The world commemorated 80 years of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this August. Across the world, editorials, opinion pieces, activist marches, discussions and other events marked the occasion. On 9 August 2025, as people remembered the horrors of how 70,000 people vaporised in seconds at Nagasaki when the Fat Man exploded over the city in 1945, and pledged “No More Nagasakis,” Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir was likely giving finishing touches to a speech he was going to deliver the next day at a dinner hosted by Pakistan’s honorary consul in Tampa, Florida. On 10 August, in a new level of nuclear brinkmanship, he threatened nuclear use that would take “half the world” with Pakistan. This was only the latest of many instances in which Pakistan has practiced nuclear brinkmanship. The idea of the risk of escalation into unknown and uncontrollable territory is used often as a means of deterrence.

Traditionally, the blatant use of nuclear threats has been decried as irresponsible and ascribed mostly to ‘rogue’ states. So, when the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un greeted the world on 1 January 2018 with a grim reminder that “the nuclear button is always on the desk of my office” in order to signal that he could attack the US at will, the remark was taken as typical brinkmanship behaviour by an irresponsible state. The world did not realise that it was about to enter a new era of the mainstreaming of nuclear brinkmanship.

The very next day, on 2 January 2018, then US President Donald Trump retorted through a tweet, “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” With this exchange began the casual use of language around the issue of nuclear weapons, heralding a growing acceptance of overt brinkmanship. So, nuclear weapons were no longer left to quietly talk from arsenals and behind veils, but became free to loudly signal their presence to perform coercion.

In 2022, the trend travelled to Russia when President Putin initiated the military operation against Ukraine on 22 February 2022, after having overseen elaborate and well-reported nuclear exercises three days earlier. On the fourth day of the invasion, he announced that he was raising nuclear alert levels by imposing a “special regime of combat duty.” There were reports of the deployment of nuclear submarines from the Northern Fleet. Through the ongoing operations, now into the fourth year, Russia has repeatedly drawn attention to its nuclear capability, such as by testing nuclear-capable missiles, reiterating the threat of ‘unpredictable consequences’, or by holding exercises for tactical nuclear weapons use in combat. Indeed, keeping the nuclear threat in the news has been part of the Kremlin’s nuclear strategy of deterrence.

If Europe was surprised by the re-emergence of nuclear brinkmanship in its part of the world, India wasn’t, having experienced the phenomenon often in South Asia. Since declaring itself as a state with nuclear weapons, Pakistan has used brinkmanship as its policy of first resort in every India-Pakistan crisis. Its nuclear strategy is based on the amplification of the risk of nuclear escalation to deter a conventional war with India, the possibility of which is created by Pakistan’s blatant use of terrorist organisations that it nurtures, supports, equips, and trains. There was a time when these were covert, and Pakistan used strategic deniability. Over time, however, the cover has fallen. The world is cognisant of Pakistan’s use of terrorism. Several American officials and Pakistan’s own military and civilian leaders have acknowledged their use for perceived ‘national interests’.

In India’s experience, the presence of nuclear weapons has emboldened Pakistan’s use of cross-border terrorism, buttressed by the confidence that the fear of escalation will prevent India from taking any counter-action. Within months of its nuclear tests, the Pakistani Army undertook a bold step in 1999 by planning to have the Indian heights of Kargil in Jammu and Kashmir occupied by its regular forces in the guise of mujahideen. The underlying assumption of this military move was that India would be constrained in using force to evict the occupiers because of the risk of nuclear escalation. It would therefore be forced to accept the territorial salami-slicing. While India managed to thwart the Pakistani operation through military action, Pakistan has continued to hone its strategy of brinkmanship by adding new instruments to its toolkit. In 2011, it announced the testing of a very short-range ballistic missile to bring in the idea of tactical use of nuclear weapons against battlefield targets. In 2013, it announced a full-spectrum deterrence strategy to ostensibly suggest a range of weapons and platforms to deter India at every level of conflict. The idea of zero-km range nuclear weapons was presented in 2023. In 2025, a new brink has been breached, with Pakistan making an open threat of nuclear war to India and the world, and that too from a third country: the US. Interestingly though, there have been no responses from officials across world capitals! More or less a similar silence had followed another dangerous escalation in brinkmanship, marked by Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and Tehran’s retaliatory missile attacks.

As new levels of brinkmanship are breached, national leaders watch silently, sometimes making perfunctory statements. The involved parties are having to deal with the situation individually, with others opt to remain quiet, ostensibly to protect national interests. Lack of public criticism and apparent acceptance of brinkmanship behaviour can only embolden states to test new brinks. Graduating from the use of casual language, leaders could next be tempted to move towards actual deployment to communicate risk and show resolve. As psychological shows of ego, fear, and anger punctuate inter-state equations, one can expect an entangled knot that could lead to nuclear use.

With nuclear disarmament still a hazy dot on the far horizon, nuclear risks from brinkmanship are here and now. Unless loud and united public criticism is used to stop the normalisation of certain kinds of behaviours and actions, a misstep could have global repercussions. National interests may vary on many issues, but stemming the creeping acceptance of nuclear brinkmanship should be treated as a global concern to be addressed by all—irrespective of its origin.

Dr Manpreet Sethi is Distinguished Fellow with the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS) in New Delhi and Senior Research Advisor with the Asia Pacific Leadership Network (APLN).