NGOs: Break the Impasse on Disarmament

At the UN, groups urge the nuclear powers to step back from what the secretary-general call’s “a knife’s edge” of global catastrophe.

New York: A joint statement for the Second Preparatory Meeting for the 2026 NPT Review Conference by nearly 50 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — which focus on arms control negotiations — delivered on Tuesday by Daryl G. Kimball of the Arms Control Association calls for “Breaking the Impasse of Disarmament and Implementing Archive VI Obligations”.

“The success of the global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament system and our collective efforts to avert nuclear catastrophe have always relied on effective dialogue and diplomacy between the nuclear-weapon states to reduce the role and number and salience of nuclear weapons, combined with effective leadership and pressure from non-nuclear weapon states to achieve action” on key nuclear disarmament initiatives of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

But, the statement adds, for more than a decade, the NPT’s five nuclear-armed states have failed to engage on disarmament and meet their key NPT Article VI commitments, and they are spending tens of billions of dollars each year to modernize, upgrade and, in some cases, expand their deadly nuclear arsenals as if they intend to keep nuclear weapons indefinitely.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a special message on June 7: “Humanity is on a knife’s edge.”

But the fact is that “the viability of the NPT regime and global peace and security are at severe risk.” While non-nuclear-armed states are actively engaging to promote nuclear disarmament, including through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), there is no serious dialogue between nuclear-armed states. All of them appear to be increasing reliance on nuclear weapons, with some even threatening potential nuclear use. Nuclear dangers are growing. None of the NPT’s nuclear-armed states can credibly claim they are meeting their NPT disarmament obligations.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a special message on June 7: “Humanity is on a knife’s edge. The risk of a nuclear weapon being used has reached heights not seen since the Cold War. States are engaged in a qualitative arms race. Nuclear blackmail has reemerged, with some recklessly threatening nuclear catastrophe.”

“Meanwhile,” he said, “the regime designed to prevent the use, testing and proliferation of nuclear weapons is weakening. [We] need disarmament now. All countries need to step up, but nuclear weapons states must lead the way.”

The statement agrees. Indeed, if we are to repair the NPT regime and avert a new nuclear arms race, or worse, the time for action is here and now.

Priority action steps

The authors of the joint statement urge all parties involved in the 2026 NPT Review Conference state parties to come together around the following priority action steps:

1. Demand that the United States and the Russian Federation immediately return to the nuclear arms control and disarmament negotiating table, fully implement their obligations under New START and agree on new arrangements to cap and reduce their nuclear arsenals before New START expires. At a minimum, Moscow and Washington should conclude a simple bilateral understanding that says that neither side shall increase the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons beyond the New START ceiling of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads until such time as they can conclude a more comprehensive framework agreement or set of agreements to limit and reduce their deadly nuclear arsenals.

So long as Russia and the United States agree to cap their strategic deployed nuclear arsenals and work to negotiate a new nuclear arms reduction framework, the NPT’s other nuclear-armed states, China, France and the United Kingdom, should pledge to a nuclear freeze of the overall size of their nuclear arsenals and a fissile material production halt.

Such an arrangement would lessen dangerous nuclear competition and create space for more intensive and wide-ranging arms control and disarmament negotiations not only between the United States and Russia, but also involving China, France and the United Kingdom.

1. Call upon all five of the NPT’s nuclear-armed states to engage in a serious high-level dialogue that leads to a joint commitment not to use or threaten the use of nuclear weapons and to agree that none will be the first to use nuclear weapons for any reason.

We note that this year, senior Chinese officials proposed that the five should “negotiate and conclude a treaty on no first use of nuclear weapons against each other,” and we note that China published a working paper on the topic this month. In response to the idea, a senior U.S. official said in April that “If they want to engage in a conversation of the many questions raised by their no-first-use proposal, we would engage.”

In addition, the five NPT nuclear-armed states should consider how to update, implement and multilateralize the 1973 U.S.-Soviet Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War, which pledges they will “refrain from the threat or use of force against the other party, against the allies of the other party and against other countries, in circumstances which may endanger international peace and security.” It requires that “if at any time there is the risk of a nuclear conflict [each side] shall immediately enter into urgent consultations … to avert this risk.”

Such a dialogue would be an overdue way to operationalize the January 2022 joint statement from the NPT’s five nuclear-armed states that a “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” However, these and other nuclear risk reduction measures cannot erase the tensions that can lead to nuclear war, they cannot remove the inherent dangers of nuclear deterrence policies, nor can they prevent dangerous forms of qualitative and quantitative nuclear arms racing.

1. Condemn threats of nuclear use as “inadmissible” and illegal. We condemn the recent threats from leaders of some nuclear-armed states underscoring their readiness to use nuclear weapons. Any threat to use nuclear weapons, at any time and under any circumstances, is extremely dangerous and totally unacceptable.

We call on this conference, as the first meeting of states parties to the TPNW did in their 2022 consensus political statement to declare that “any use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is a violation of international law, including the Charter of the United Nations,” and to “condemn unequivocally any and all nuclear threats, whether they be explicit or implicit and irrespective of the circumstances.”

1. We also urge all NPT states-parties to constructively engage with the TPNW and if they have not already done so, to join the TPNW, which is a complementary approach that reinforces the taboos against nuclear weapons, bolsters the NPT, and creates additional pathways to verifiably cap, reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear arsenals.
2. Call upon all members of the Conference on Disarmament to agree to a work plan that allows for negotiations on a comprehensive fissile material cutoff treaty and on legally binding negative security assurances against nuclear attack for non-nuclear-weapon states. The June 14 decision to establish subsidiary bodies on these and other topics was a positive but small step forward that is not sufficient.
3. Jointly reaffirm their support for the de facto moratorium on nuclear testing and call upon the remaining nine NPT hold-out states to take concrete action before the 2026 NPT Review Conference to ratify the CTBT. The last such statement from the five NPT nuclear-armed states in support of the CTBT was issued in the form of UN Security Council Resolution 2310 from September 2016. In the meantime, NPT states-parties should demand that the nuclear-armed states refrain from threats to resume nuclear testing and actively press them to agree on new technical measures to build confidence that any ongoing nuclear experiments at their former test sites are fully compliant with the zero-yield CTBT.

The statement continues: Work to advance these and other disarmament goals must continue well beyond this meeting and be pursued at the UN General Assembly, at the UN Security Council, and at the highest levels in bilateral and multilateral meetings, and beyond. All nuclear weapons make us all less secure. Embarking on a safer path through disarmament diplomacy is imperative.

The statement has been issued by the following arms control negotiations:

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director, Arms Control Association

Melissa Parke, executive director, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Rebecca Eleanor Johnson, director, Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy

Peter Wilk, administrative chair, Back from the Brink Coalition

Thomas Countryman, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for international security and arms control, chair of the board of directors, Arms Control Association

Oliver Meier, policy and research director at the European Leadership Network*

Hans Kristensen, director, Nuclear Information Project, Federation of American Scientists, and associate senior fellow to SIPRI

Götz Neuneck, chairman, Federation of German Scientists

Bridget Moix, general secretary, Friends Committee on National Legislation

John Holum, former director of the U.S. Arms Control Disarmament Agency and ACDA Director Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security

John Hallam, People for Nuclear Disarmament, Human Survival Project

Bernard Norlain, president; Marc Finaud, vice president; and Blaise Imbert, treasurer, Initiatives pour le Désarmement Nucléaire

Ulrich Kühn, head of arms control and emerging technologies program, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg

Tobias Fella, project head, Challenges to Deep Cuts, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg

Lucian Bumeder, researcher, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg

Margaret Beavis, co-chair, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Australia

Jean-Marie Collin, director, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, France

Michael Christ, executive director, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), and Chuck Johnson, director, IPPNW-Geneva Liaison Office

Hideo Asano, secretariat staff, Japan Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Yayoi Tsuchida, assistant general secretary, Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs

Angela Kane, former United Nations under-secretary-general and high representative for disarmament affairs

David Cortright, professor emeritus, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame*

Deepshikha Vijh, executive director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Francesco Lenci, research associate and retired research director at the National (Italy) Research Council

Benetick Kabua Maddison, executive director, Marshallese Educational Initiative

Aaron Tovish, senior adviser, NoFirstUse Global

Jay Coghlan, executive director, Nuclear Watch New Mexico

Valeriia Hesse, nonresident fellow, Odesa Center for Nonproliferation

Bill Kidd MSP, co-president, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament (PNND), Scottish Parliament

Kevin Martin, president, Peace Action

Akira Kawasaki, executive committee member, Peace Boat (Japan)

Brian Campbell, executive director, Physicians for Social Responsibility

Denise Duffield, associate director, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles

Shaghayegh Chris Rostampour, policy and communications coordinator, Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction

Frank von Hippel, senior research physicist and professor of public and international affairs emeritus at Princeton University

Frederick K. Lamb, research professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty member, Program on Arms Control and Domestic and International Security, University of Illinois*

Norman Solomon, national director, RootsAction.org

Jennifer Allen Simons, founder and president, The Simons Foundation Canada

Tomohiko Aishima, executive director for peace and global issues, Soka Gakkai International

Carlo Trezza, former Italian ambassador for disarmament, chairman of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board for Disarmament Affairs, and chairman of MTCR

Scott Yundt, executive director, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment

Tara Drozdenko, director, Global Security Program, Union of Concerned Scientists

Colleen Moore, director of Peace With Justice, the United Methodist Church — General Board of Church and Society

Elena K. Sokova, executive director, Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation

Noah Mayhew, senior research associate at Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non- Proliferation

Sean Arent, nuclear weapons abolition program manager, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility

Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director, Western States Legal Foundation

Elayne Whyte, ambassador, and president of the TPNW negotiations, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

Darien De Lu, president, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

David Swanson, executive director, World Beyond War.

By: J. NASTRANIS / INDEPTHNEWS