- People are less trusting of the US as a nuclear umbrella.

If nations like Iran and North Korea can obtain nuclear weapons, other countries start to think, hmm, maybe it looks pretty good to get one.

(uptempo music) - Hello and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer and today, are we entering a new nuclear era?

(explosion booms) For years, nuclear deterrents relied on a kind of uneasy stability, two sides, arm to the teeth, knowing that any first strike would guarantee destruction for everyone.

After almost blowing us all up in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War built rules of deterrence for a world of dueling nuclear superpowers and static arsenals.

But in today's fragmented GZERO World of fast-moving technology and unpredictable leadership, safeguards are falling apart.

So how serious is nuclear risk?

How do we guarantee security in a world where the weapons and the rules are fast-changing?

Are we ready for a future where not just missiles, but lines of code could end civilization?

To help answer these questions, I'm joined by Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander.

Don't worry, I've also got your Puppet Regime.

- Da, da, da.

We can circle back next week, ugh.

Another invasion that could have been an email, am I right?

- But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Announcer] Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint (bright music) and scale their supply chains, (bright music) with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com - [Announcer] And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And.

(bright music) (tense music) - Do nuclear weapons make a country safer or more vulnerable?

It's a difficult question.

To unpack it, let's rewind to the 1990s, in a tale of two radically different nuclear paths: Ukraine, North Korea.

Ukraine inherited the world's third largest nuclear arsenal after the Soviet collapse.

To be fair, they didn't control the nuclear weapons operations, but they had them on their territory and they gave them up under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, trading warheads for security assurances from the US, United Kingdom, and Russia.

- Thanks to your vision and that Ukrainian parliament, you are removing the threat of nuclear weapons and laying the groundwork for an era of peace with your neighbors.

I salute the courage you have shown.

America will stand with you to support your independence, your territorial integrity, and your reforms.

- But assurances are not guarantees.

Two decades later, Russia annexes Crimea.

The West responded with sanctions, but little real pushback.

(explosion booms) Emboldened, Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

(canon pops) North Korea took a very different route.

They abandoned diplomacy, pursued nuclear weapons, and lied to the world all along.

Today it's a global pariah with a small functional nuclear arsenal.

But the uncomfortable truth is nobody's thinking about invading North Korea.

So did Kyiv get played?

Did Pyongyang make the smarter move?

The contrast between Ukraine's vulnerability and North Korea's impunity seems stark today.

Ukraine may have been betrayed, but it also gained global sympathy and unprecedented support from the West, military, economic, and diplomatic.

Had they kept their nukes, it's hard to imagine Russia would've invaded.

But it's also hard to imagine the West would have given the same support to a nuclear-armed, post-Soviet wildcard.

Meanwhile, North Korea has become a dangerous rogue state, and the United States and many other countries have imposed unilateral sanctions.

Isolated, starving, economically stagnant, North Korea survives on a fraying lifeline from China.

Its nukes haven't made it much stronger.

In 2025, where does that leave us?

The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty still holds, barely.

Iran, a party to the NPT since 1970, was enriching uranium to near weapons grade levels before the Israeli and US strikes.

Those attacks may strengthen the argument inside Tehran, that acquiring nukes is the best way to ensure the regime's survival.

And global instability is growing.

The United States, Russia, and China are all investing billions to modernize their nuclear arsenals.

President Trump's skepticism of alliances and his protectionist foreign policy has shaken faith in the US nuclear umbrella.

When the umbrella leaks, allies start shopping for their own raincoats.

Building nuclear weapons is a gamble.

It's not just a strategy.

And sure, the West eventually, after years of sanctions, accepted India's and Pakistan's programs, but those created new challenges and a near constant threat of war on a tinderbox border where anti crisis could end in catastrophe.

Nukes may seem like a shortcut to security, but they also increase the risk of miscalculation and deadly escalation along the way.

Ukraine and North Korea chose opposite nuclear paths, yet neither is truly safe.

And that's the point.

Real security comes from trust, comes from diplomacy, comes from alliances, and absent that, a country may feel it's worth the risk of going its own way.

Here to help us unpack the growing nuclear threat and what we can do to stop it, I'm joined by former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis.

Admiral Jim Stavridis, so wonderful to have you back on the show.

- Thanks, Ian.

Always great to be with you.

- You are a guy I turn to for both today and for the future on the military balance on nuclear weapons.

And there's been a lot of thought about that of late.

Start with a big question.

Do you think we are going to see a lot more nuclear proliferation in the coming decade?

- I do, unfortunately, and what has held it off for decades has been the expense of it, a use of US nuclear umbrella, which made countries like Japan and South Korea, Germany, and Poland comfortable not having nuclear weapons.

And unfortunately, both of those factors are kinda moving in the wrong direction.

People are less trusting of the US as a nuclear umbrella, and secondly, the technology remains a reasonable barrier.

But if nations like Iran and North Korea can obtain nuclear weapons, which one has them, the other has been very close, I think other countries start to think, hmm, maybe it looks pretty good to get one.

So, I'll close with this, Ian.

Top of my list of nations that I'm watching to see if they decide to go nuclear, none of which will surprise you, but Japan, South Korea, Poland, possibly Germany, and Saudi Arabia.

- Saudi Arabia.

Not Turkey.

Turkey not on your list.

Is it close?

- It would be the sixth, yeah, and I think is conventionally thoughtful in that regard.

There you've got nominally the fact that they're a NATO nation, they have a NATO US umbrella, plus the Brits and the French already have nuclear, but I think you're right, I'd throw them in, so let's call it the possibly dirty half dozen.

- The dirty half dozen.

Now, if you were advising the Iranian leadership, would you tell them, "Okay, that really went badly.

You've gotta find a way to get a covert program successful as fast as possible because otherwise we are just done for."

Is that your advice?

- Well, first of all, I would never advise the Iranians as you know, but putting it in the third person, I think an Iranian strategic planner would do exactly that.

They would try and take this program deep underground, disperse it.

They're not gonna give up all of the enriched uranium.

They have probably close to a thousand pounds, I'd guess.

And frankly, there are a lot of what Don Rumsfeld would call known unknowns about this program.

I suspect there's already a pretty good secondary program in existence.

- So, thinking about the Israeli and then the American decision to militarily degrade Iran's nuclear capabilities, was that the right strategic decision or was this a unique moment to try diplomacy to a greater degree?

- I think it's a close call, Ian, and you can argue both sides to that coin.

If I had been advising President Trump, I would've said, "Hey, let's give it another handful of weeks, maybe even a month or two, and see if the-" - You would've said that before the Israelis struck or after the Israelis struck.

- Even after the Israelis struck.

I would've said, "Go to Netanyahu, tell them, 'Cool your jets,' literally, and take a couple of months and send the talented Mr. Witkoff one more time."

And I don't think we would've lost a lot.

And at the end of the day, he chose to make the strike when he did.

And I think that's a defendable decision.

And militarily it was executed well and I think probably knocked the Iranian program back somewhat six months to a year and a half, kind of in that range.

So, a defendable decision.

And then finally, one thing that it did do was show the world that the United States, and particularly President Trump, was willing to use direct force in a pretty strong way and in a contained way, no boots on the ground to follow, but that you and I would, both as political scientists, define deterrence as capability and credibility.

And I think that doing this strike enhanced the credibility side of an already quite capable equation for the United States.

- And do you think that makes diplomacy more credible now from the United States?

- I think there's still a window.

I don't think it's a slam dunk, to say the least.

But at the end of the day, a lot of the reason the Obama administration pursued this program was a bet that over time the demographics of Iran, the engagement with the west, the opening of Tehran to business, that all of that would change Iran more than Iran would be able to change the face of the Middle East.

At this point in time, Iran has pretty limited capability to change the face of the Middle East.

So, I think you can go back to that Obama bet and say, "Okay, let's try some diplomacy."

And from what I've seen in off and on statements from the administration, they seem willing to do that, and they're still talking about talks, and I think Witkoff and Marco Rubio are on hot standby to fly over and have a conversation.

Why not?

- The Russian front, we've seen Ukraine with some extraordinary success in using advanced technology to take out Russian strategic bombers, jet fighters deep in the country, but it's not stopping the Ukrainians from continuing to lose territory.

How much do you worry about that kind of escalation and does that make you worry about being involved in a proxy war with a nuclear power?

- Well, I think we're already involved in a proxy war with the nuclear power, and we have been- - Yes, yes, indeed.

- For quite a while, as you and I would agree.

I think it's unlikely Putin is going to use a nuclear weapon unless he truly believes there's a regime change, a threat to him personally.

If he begins to feel that Ukraine has the ability to reach into the Kremlin itself with a drone attack, then I think at some point the possibility of him using a tactical nuclear weapon goes up.

Having said all that, how do I feel about Ukraine right now?

I actually feel reasonably, cautiously optimistic.

Here's why.

Number one, NATO has kind of hung together here.

In the recent summit, the agreement for 5% defense spending, albeit not until 2035, but really an alliance kind of together.

Number two, the Europeans increasingly are spending, of their own volition, more on their own defense industry.

And number three, they're being more supportive of Ukraine despite building domestic pushback.

So, I kind of put all that together and I add to it a fourth and important thing, which is that Donald Trump appears to becoming convinced, maybe too strong a word, but beginning to believe that Vladimir Putin is, in fact, no friend of his, no friend of the United States, certainly no friend of Western Europe, and I see a lot of frustration building in Washington about Putin.

I think for all those reasons, I think the Ukrainians have a better hand of cards right now, although Putin certainly has cards to play.

- Now, the big thing we haven't talked about in terms of the nuclear balance is China.

- Yeah.

- The Chinese, of course, have only stepped up dramatically their spend on their strategic nuclear weapons program.

And how do you think about a changing strategic balance where it's not the United States and the Soviets after '62, with some arms control conversations and the rest, it's actually now a new player, it's China, with none of that framework and architecture, and frankly, barely useful conversations happening at the high level right now.

What does that say to you as a strategic and military planner?

- I am much more worried about that than anything else we have talked about.

China is going from a pretty modest inventory of around 300 to stated goal of 1,500 deployable nuclear warheads.

That's the same as the US and Russia under the START Treaty, 1,500 deployable warheads.

They're talking about getting to that point in the next five years.

That is going to be difficult, but I think attainable.

So your point, there is a whole new structure here that we have never encountered.

We've never had a three-handed triangle of major nuclear powers.

So what do we need to do?

I think we need to recognize China is going to build a 1,500 minimum capability in terms of warheads.

They're going to have them.

- So it will be a third, within five years, it'll be a third nuclear superpower with global reach.

- In my view.

And I think the question is what do we do about it?

Number one is, and we've touched on it, but it's reopen arms limitation talks, and to get to that, we have to get through Ukraine and get to a ceasefire there.

I think that's attainable.

Once we do that, we ought to go to Russia, we ought to go to China, and we ought to try and lead those, and if you call them new, new start, or result, or however you wanna categorize it, arms control talks are gonna be pretty critical.

Number two, number two thing we need to do is up our game in terms of intelligence, AI, cyber, all the kind of ancillary things that go toward making a nuclear force capable.

Third and finally, would be smart to try and continue to have strong alliances to balance China and Russia drawing closer and closer together.

- So if we look to the future, is there a point that you can see where nuclear weapons become less relevant because of advanced technologies?

Is there a time that these legacy programs that have been around for decades and decades are suddenly not capable of providing either deterrence or counterstrike capabilities?

- It would be pretty to think so, but I think there's a hard kinetic reality to what 1,500 nuclear weapons can do.

What pops into my mind when you say all of that is two words, Golden Dome.

So what do I mean?

I think if new technologies could somehow actually create a kind of Golden Dome over individual nations, then you're really into a game-changing approach to the weapon systems themselves.

And you and I, again, are old enough to remember fierce conversations about- - Over Star Wars, yeah.

- Exactly.

I mean, this is not a new case study, and in fact, for decades, both nations, US and Soviet Union, made sure not to build these kind of ballistic missile defense systems, the idea being mutual assured destruction.

I think that's where the technology to be some combination of laser systems, some kinetic kill, but more importantly, cyber AI, using quantum computing to power all that, you really could build some kind of effective missile defense system and would have to be able to block not just lumbering ballistic missiles, but also hypersonic cruise missiles, for example.

So, responsive in a second.

We're a long way from that, long way being 10 to 20 years, but it's not impossible that we get there.

Until those technologies mature, I think until that happens, the ballistic missile treaty limitation theory, the mutual assured destruction is still gonna be important, it's just gonna be occurring in a triangular environment instead of a bilateral one.

- I mean, mutually assured destruction, it came up in the context of nuclear Armageddon, but one could think about mutually assured destruction biologically or economically or from a cybersecurity perspective.

I mean, does it have to be about nukes?

And I'm not being flip here, I'm just saying that like, it seems to me that there's just lots of technological capabilities that are moving a lot faster than nukes are that also create these kinds of sort of requirements of serious deterrents or else.

- 100% and today, the potential for offensive cyber without getting into classification here, let's just say, can have profound and kinetic impact on societies, to include permanently taking out electric grids, taking out water production facilities.

You can live almost indefinitely without electricity, you got about three days without potable water.

So yeah, I think cyber is the top of the list, bio right behind it.

Bio's a lot harder to control, but not far behind it.

And I think when you combine all those effects, it's that principle of mutual assured destruction that allows you to have coherent conversations about this.

And I agree with your implication, which is that, yeah, we gotta be talking about nukes, we ought to be talking about at a minimum, puts cyber right alongside that.

- Which kinda and to close the conversation, it brings you back to the way we opened it, which is a world where there's a lot more incentive for the proliferation of the most destructive technologies because the governance is fragmenting, the rules are fragmenting, and the Americans are increasingly not trusted.

That's gonna be a much, much less secure world for all of us.

- It is and I'll add the final thought.

The two points you made, and the third is the cost, the barriers to entry are reducing rapidly.

When you put those three things together, it's watch for the hurricane that's coming.

- Jim Stavridis, thanks so much for joining us on GZERO World.

- Thanks.

See you soon.

(ambient music) - Now, we move from the nuclear arms race to puppets that just go nuclear on each other.

I've got your Puppet Regime.

- Da, da, da.

We can circle back next week, ugh.

Another invasion that could have been an email, am I right?

Vladimir Putin here with a pro-tip.

In today's fast-moving world, efficiency is key to productivity.

As such, I have recently optimized my own approach to removal of unwanted staff.

Falling people out of windows is picturesque, but inefficient.

Constant need to find windows, endless NIMBY opposition, just headache, And poisoned tea sets, I used to love this, but who's wasting valuable poison on a $9 matcha latte these days, right?

No, recently I'm taking different tack.

So for example, I recently gave corrupt interior minister a special Kremlin handgun.

True story.

Then I laid him off at 10:00 AM on Monday morning, and by lunchtime he was already apparent suicide.

This man has very clearly modeled ideal culture of both accountability and execution.

The best part is I would promote him if I could, but due to his excellent work, I cannot.

♪ Puppet Regime ♪ - That's our show this week.

Come back next week and if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you think you can lower the nuclear temperature all by yourself, why don't you come check us out at gzeromedia.com.

(upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) (upbeat jazz music continues) (upbeat jazz music continues) (uptempo music) - [Announcer] Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint (gentle music) and scale their supply chains, (gentle music) with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com - [Announcer] And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And.

(bright music) (uptempo music)