- Global nuclear stockpiles show renewed upward trend.
- Trust is eroding within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- The summit risks deadlock amid Ukraine and Iran tensions.
UNITED NATIONS: Signatories to the landmark nuclear non-proliferation treaty will meet at the United Nations from Monday as hopes of a deal fade and tensions rise between nuclear powers.
In 2022, during the final review of the treaty, considered the cornerstone of non-proliferation, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that humanity was “one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”
The situation has only gotten worse since then.
“I think there is a shared, if you will, sense of crisis among all states,” said Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.
“We have no bilateral arms control agreements between the two largest nuclear weapons states,” she said, referring to the February expiration of the New Start treaty between Moscow and Washington.
“We are also beginning to see a quantitative increase in nuclear capabilities in all nuclear weapon states.”
Nakamitsu said rising geopolitical tensions had halted the post-Cold War disarmament trend.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed by almost every country on the planet – with notable exceptions such as Israel, India and Pakistan – aims to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to promote complete disarmament and to encourage cooperation on civilian nuclear projects.
The nine nuclear-armed states — Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — possessed 12,241 nuclear warheads by January 2025, according to the latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The United States and Russia possess nearly 90% of nuclear weapons globally and have undertaken major programs to modernize them in recent years, according to SIPRI.
China has also rapidly increased its nuclear stockpile, SIPRI said, with the G7 sounding the alarm on Friday that Moscow and Beijing were increasing their nuclear capabilities.
US President Donald Trump has indicated that he intends to carry out new nuclear tests because “other countries are doing it too.”
In March, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a dramatic shift in nuclear deterrence, notably an increase in the nuclear arsenal, which currently numbers 290 warheads.
NPT could ‘unravel’
“It is obvious that trust is eroding, both inside and outside the NPT,” said Seth Sheldon of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. AFP.
He questioned the likely outcome of the four-week summit.
Decisions on the NPT must be taken by consensus, as the previous two conferences have not adopted final political declarations.
In 2015, the stalemate was largely due to opposition from Israel’s arch-ally Washington to the creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.
In 2022, the impasse was mainly due to Russian opposition to references to Ukraine’s nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, occupied by Moscow.
This year’s summit could hit any number of stumbling blocks.
The ongoing war in Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear program and the war there, non-nuclear states’ fears of proliferation and North Korea’s developing arsenal could all be deal-breakers.
If there is a third failure in a row, the treaty “may not implode overnight,” said Christopher King, the conference’s secretary-general.
But there is a risk that “it will eventually work itself out”.
Artificial intelligence may be a prominent issue as some countries call for all sides to maintain human control over nuclear weapons.
