September 1, 2025
William C. Potter and Sarah Bidgood
The following is an excerpt from Arms Control Today.
Some meetings of nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) member states are remembered for artistic performances as well as nonproliferation and disarmament achievements. They include the remarkable collection of cartoons created at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference by U.S. delegate Carl Stoiber; the 2002 NPT preparatory committee chair’s “factual summary,” sung to the tune of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” by Swedish diplomat and former pop star Henrik Salander; and the poorly executed standup comic routines that masqueraded as “rights of reply” at the end of many NPT sessions since the 2018 preparatory committee meeting in Geneva. In terms of a theatrical metaphor for the NPT review process, perhaps the most appropriate is Samuel Beckett’s classic play, “Waiting for Godot.”
Just as it is hard to pin a definitive label on Beckett’s play—existential drama, theater of the absurd, or tragicomedy—the NPT review process looks very different to key stakeholders. As with the play, the current review cycle, which culminates next April at the 2026 NPT Review Conference, is struggling with existential issues. They involve complex power dynamics among unequal parties, language that tends to obscure rather than clarify, a cyclical process in which the key players often repeat the same arguments, and boundless faith in an elusive promise.
Faced with these challenges, it should have been little surprise that the third session of the current NPT review process cycle held April 28-May 9 failed to agree on recommendations to present to the 2026 Review Conference. If that conference also fails, it could further erode the NPT and nonproliferation efforts in general.
A Ritual of Repetition
After the NPT’s entry into force in 1970, representatives from most of the treaty’s 191 member states have gathered for four weeks at review conferences to take stock of the operation of the treaty. Except for during the COVID-19 pandemic, the conferences have been held every five years. In between review conferences, preparatory committee meetings typically are held for two weeks in each of the three years prior to the next review conference. In order to make the review process more resultsoriented, the Final Document of the 2000 Review Conference mandated that the third session of the review cycle should strive to produce consensus recommendations for the upcoming conference.
In fact, this mandate has never been fulfilled, and the 2025 preparatory committee meeting was no exception. Instead, delegates from 145 states gathered in stuffy conference rooms at UN headquarters in New York, dutifully reiterated their support for the NPT’s three pillars, read aloud their well-known statements during the general debate and concluded the meeting without any agreed recommendations for the 2026…
Continue reading at Arms Control Today.
