Just this week, one nuclear state is threatening another nuclear state that happens to border with two other nuclear states. Meanwhile, the nukes are on hair trigger everywhere. What can possibly go wrong?
The really scary part, however, is that, obviously, nobody cares. There are no angry tweets, demonstrations, whatever. Politicians must feel like they can do whatever they want without anyone even noticing.
On the positive note, there are UN negotiations of nuclear weapon ban going on. In theory, the ban could be approved as soon as this summer.
Ah, global zero idea, right? Which is cool, if you believe world leaders can be trusted ... and, even if they can, that they'll trust each other.
It doesn't help that the Saudis are just one large money-transfer away from having their own nukes (the check is probably already written, just waiting to be cashed, so to speak). The Iranians are closer, and Pakistan's been there for some time. So even if the "grown ups" (USA, Russia, China, India, UK, France, Israel) can be counted on to behave themselves, the upstarts less so.
It's also an open question how well the new members of the club would be able to keep their own arsenal under lock and key. If the Middle East gets into a nuclear arms race, to protect themselves from each other, that's all the more opportunities for some enterprising jihadis.
In one sense, the presence of nukes has made large-scale war more unlikely, and taking them off the table might have the opposite effect.
It was done with other types of WMD, so why not nukes? Such bans come with extensive monitoring programs.
Also, it's better to have couple countries hiding few nukes so that they are not found by inspectors than thousands of nukes on hair trigger as we have today. An accident in the first case may wipe out one city or one country. An accident in the latter case will wipe out humanity as a whole.
Also kudos to South Africa who have destroyed their nuke cache long time ago!
This is the original context for "trust, but verify."[1]
There is already a lot of infrastructure for monitoring the development and production of new nuclear weapons. As you suggest, tracking existing weapons is much harder and depends mostly on the cooperation of the club members.
The really scary part, however, is that, obviously, nobody cares. There are no angry tweets, demonstrations, whatever. Politicians must feel like they can do whatever they want without anyone even noticing.
On the positive note, there are UN negotiations of nuclear weapon ban going on. In theory, the ban could be approved as soon as this summer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-Weapon-Ban_treaty