Elsa Chang

I'm Elsa Chang.

Here's how President John F. Kennedy described the risk of nuclear war at the United Nations in 1961.

Kennedy would kickstart a decades-long effort to reduce that risk.

If the world was dangling by a thread, he began building what would eventually become a web of painstakingly negotiated treaties to stabilize global nuclear arsenals.

The presidents who followed forged new agreements.

From Nixon?

To Reagan.

Today, that web is in tatters.

Last week, the last bilateral nuclear treaty between Russia and the United States expired.

Meanwhile, President Trump is shaking up the nuclear status quo in other ways.

The US has been pushing Europe to step up its own defense.

Last March, Trump said he would not defend NATO countries that don't spend enough.

No, I'm not going to defend them.

Now Europe has clearly taken notice.

And in a speech Friday at the Munich Security Conference, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that in an era of great powers, Europe's freedom is no longer a given.

He said that he was in talks with the president of France about a European nuclear deterrent.

Consider this.

The world is increasingly unstable.

Could that drive more countries towards nuclear arms?

From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang.