20210129封面解读

Our cover this week is about the growing threat of nuclear proliferation. Today nine states possess nuclear arms, no more than a quarter-century ago. Yet the long struggle to stop the world’s deadliest weapons from spreading is about to get harder. In the next decade the threat is likely to include economic and diplomatic heavyweights whose ambitions will be difficult to restrain. China’s rapidly increasing regional dominance and North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal haunt South Korea and Japan, two of Asia’s largest powers. Iran’s belligerence and its nuclear programme loom over Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Proliferation is not a chain reaction, but it is contagious. If the nuclear order starts to weaken, the sickness will be almost impossible to stop. That is why it is so important to act today. ………………………………