Upsetting the nuclear order: how the rise of nationalist populism increases nuclear dangers

ABSTRACT Nationalist populists as leaders of states that possess nuclear weapons undermine the nuclear order and increase nuclear dangers in novel, significant, and persistent ways. Such leaders talk differently about nuclear weapons; they can put nuclear policy making and crisis management in disarray; and they can weaken international alliances and multilateral nuclear institutions. The rise of nationalist populists in nuclear-armed states, including some of the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the 1968 Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, shatters the presumed distinction between responsible and irresponsible nuclear powers and complicates attempts to heal rifts in the international order. Policies to wait out populists or to balance their influence in multilateral institutions seem to have had limited success. A sustainable strategy to deal with the challenge posed by populists would need to start by recognizing that we can no longer assume that nuclear weapons are safe in the hands of some states but not in others’.