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Do nuclear weapons make a country safer?
Does acquiring nuclear weapons make your country safer? It’s a difficult question. On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer looks back to the 1990s and a tale of two radically different nuclear—Ukraine and North Korea.
Ukraine inherited the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal after the Soviet collapse. They gave them up in 1994 in exchange for security assurances from the US, UK and Russia. But assurances aren't guarantees, and a decade later, Russia illegally annexed Crimea before launching its full-scale invasion in 2022. Meanwhile, North Korea abandoned diplomacy, pursued nuclear weapons, and lied to the world all along. Now it’s a global pariah, but the uncomfortable truth is nobody’s thinking of invading North Korea. So did Kyiv get played? Did Pyongyang make a smarter move? The contrast between Ukraine’s vulnerability and North Korea’s impunity seems stark. But the story is more complicated. Building nuclear weapons is a gamble, not a strategy. Watch Ian Explains to understand why and what it means for the growing nuclear threat in 2025.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
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Zohran Mamdani gestures as he speaks during a watch party for his primary election to become the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor on June 25, 2025.
What We’re Watching: Far-left upstart wins NYC mayoral primary, NATO members to boost defense spending, Iran nuclear damage in doubt
Upstart wins mayoral primary in New York
In a stunning political upset with national implications, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year old Democratic Socialist, won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, defeating centrist former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. In heavily blue NYC, the Democratic primary winner usually wins the November general election. Mamdani, though, will face a strong backlash from Wall Street power brokers and centrists like current Mayor Eric Adams, who will likely challenge him as an Independent. National-level Dems are closely watching the race. As the party seeks a path back from the wilderness, it faces a widening internal rift between progressives and establishment-oriented centrists.
NATO summit agrees to massive defense spending increases
The 32-member alliance formally agreed to US President Donald Trump’s demand that they boost defense-spending targets from 2% to 5% of GDP, with the goal of achieving this by 2035. Some countries appear to be getting a headstart: Germany pledged a 70% increase in spending by 2029, the United Kingdom is buying jets that can drop nuclear weapons, while Poland wants to get close to the 5% target this year. However, the steep costs could increase pressure on European government budgets, which are renowned for upholding their end of the social contract.
How badly damaged is Iran’s nuclear program?
Four days after US President Donald Trump’s Midnight Hammer struck three key Iranian nuclear facilities, the effects are still unclear. A new US intel report says the mission set back Tehran’s atomic ambitions by only a few months – Trump disputes this. It’s also uncertain what Iran did with the uranium it has already enriched. The stakes are high: if Tehran can in fact revive its program in short order, the US-Israeli assault will be seen as a costly and risky failure.
How do we avert nuclear disaster in 2023?
Rafael Grossi has a very tough job as head of the UN's nuclear watchdog. But he's an optimist.
Still, the stakes are very high.
We've got North Korea building even more nukes. Russia turned into a rogue state that controls Europe's largest power plant in Ukraine, which is still at risk of an accident. And Iran getting closer to getting the bomb.
Last but not last, there's the global race to build smaller, faster tactical nukes.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Rogue states gone nuclear and the watchdog working to avert disaster
What happens if Russia nukes Ukraine?
How should the US respond if Russia uses a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine?
Unlike strategic ones, tactical nukes are not subject by signed treaties, so all bets are off, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World. Independent agencies don't inspect them so we don't know very much about their size, range, effects, or pre-launch prep.
As for the 'Mutually Assured Destruction' dynamic that held nuclear war at bay for 60 years, including during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Sanger says the dynamics now are "completely different."
Since Ukraine is not a member of NATO, it's not clear if a Russian nuclear attack there would trigger a major US response.
Watch the GZERO World episode: US threat levels from foreign and domestic enemies
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Kevin Rudd: Xi thinks Putin is a "dummy"
Australia's former PM believes that the once-blossoming bromance between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin has turned toxic. Why? You guessed it: Russia's war in Ukraine.
China's leader thinks Putin is a "dummy" for launching a "halfcocked" invasion that neither the Russian military could pull off nor the Russian economy afford, Rudd — also president and CEO of the Asia Society — says during a conversation with Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer at the Asia Society's HQ in New York.
While Xi won't break ranks in public, Rudd adds that in private, he’s "crab-walking away from 100% endorsement" of Russia, as we saw at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan.
As for whether China can deter Russia from using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Rudd says Xi has been clear: don't do it, Vladimir.
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Ian Bremmer: Risk of nuclear crisis in 2022 is too high
The White House believes that there is a 20% chance of another Cuban Missile Crisis "in the next eight weeks" with Russia, Ian Bremmer said at an event at the Asia Society in New York on Monday. While Bremmer doesn't see as high a chance that Putin would risk using nuclear weapons, he added, "Either way, those numbers are way too freaking high." The even bigger risk, he points out, is that not enough is being done to manage the unprecedented danger from Russia in the medium term.
The Russian economy is being cut off from the West the same way as Iran has been, with a 40% or 50% contraction expected over the next five years. A G20 economy has never been decoupled from the West before. If Russia becomes a rogue state like Iran with ballistic missile attacks, drone strikes, espionage, proxy wars, radicalism, and terrorist violence - but with 6,000 nuclear warheads in their arsenal - "that really does not bode well for the next five, 10 years or for our kids. It really doesn't," Bremmer told former Australian PM and Asia Society President and CEO Kevin Rudd at the Asia Society's headquarters in New York.
US threat levels from foreign and domestic enemies
The Biden administration finally released its long-anticipated National Security Strategy, basically America's biggest threats — foreign and domestic.
The No. 1 external enemy is not Russia but rather China. It also emphasizes the homegrown threat of Americans willing to engage in political violence if their candidate loses at the ballot box.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to David Sanger, who knows a thing or two about national security because it's his beat at the New York Times.
His take on China? Taiwan's status as a semiconductor superpower may be staving off a Chinese invasion.
On Russia, Sanger discusses how Kyiv and the world face the paradox that the better Ukraine gets at resisting Russia, the more likely it is that Vladimir Putin will consider launching a tactical nuke. “If the Russians use a tactical nuclear weapon in a conventional war and essentially get away with … then all of a sudden, the taboo about using nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict is gone,” he says.
Meanwhile, America should not lose sight of the "insider threat" to its democracy, particularly with midterms just days away.
Will Putin drop a nuke on Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin isn't exactly losing the war in Ukraine, but he's definitely not winning it either.
Although Russia has more territory now than before the invasion, things aren't going well. Putin has had to call up reservists, his annexation of four Ukrainian regions was immediately challenged, and he's on the hook now for selling to the Russian people the idea that they are at war with NATO and the West.
Putin's push to win at all costs might soon force him to make one very serious and potentially scary choice. He needs to land a big blow, so what bigger blow than the biggest of them all: nuclear weapons. Russia's president has already hinted at the possibility, while Washington and NATO are sorting through what they might do in response.
Let's look at why he might, or might not, pull the trigger to launch what is known as a tactical nuke, a low-yield atomic warhead designed to take out military targets, not entire cities.
The sheer destructive capacity of a nuclear weapon could turn the tide of the war in Russia’s favor. Even a small nuclear strike could wipe out entire units of Ukraine's army in minutes. It would also give the Russians time to regroup their forces to push back against the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive and appease hardliners griping about Russia not doing enough to win in Ukraine.
Putin still has some other options. He could order cyberattacks, the sabotage of European energy links, or more intense conventional strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. But none of those have the shock value of a single nuke, which might just scare Kyiv into accepting Russia’s terms for “peace” — such as the recent land grab of 15% of Ukraine.
Also, Putin perhaps thinks he can get away with it (relatively) unscathed. In other words, the US and NATO will respond, but probably not in kind.
Aside from warning of somewhat vague "catastrophic consequences," the West hasn't been very clear on what it would do if Putin pushed the nuclear button. Doing nothing at all is a non-starter, yet the US and its NATO allies, wary of a dangerous escalation with nuclear-armed Russia, might only toughen sanctions and send more advanced weapons to Ukraine — a best-case scenario for Putin.
Putin might even test a tactical nuke just to bait NATO into attacking Russia, which he's been daring the alliance to do since his invasion began. It would give him an excuse to say he was right all along about the West trying to encroach on Russia’s sphere of influence.
Still, for Russia, a non-nuclear Western response might be almost as bad as a nuclear one. US airstrikes could wipe out most of Russia's forces inside Ukraine and sink its entire Black Sea fleet in one fell swoop. Putin might back down if he thinks the price would be too high — even if it went against his own grievance-fueled narrative.
Dangerous escalation? Perhaps. But it hasn’t been ruled out by retired senior US officials.
Putin might lose his two most powerful friends if he pushes the button. Although we know both China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi are unhappy about how the war is going, we don't know what they recently told Putin about how they’d react to a Russian nuclear strike. But Putin does, and his decision-making will surely factor in how it'll go down in Beijing and New Delhi.
The Chinese or Indian response could be anything from a reprimand at the UN to cutting economic ties with Moscow right when the Russian economy is reeling from sanctions despite a strong ruble. Just the threat of turning down Russian oil and natural gas — which Putin needs to sell to keep his war machine going — should give the Russian leader pause.
There's no turning back. If Putin crosses that line, all other options cease to exist. He loses control of the narrative because he's done the unthinkable. Then again, perhaps the Russian leader has already backed himself into a corner, and it's all just a question of not if but when he orders the first nuclear strike since World War II.
What do you think Putin will do? Let us know here.This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.
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