The architecture of international arms control, painstakingly constructed during the Cold War to manage the existential threat of nuclear weapons, is confronting an unprecedented crisis. Emerging post-nuclear warfare technologies, specifically the militarization of outer space, the proliferation of autonomous lethal drone systems, and the weaponization of synthetic biology, are fundamentally undermining the legal, institutional, and strategic foundations upon which traditional arms control regimes were established. This paper critically examines the structural incapacity of existing international frameworks to regulate these technologies and assesses the consequent governance vacuum that now imperils global strategic stability. Through a qualitative comparative case study methodology, drawing upon primary treaty documents, United Nations reports, and secondary scholarship from leading security studies institutions, this research argues that the core assumptions embedded in Cold War-era arms control, state-centrism, weapon observability, deterrence through assured destruction, and treaty-based verification are rendered fundamentally obsolete by technologies that operate autonomously, exist in legally ambiguous domains, are rapidly privatized, and evolve at a pace that far outstrips the capacity of international law to respond. The paper demonstrates that anti-satellite weapons and orbital warfare are eroding space as a global common; that autonomous drone systems armed with artificial intelligence create irresolvable accountability gaps under international humanitarian law; and that advances in CRISPR-based genetic engineering have transformed biological weapons from blunt strategic instruments into precision tools of covert destabilization that the Biological Weapons Convention cannot adequately address. The comparative analysis reveals a pattern of converging governance failure across all three domains. The paper concludes by reaffirming its central hypothesis: existing arms control frameworks are structurally incapable of regulating post-nuclear warfare technologies, thereby generating escalating strategic instability. Recommendations are advanced for a new generation of arms control architecture tailored to the realities of twenty-first-century warfare. Keywords: security dilemma, space weapons, bioweapons, post-nuclear warfare, anti-satellite weapons, drones, space law.
Rana Usman (Mon,) studied this question.