are better off without them.

The key to nuclear abolition is realizing that our safety is bound up with everyone else’s. Common thinking on national security assumes that you get more bombs and build higher walls and then people are safe. But this can’t address the biggest threats we’re facing, like climate change or nuclear war, whose impacts affect everyone.

Vanaik: As we push for more countries to sign onto the TPNW, we should also propose nuclear risk reduction measures. We need to set up a framework for a discussion about nuclear disarmament just like we have around climate.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would ease the situation. If the U.S. ratified it, Russia would follow, and it would put tremendous pressure on India and Pakistan. We must also promote more nuclear weapons free zones. Most important would be a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction. The principal holdout is, of course, Israel.

Even if we don’t achieve these, we should still raise them to propagate and raise general consciousness.

While we don’t want more nuclear weapons, we also don’t want imperial powers dictating what Global South nations can and can’t do. What should an anticolonial, antinuclear politics look like?

Hennaoui: It’s really complicated. We need to reject nuclear apartheid, where a handful of nations hold permanent nuclear rights while the rest of the world is denied them. That’s the first principle.

We should listen to the voices of the people silenced during the manufacturing of the colonial system. Nuclear weapons today are a new form of colonization. We must support the agency of the Global South and their right to shape disarmament and demand reparations from the nuclear harm they were subjected to.

Don’t underestimate the importance of a progressive mass politics. Mass politics can lead to the overthrow of even the most intense dictatorships, and it can provide resistance against countries that are considering using nuclear weapons.

It’s understandable that the nuclear deterrence logic might appeal to Iran, which was just attacked by the U.S. and Israel. But we shouldn’t support this. Instead, we should call out double standards and the coercive disarmament that is always imposed on the weak, and we should insist that all nuclear arsenals, including those of the P5 nations, Israel, and others, should be dismantled.

Vanaik: Nuclear elites always say that nuclear weapons offer leverage. The problem is they represent something so extreme that you can’t actually use them to bully another country. Having nuclear weapons will not protect you from attacks.

You can’t fight successfully to get rid of nuclear weapons by only focusing on nuclear weapons. We have to connect that struggle to the struggle against expanding militarism and racist nationalism.

The danger of nuclear weapons has to be addressed at the international level. Regional efforts like nuclear weapons free zones are all steps in the generation of a consciousness to move beyond the terrain of nationalism and fight the interconnected crises, from militarism to climate, that impact us all. We need to be internationalists.

What do you see as major challenges to nuclear abolition?

Hennaoui: The biggest challenge is the exclusion of the Global South. The current nuclear governance system, with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as its cornerstone, silences and excludes southern voices. Powerful states have also been pressuring countries not to engage with the TPNW. Persistent regional rivalries, like between India and Pakistan, also feed the deterrence logic.

We can overcome these obstacles with grassroots and diplomatic pressure, credible technical assistance, and the push for new decolonial treaties. I think of the TPNW as a decolonial legal tool. It’s difficult to dismantle this house built on colonial legacies. International law is a tool that has always been used, and we should use tools like the TPNW.

Haghdoosti: Our movement can be shortsighted in evaluating our work. We need to realize the sum total of our efforts. The conversation about nukes isn’t just about those weapons. It’s really about a mindset of what keeps us safe and what doesn’t. Opposing the genocide in Gaza, or critiquing the Pentagon budget, are linked to furthering the conversation about nuclear abolition. Every time you stand up to militarism, you’re taking a chink out of the armor.

The topic of nuclear weapons can feel overwhelming. What keeps you motivated in this struggle?

Vanaik: Don’t underestimate the importance of a progressive mass politics. Mass politics can lead to the overthrow of even the most intense dictatorships, and it can provide resistance against countries that are considering using nuclear weapons.

We also have no choice. The biggest problems of the world today are caused by the rich and the right. But the future is open ended. We can change it. It has changed before. We guarantee that it will only get worse if we don’t fight.

Haghdoosti: When you read this, do something. It feels overwhelming, but the only way to ensure nothing changes is to do nothing. Join an organization. Under authoritarianism, you’re told that your voice means nothing and that collective action doesn’t deliver. If we start to believe that, we will start to really lose any chance for change as well as our democracy.

Hennaoui: Hope lies with the survivors who are still telling their stories. They show us the human cost and bring voice to those who were silenced. Hope also lies with the energy of the youth and the new anti-nuclear movements. The struggle is alive with them.

Many things have been accomplished in the past that were unimaginable. The U.S. abolished slavery. We achieved a chemical weapons prohibition and a landmine ban. Disarmament is not naive. What seems impossible now, may, in the foreseeable future, become possible.