Nuclear gambit: NPT participants gather at a conference in New York

The 11th Review Conference on the Operation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will start on April 27 at the UN headquarters in New York. It has already been called one of the most intense in the entire existence of the forum. At the previous two meetings, the states were unable to agree on a final document due to acute geopolitical contradictions. Since then, the situation has only escalated further. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.

They will meet for the 11th time.

The NPT member states will meet for the 11th time to "check the clock" to see if the provisions of the treaty are being respected. The Review Conference begins its work on April 27 and will last almost a month — until May 22.

Such events are usually held every five years, however, due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the tenth forum was decided to be held in 2022, and the 11th was called a year earlier - in four years.

The treaty itself forms the basis of a modern security architecture, focusing on the goal of preventing an increase in the number of States possessing atomic weapons. This document was developed by the UN Disarmament Committee, and it entered into force in 1970 for a period of 25 years. And in 1995, it was extended indefinitely.

The Treaty laid down three pillars of international security. The first is nonproliferation itself: nuclear Powers have no right to transfer explosive devices or levers of control over them to anyone, as well as to help other countries create or acquire such weapons. States without nuclear status, for their part, refuse to accept and manufacture it.

The second is the unconditional right of the participants to peaceful atom, subject to the rules that exclude its military use.

The third is the movement towards nuclear disarmament: the signatory countries are obliged to negotiate general and complete disarmament, as well as the cessation of the nuclear arms race.

There are periodic problems with compliance with the treaty, but experts are sure that without the NPT today there would not be nine nuclear powers (the five official ones are permanent members of the UN Security Council: Russia, the United States, China, France, Great Britain — and four unofficial ones — India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea), but several dozen. This would significantly increase the risk of the actual use of atomic weapons.

Currently, 191 States are considered to be parties to the NPT. Face-to-face meetings are necessary to identify pain points and develop a coordinated view on challenges that simply could not have been foreseen at the time of the creation of the agreement, for example, modern technologies, artificial intelligence, etc.

Will they agree or not

The main intrigue of the upcoming meeting is whether the participants will be able to agree on the final document. Of the ten conferences, this was achieved only four times — in 1975, 1985, 2000 and 2010. In 1995, the declaration was not agreed upon, but a package of other key decisions was adopted, including the indefinite extension of the NPT itself, as well as a resolution on the intention to create a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, which has not yet been implemented.

The last two conferences ended inconclusively. In May 2015, the position of the United States, Great Britain and Canada on the Middle East zone became a stumbling block. In August 2022, the main irritant was the situation around the Zaporizhia NPP, which had come under Russian control shortly before the conference.

The West accused Moscow of seizing and threatening the nuclear facility. Russia insisted that the issue was being deliberately politicized, and that the conference itself was becoming a "hostage" to someone else's geopolitical agenda.

According to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute SIPRI, as of January 2025, the world's nuclear warheads numbered 12,241, of which 9,614 are classified as military stocks (placed on carriers or stored in operational arsenals), and the remaining 2,627 have been decommissioned but not yet dismantled.

The main problems

The conference is coordinated by Vietnam's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Do Hung Viet. Two weeks before the launch, he stated: humanity is facing challenges that did not exist even in the most intense moments of the Cold War.

He mentioned the escalating rivalry of superpowers, geostrategic competition, the modernization and quantitative growth of arsenals, the threat of using nuclear weapons, the revision of doctrines and policies of nuclear states, and the expansion of all possible deterrence mechanisms. It is very difficult to achieve results in such conditions.

At the same time, as Do Hung Viet emphasized, the participating countries "sincerely strive to hold the conference as productively, transparently and constructively as possible and to sign the document."

Success will depend on whether the States manage to agree on a final document. If this fails, the signal will be extremely alarming. The risk of nuclear escalation, the resumption of tests, an arms race and further proliferation is only increasing, the diplomat believes.

The worst nightmare

The owners of nuclear arsenals began a fierce mutual confrontation, which practically nullified the prospects for further disarmament, although formally the treaty prescribes them to move in this direction.

Countries without nuclear status, on the one hand, express disappointment at the unwillingness of the nuclear powers to fulfill their arms reduction obligations, and on the other, they themselves increasingly want to possess their own nuclear potential in the face of international turbulence, seeing it as the last reliable guarantor of protection from external threats.

Iran, which does not have nuclear weapons, but which has been subjected to aggression by the United States and Israel, which possess them, has already made it clear that it can withdraw from the agreement. Many analysts predict that such a move could trigger a "domino effect" in the region: other countries will also consider the restrictions imposed by the treaty not in their interests.

The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, recently admitted that the nuclear arms race is his "worst nightmare." According to him, a crack in the current system could turn into a chain reaction, and a world with twenty or more nuclear powers would be extremely dangerous.

Everyone has their own claims

Each country has its own claims against the other participants. Moscow has revealed the following violations of the NPT: military operations by the United States and Israel against Iran, plans by France and Britain to resume building up nuclear arsenals and at the same time abandon transparency in this area, France's willingness to deploy its nuclear weapons in a number of European countries as part of the provision of a "nuclear umbrella", statements about the permissibility of non-nuclear Western states are increasingly heard acquire their own nuclear potential or take over foreign arsenals.

In addition, the alarm is caused by signals from the US administration about its readiness to return to full-fledged nuclear tests, which is motivated by allegedly similar actions by Russia and China, Washington's lack of interest in Russian initiatives on voluntary restrictions on strategic offensive weapons, intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles, as well as the intention to transfer nuclear submarines to Australia as part of the AUKUS project.

On the eve of the conference, NATO issued a statement confirming its commitment to the NPT, pointing to the aggravation of proliferation-related crises, and accusing Moscow and Beijing.

The alliance believes that "Russia has violated key arms control obligations and resorted to irresponsible nuclear rhetoric, while China is rapidly increasing and diversifying its arsenal without any transparency."

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization noted that both countries "have deepened ties with states seeking to spread nuclear weapons."

In the current situation, the possibility of reducing nuclear arsenals and completely abandoning them among the "nuclear five" countries is minimal, said Andrei Belousov, Ambassador-at-large of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

He stressed that Moscow shares humanity's desire for a "nuclear-free world," but the realization of this goal requires a favorable military and political climate, which currently does not exist.

"We must admit that in the current difficult conditions of the increasing destabilization of the international situation, the growing tension, and the degradation of relations between nuclear states caused by our opponents, such a possibility is scanty," the diplomat said.

He added that the actions of the Western "nuclear troika", which includes Britain, the United States and France, to build up arsenals and create new infrastructure in the territories of non-nuclear allies indicate rather a setback in disarmament issues.

Negative, but also a result.

Nuclear weapons have never disappeared from the global agenda, says Dmitry Stefanovich, a researcher at the IMEMO RAS Center for International Security and co-founder of the Watfor project.

"And after 2018, it finally became clear: there is no return to "disarmament optimism." For Europe, the issue of possessing nuclear weapons is also gaining a political dimension — against the background of a reduced role of the United States in security guarantees, the EU will be forced to strengthen its own deterrence potential," the expert explained.

According to the expert, this is not about replacing American weapons, but, on the contrary, about the complementary potential of old and new systems.

"Arms control is in the deepest crisis, but it remains an uncontested method of strengthening security. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are countries that may well decide to acquire nuclear weapons. The task of the international community is to prevent conditions under which the balance of "benefits from creating weapons minus losses" will become positive for them," the analyst is sure.

The upcoming NPT Review Conference will turn into a difficult event: the general atmosphere of confrontation among the leading powers, the dispute over Iran's nuclear facilities, the build-up of arsenals by nuclear states in the complete absence of reduction negotiations, the political scientist admitted.

"In such circumstances, the consensus document is highly unlikely to be adopted," Stefanovic predicted.

In turn, Petr Topychkanov, Head of the Sector of New Challenges in South and Southeast Asia at the Primakov Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that the period when the world community could have consolidated its response to nuclear proliferation crises is in the past.

"Paradoxically, even a bad outcome of the NPT Review Conference can be a good incentive: if any state withdraws from the NPT, it will be a cold shower for the nuclear powers, who realize that their policies are destroying the treaty and bringing the process of uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons closer," the expert concluded.