Is the Non-Proliferation Treaty heading toward its twilight years?

The crucial 11th Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which began on April 27, concluded on the evening of May 22 in New York. After weeks of difficult negotiations and debates, representatives from approximately 190 countries failed to reach consensus on a final document reaffirming the shared commitments reached at the 1995, 2000, and 2010 Review Conferences—apparently due to references to Iran’s nuclear program that the United States insisted on including in the document.

The NPT is the fundamental international instrument for regulating nuclear energy issues: it prohibits new countries from acquiring nuclear weapons, mandates nuclear disarmament, and promotes peaceful nuclear applications. Having entered into force in 1970, it is nearly universal, with only North Korea, India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Sudan remaining outside its scope.

Given the treaty’s crucial role in global security, a conference is held every five years to “examine the operation of the treaty in order to ascertain whether the objectives of its preamble and its provisions are being realized” and to propose recommendations for strengthening controls over military and civilian nuclear energy. Due to the extreme political sensitivity of the review conferences and the complexity of the work to be done, the international community engages in preparatory work during the three years leading up to a conference, through a preparatory committee divided into three sessions.

The work of the 11th Conference was already expected to be difficult due to the failure of all three sessions of the Preparatory Committee, which concluded without an agreed-upon document, but above all because of the current complex political situation and growing international conflict.

After numerous revisions of a draft final declaration—already deemed weak from the outset by disarmament advocates—Do Hung Viet of Vietnam, the conference president, with “deep disappointment,” declined to submit the text for adoption, stating: “I have presented four versions of the draft final document, all carefully revised in accordance with the wishes of the States Parties. Despite all our efforts, I understand that the Conference is unable to reach an agreement on the content of its own work.”

President Viet had in fact skillfully pursued an agreement on a relatively short draft final document (only seven pages), focused on principles rather than specific events and positions, and had also sidestepped a number of key sensitive issues—including the North Korean nuclear challenge, the attacks on Ukrainian and Iranian nuclear facilities, and growing unease regarding extended nuclear deterrence practices toward allies—in an attempt to build consensus on fundamental issues. However, this was not sufficient to reach an agreement among the numerous divergent positions of the States Parties.

According to independent observers, the five NPT nuclear-weapon states (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US) jointly employed aggressive diplomatic intimidation tactics against non-nuclear-weapon states to prevent the adoption of urgent concrete measures to avert a new nuclear arms race and reassure non-nuclear states that they will not be attacked or threatened by nuclear-weapon states.

The states parties thus missed an opportunity to use the conference to address the dizzying array of nuclear dangers, including the deficit in nuclear disarmament diplomacy. For the first time since 1972, there are no agreed limits on the size of the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals, the largest in the world. In the absence of new bilateral or multilateral constraints, there is a serious risk of a dangerous global nuclear arms race in the coming years.

This is the third consecutive time that the review conference has failed to adopt a text, blocked by Russia in 2022 and by the United States in 2015. Despite this latest failure, the treaty remains in force, but with a growing risk of erosion of its legitimacy and trust, which could lead some non-nuclear states to question whether non-proliferation is truly the best solution for their security.

President Du Hung Viet had warned: “A further failure could undermine the very credibility of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”