In March 2020, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) turned fifty. The 10th Review Conference (RevCon), originally scheduled for April and May, was postponed to January 2021 and is now tentatively planned for August 2021.

The NPT is often described as the cornerstone of the global nuclear order. It is among the most widely adhered to global treaties. All countries except four (India, Israel, and Pakistan never joined, and North Korea withdrew in 2003) are parties to the NPT. Despite its enviable record, a sense of disquiet and uncertainty surrounds RevCon and its future.

Any global order needs two enabling conditions: a convergence of interests among the present major powers to define a shared objective, and an ability to package and present it to the world as a global public good. The conditions for nuclear order and the NPT were no exception.

In 1963, only four countries (the United States, France, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom) had tested a nuclear device when U.S. President John F. Kennedy sounded the alarm that by 1975 there could be as many as 20 countries with nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union shared similar concerns. This convergence of interests between the two Cold War adversaries enabled the NPT negotiations.

To make nuclear order attractive as a global public good, it was packaged as a three-legged stool: nonproliferation, obliging those without nuclear weapons to never acquire them and accept full-scope safeguards; disarmament, requiring the five countries with nuclear weapons (the U.S., China, France, the Soviet Union, and the U.K.) to negotiate the reduction and eventual elimination of their nuclear weapons; and the peaceful use of nuclear energy, guaranteeing non―nuclear weapons states full access to peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology.

Since the NPT was concluded, only the four countries outside the NPT have acquired nuclear weapons, bringing the total number of nuclear weapons states to nine, far fewer than Kennedy feared in 1963.

Among the oft-cited successes of the NPT is the dramatic reduction in the number of nuclear weapons from a peak of over 70,000 warheads in the early 1980s to around 14,000 at present, with the U.S. and Russia accounting for over 12,500 of them. However, these reductions were a result of bilateral negotiations between the U.S. and Russia, reflecting the state of their relations. No negotiations have ever been held within the NPT framework.

In fact, during the first 15 years of the NPT, the U.S. and Soviet arsenals increased from below 40,000 to over 65,000, making it clear that the nuclear disarmament leg of the NPT was being ignored as the U.S. and Soviet Union embarked on a nuclear arms race.

Some claim that the NPT helped strengthen the taboo against nuclear weapons. However, a closer examination of recently declassified papers indicates that since 1970, there have been over a dozen instances where the U.S. and Soviet Union came close to initiating a nuclear exchange, many of which were based on system errors or misperceptions about the intentions of the other.

Today, the nuclear taboo is being challenged as major nuclear powers undertake research and development (R&D) for more usable low-yield nuclear weapons. Ballistic missile defense, hypersonic systems that carry both conventional and nuclear payloads, and growing offensive cyber capabilities further blur the line between conventional and nuclear weapons.

The NPT has reached the limits of its success as far as the proliferation objective is concerned. Further, its packaging as a balanced three-legged stool stands exposed as a wobbly, one-legged stool, for the NPT delegitimized proliferation but not nuclear weapons.

The clearest reflection of this growing frustration among the non―nuclear weapons states party to the NPT was the humanitarian initiative spearheaded by a coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society to negotiate a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was concluded in 2017 and entered into force in January 2021, making it the only multilateral nuclear treaty to emerge since the NPT 50 years ago. Each of the TPNW’s 86 signatories and 54 ratifying states are members of the NPT in good standing.

For the first time, an NPT RevCon will take place with a new, un-ignorable divide between states that rely on nuclear weapons (or nuclear-armed allies) for their security and states that believe nuclear weapons are a threat to global security and accept that the NPT cannot be the route to nuclear disarmament.

However, the five nuclear weapons states party to the NPT are convinced that the TPNW undermines the NPT even though the TPNW’s 140 signatories and ratifiers provide legitimacy.

Other divisive political challenges for the RevCon include Iran and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was unilaterally discarded by the Donald Trump administration; a push by non―nuclear weapons states for substantive reductions in nuclear arsenals; lack of progress on the 1995 initiative for the Middle East as a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction; a U.S. push for universal adherence to the International Atomic Energy Agency Additional Protocol; and North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, among others.

For the last 50 years, a substantive consensus outcome has been the criteria for a successful RevCon. Yet anticipating the difficulties of a consensus, supporters of the NPT are suggesting that the definition of a successful outcome should be reconsidered.

However, such an approach is at best a temporary resolution. Any permanent resolution would lie in accepting the limitations of the NPT and seeking to join the TPNW proponents in a constructive dialogue. This needs imaginative approaches and a shift from the zero-sum model of negotiation to a win-win outcome, preserving the NPT while looking beyond it. A mindset change is necessary for the NPT to overcome its midlife crisis.


Rakesh Sood is a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, India, and a member of the Asia-Pacific Leadership for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN). This is an abridged version of the paper originally published for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Council of Councils Tenth Annual Conference.

This article was published in The Korea Times on 16 June 2021 and is part of dedicated, regular column with analysis by APLN members on global issues. You can find the original post here.

Image: U.S. Department of State