It's been 75 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated, and 50 years since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty took effect. And yet the world today is in greater danger of nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In its confrontation with the United States, Iran appears hell bent on getting nukes, and could do so within a year. If it does, Saudi Arabia and Turkey will almost certainly follow suit. Israel is already armed. Asia has several nuclear hot spots. And in the most frightening scenario, at any point bombs could fall into the hands of terrorists or other "nonstate" groups that are hard to retaliate against and thus deter.

To slow this proliferation of nukes, the world still relies mostly on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, known as the NPT, which currently has 191 signatories. Every five years, diplomats gather for a review conference (RevCon), and the next one, in New York, starts in April. Expectations are low, fears are high. If diplomats and the public read up on game theory, their dread would grow more.