THE WORLD stands on the brink of a nuclear-arms race. If one can be avoided, a big reason will be this: currently, the first country to start such a race risks paying a terrible price. Rogue states caught sprinting for a bomb face crippling sanctions and military strikes. Meanwhile, any halfway respectable country that flouts the Non-Proliferation Treaty—a legal ban on the creation of new nuclear-armed powers, signed by 191 states—risks becoming a pariah, with unknowable economic and diplomatic costs

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