Requiem for a Treaty: The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference Fails for a Third Time in a Row

Hardly noticed amidst the static of geopolitical tensions and armed conflict, the 190 states parties to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the world’s primary agreement aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons while advancing disarmament, met at United Nations HQ in New York from April 27-May 22, 2026. Despite the best efforts of attending diplomats and the skilled management of the proceedings by conference President Ambassador Do Hung Viet of Vietnam, the conference failed to produce an agreed outcome document. The fourth and last version of a draft outcome was such that President Viet decided that it could not be the basis for a consensus agreement, and he did not put it forward for adoption.  

Coming after similar failures to agree at the 2015 and 2022 Review Conferences, this third negative result raises the spectre of a treaty being drained of its authority. This situation is fraught with risks as the NPT is the embodiment of a global nuclear governance regime that provided for nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and the promotion of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Not since the entry into force of the NPT in 1970 has the treaty been under greater stress and the effectiveness of its key norms more in doubt. After decades of being referred to as the “cornerstone” of international security, the dismal result of the conference led its President to warn that even cornerstones can “succumb to erosion” and the edifices they support can collapse. In fact, the nuclear restraint regime centered on the NPT has been fraying for years – will this further failure lead it to completely unravel? After years of relative stability (with the notable exception of North Korea’s defection from the NPT in 2003) the treaty’s underlying bargain of progress on nuclear disarmament in return for holding the line against nuclear proliferation is being challenged. This uncertainty could prompt major changes in the strategic outlook of states from the Middle East to Asia and in Europe itself. 

Consensus in Name Only

The bane of the NPT review conferences in recent decades has been the effort to come to common positions regarding regional problems that remain divisive amongst state parties. The proximate reason for the failure to produce an agreed outcome at the last three review conferences has been disputes on regional issues – over Israel and Middle East nuclear free zones in 2015; on the Ukraine-Russian war and the status of the Zaporiezhzhia nuclear power plant in 2022, and, in this instance, Iran.  In short, the insistence of nuclear weapon states on their national positions on disputes, largely tangential to the NPT core commitments, has come at the expense of the collective interests of the treaty. The selfishness of leading powers has blocked progress on implementing NPT commitments and undermined a sense of common purpose. 

In the consensus decision-making characteristic of multilateral diplomacy, the few can readily stymie the desires of the many. The four revisions of the draft outcome document produced by the President revealed a consistent pattern of the five nuclear weapon states (US, Russia, China, France and the UK) diluting or deleting proposed commitments generated by non-nuclear weapon states. Even agreed past conclusions and commitments were ignored or distorted. To cite just one example, the 2010 review conference had affirmed “the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” a vital impetus to humanitarian disarmament initiatives. This reference was reworked to express concern over the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war – thereby implying that nuclear weapon use short of outright nuclear war was somehow acceptable. 

Similar diminishment of proposals was evident in each new revision of the draft outcome document. A call for nuclear weapon states to adopt “No First Use” doctrines (which would limit the role of nuclear forces to deterring only a nuclear attack) for their nuclear forces was dropped. All references to nuclear sharing which many states deplored were deleted. A call for the United States and Russia to abide by the limits set out in their now expired New START treaty was axed and no specific direction to the nuclear weapon states to fulfil their Article VI disarmament obligations was retained. That this comes at a time when all five are modernizing their nuclear forces and contributing to an emerging nuclear arms race that they are bound by the treaty to stop is both counterproductive and alarming.

The “right” of non-nuclear weapon states to receive binding security assurances against the threat or use of nuclear weapons was downgraded to an acknowledged “interest” of these states in receiving such assurances. A proposed conference decision requiring reporting from nuclear weapon states on their Article VI implementation was reduced to a “welcoming” of voluntarily provided information by these states. Sustained demands by non-nuclear weapon states for greater transparency and accountability by nuclear weapon states for their Article VI implementation were systematically ignored. 

This loss must have been a painful blow to states such as Canada that have championed the need for cooperative transparency in reporting to sustain the treaty’s credibility. As the opening statement by the Canadian Head of Delegation affirmed: “This Conference must advance nuclear disarmament, reduce nuclear risks with principled transparency, credible follow-through and real accountability”. 

Disarmament by Deletion

The continuing threat to the NPT’s norms represented by North Korea’s nuclear weapon programme was eliminated from the text despite broad support with the Russian delegation saying the issue was “closed”.  A call for states to maintain or enact moratoriums on the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons was similarly jettisoned. Again, Canada has long been associated with the fissile material treaty, which has not had a single day of negotiation despite being an agreed objective of the NPT membership for decades. In part, this was a function of the negotiation of such a treaty being confined to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva which has been moribund since 1996. Canada has finally acknowledged that other venues will need to be pursued if this treaty is ever to see the light of day and the Canadian delegate called for the “immediate commencement of negotiations on a treaty on fissile material for nuclear weapons without preconditions”.  

Symptomatic of the backsliding on nuclear disarmament commitments was reference to the Comprehensive (Nuclear) Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) which 30 years after its conclusion still has not come into force due to the failure of nine states to sign or ratify the treaty. As a functioning CTBT was the top priority for the NPT membership when the treaty was indefinitely extended in 1995, the failure to achieve this remains corrosive to the NPT’s credibility. Instead of reinforcing the norm against nuclear testing, the US delegation repeated accusations that China had violated the Treaty (both states having signed but not ratified the treaty) by conducting a low-yield nuclear test in June 2020. This impugned the effectiveness of the International Monitoring System of the CTBT Organization while the US remains responsible (along with the eight other holdouts) for the inability to apply additional verification provisions such as On-Site Inspections which are only operative once the CTBT has entered into force. President Trump’s instruction that the US Department of War should conduct reciprocal nuclear tests has only further weakened the existing norm against nuclear tests. 

A Treaty Losing Credibility

The final dispute that led the President to decide that no consensus was possible on even the anodyne fourth version of the draft outcome concerned Iran. Despite the aggressive attacks by two nuclear armed states (one outside of the NPT) on the nuclear facilities of a non-nuclear weapon state party it was not possible to produce a general condemnation of attacks against nuclear facilities despite the risks such attacks represent. The US insertion in the final draft text of the phrase “Iran can never seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons” was obviously unacceptable to Iran and the lack of any willingness of the protagonists to compromise ensured the failure of the conference to produce an outcome. 

One does not have to be a cynic of world affairs to wonder about the utility of a process like the NPT Review Conference that consumes the efforts of 190 delegations over a month and yet is unable to produce a result. While the diplomatic machine lumbers forward and a decision was taken to launch another five-year review cycle to culminate in a review conference in 2031 it is clear that the NPT is losing its credibility and standing in global affairs. While defections may not be in store in the short term, current conflicts from Ukraine to Iran (and the reactions of states to these unchecked aggressions) have weakened the norm against nuclear proliferation. North Korea may not have featured in an outcome document from this NPT meeting, but its de facto nuclear weapon status has meant that it has not been the subject of attack in the manner that Ukraine and Iran have been. The need to acquire a nuclear deterrent is not a conclusion that the international community would welcome but it is one that a weakened NPT will not be able to counter. 

For more than half a century, the NPT has helped convince states that their security could be achieved without acquiring nuclear weapons. If that belief begins to erode, the consequences will extend far beyond the conference rooms of New York. The greatest danger facing the treaty is not that states formally abandon it, but that they gradually stop believing it can deliver on its core commitments.