A critical event for the future of international peace and security – and global sanity – began last week at UN headquarters in New York, but given the paucity of political and media coverage, you could be forgiven for missing it.
The landmark 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review meeting has 191 state party signatories. Few international agreements have such widespread backing. Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are terrible holdouts.
Simply expressed, the NPT aims to avert nuclear war by fostering disarmament, preventing proliferation, and promoting the peaceful use of nuclear science and technology. At the very least, it has contributed to the averting of another nuclear disaster.
The key word here is "another." On August 6, the 77th anniversary of the first such disaster was marked in Hiroshima, where an estimated 140,000 citizens died or were sentenced to an agonizing death on one day in 1945. To put this in context, over 10,000 civilians have died in Ukraine in less than six months.
Western public opinion, lulled by the conclusion of the cold war, appears to have forgotten the immeasurable horror of nuclear warfare. Even while new missile deployments multiply, there is no Greenham Commons.
It won't be entirely awful if current events shake that complacency. When he opened the NPT conference last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued a warning.
"Today, humanity is just one misstep, one misunderstanding away from nuclear devastation," he warned. "We've been quite fortunate thus far." However, luck is not a strategy. It is also not a safeguard against geopolitical tensions escalating into a nuclear conflict."
Western public opinion, lulled by the conclusion of the cold war, appears to have forgotten the immeasurable horror of nuclear warfare.
Whether bluffing or not, Putin's nuclear blackmail has clearly deterred direct US and Nato engagement in Ukraine, extending the conflict. There is a concern that China will use similar techniques against Taiwan.
Most countries agree that NPT obligations must be honored and strengthened, according to anti-nuclear activists. Nonetheless, the deal is in jeopardy. In effect, the five recognized nuclear weapon nations — the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom – are violating their Article VI treaty duty to seek disarmament "in good faith," setting a bad example.
Instead, a multilateral nuclear arms race is gathering steam, unconstrained in the case of the United States and Russia by bilateral cold war arms limitation accords abandoned by Putin and Donald Trump, and driven in the case of China by neo-imperial ambition.
"All nuclear-armed states are growing or modernizing their arsenals, and the majority are sharpening nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military policies," according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's authoritative annual study.
While both the US and Russia claim to support further nuclear disarmament, they still have 3,708 and 4,477 nuclear weapons, respectively. China has 350, France has 290, and the United Kingdom has 225. The arsenal of Beijing is expected to more than double over the next decade. And it isn't just about Armageddon. Growing inventories of so-called tactical or battlefield weapons, as well as new hypersonic missiles, increase the likelihood of "limited" nuclear confrontation.
Hypocrisy and double-speak are not limited to the major actors. Britain and France, like Israel, India, and Pakistan, are modernizing their arsenals. In true Napoleonic fashion, President Emmanuel Macron wishes to expand France's nuclear shield to cover all of Europe.
Last Monday, Britain, France, and the United States issued a unified statement calling the NPT "irreplaceable" and "essential." They stated that they were making "consistent efforts" to meet their Article VI commitments.
However, Boris Johnson's government altered Britain's no-first-use stance last year, allowing the UK to respond with nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear strike. Ministers also increased the Trident weapon stockpile cap and limited publicly available information. "Both actions have caused many to question the government's commitment to disarmament," according to a House of Commons research document
Even as it praised cooperation, the joint statement chastised Russia for its "irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and reckless attacks endangering nuclear reactors." "We condemn anyone who would use or threaten to use nuclear weapons for military coercion, intimidation, and blackmail," it said. That is correct. Such criticism, however, fits awkwardly beside warnings from Stephen Lovegrove, UK national security advisor, that a "fast escalation to strategic confrontation," i.e. nuclear war, might all too easily come from the present screaming match between the West, Russia, and China.
To make matters worse, the rogue dictatorship in North Korea is anticipated to perform a geopolitically (and physically) destabilizing underground nuclear test shortly. But there are also rays of optimism. Last-ditch talks to rein in Iran's nuclear program have resumed. In addition, 86 nations have now signed the symbolic, but nonetheless significant, Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty of 2021.
Why it appears, is the world teetering increasingly more dangerously on the edge of another nuclear disaster? There are several aspects to consider. Rising nationalism, inept politicians, and entrenched financial interests have all contributed to increased insecurity.
The reawakened threat of nuclear destruction, more than anything else, is the result of a defining 21st-century phenomenon: the more anarchic reluctance of governments to maintain international law and the UN-underwritten, post-1945 global order.
They just will not follow the rules, even when they are breaking them.