Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and combat missiles seemed to have lost its urgency in world politics lately. This was partly the consequence of the evident crises in relations between Russia and the West, South and North, connected with the political-diplomatic lagging of their foreign policy approaches. Supported among certain European circles Russian theses about the collapse of the “unipolar world”, Moscow's claim for equal status with the leading world powers without double standards and its new world order concept seemed to have ruined all prospects of Russia's joining the West once again thus underlining the remaining gap in values between the two worlds. Correspondingly, all plans to create a kind of broad front of the states which really make efforts to stop the WMD proliferation and strengthen international security and military-strategic stability including the arms control process seem bleak.

Still, even in the traditional situation of the “war of all against all” on the world arena the issue of nonproliferation and its core element – the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Issues (NPT) – remains urgent. After all, it is in fact a question of the key problem of global security – the survival of Russia and the West in the face of new challenges.

The contemporary security situation is marked by the quick increase of new challenges as a result of the total terror methods including the use of WMD being exercised by the international Islam fundamentalists in their fight against the main enemies – the so-called “infidel” West and Russia, which prevents from attaining world leadership. This phenomenon is called “superterrorism” by some of the experts. Though, obviously, nuclear weapons, compared with other types of WMD and even subversive activities, would be most difficult for adjusting to the cannibalistic plans of the Islamists. But even the minor risk of the use of nuclear weapons concerning their terrible destructive consequences makes treat it seriously.

It is not accidentally that the President of Russia sees the WMD proliferation as the main threat of the XXIst century.

The appearance of new actors possessing nuclear weapons especially in the instability regions let alone radial terrorist groups or irresponsible rogue states compared with the possibility of nuclear-missile conflict between the members of the traditional nuclear powers club poses the main real threat today for the main world powers including the nuclear states. This set of issues also presents the basis for the security dialogue between East and West, North and South; most probably it will form the agenda in the sphere of military building and global security for the nearest future.