I resumed my peripatetic ways last week, visiting Seoul for discussions on controlling the spread of nuclear weapons. I used to run that program but hadn¡¯t attended a meeting for a while. The conversation picked up pretty much where I¡¯d left it nearly a decade ago.

Except everything feels much worse.

It¡¯s hard, if not impossible, to escape the conclusion that the world is in a grim place when measured by nuclear metrics. Virtually all trends are negative and the institutions and mechanisms that have been devised to address these threats and challenges are failing. We¡¯ve reached the point where some experts believe that we need a genuine crisis to alert officials and publics to the problem and create a sense of urgency.