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The Potential of the P5 Process
March 2025
By Thomas Countryman
The global architecture of arms control and nonproliferation is faltering. The risk of nuclear conflict is impossible to measure objectively but is certainly higher than at any time since 1962. All five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—are studiously ignoring their legal obligation under Article VI of the treaty to negotiate in good faith on reducing and eliminating their nuclear arsenals, although each is articulate in explaining why this situation is not their fault.
Non-nuclear-weapon states, which encompass most of the rest of the world, view the lack of disarmament progress with alarm. The loss of faith in the nuclear-weapon states drove the most important step in disarmament in the last 10 years, entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Continued inaction on Article VI and the foreseeable transition from modernizing nuclear arsenals to an all-out arms race will turn alarm into despair, sapping the vitality of the NPT, which is the cornerstone of global efforts to prevent nuclear conflict.
A Promising Beginning
Fifteen years ago, the five NPT-designated nuclear-weapon states began a process that was intended to reassure the world that Article VI was being taken seriously: the P5 process of consultations among the senior nuclear policy officials, at the level of undersecretary or deputy minister, of the five states.1 Launched amid the optimism generated by U.S. President Barack Obama’s Prague speech on arms control and the success of the 2010 NPT Review Conference, the process was intended to demonstrate that nuclear issues were a top priority of all five governments, requiring constant discussion and coordination, and not subject to the vicissitudes of global politics. Although some non-nuclear-weapon states complained that the P5 process was a “cartel,” and that the consultations served to maintain a permanent nuclear monopoly, most non-nuclear-weapon states welcomed the effort.
Since 2010, the P5 consultation process has broadly, if inconsistently, served three goals, all of which are shared by the five nations: to increase mutual understanding of each other’s nuclear doctrines and postures; reassure other NPT states-parties of the NPT’s continued vitality, as reflected in P5 joint statements on the importance of the nuclear test moratorium and on achieving NPT universality; and lay the groundwork for the good-faith negotiations that Article VI obliges the five nations to pursue.
The last meeting of P5 principals, as officials at the undersecretary and deputy foreign minister level are known, in December 2021 resulted in a historic statement by the five nations, namely that a “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” This statement, announced in January 2022 and first articulated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan at their summit in Reykjavik in 1986, was broadly welcomed by the rest of the world, although during its negotiation, each of the P5 states insisted on adding text that diluted the powerful simplicity of the original Reagan-Gorbachev sentence.
Disrupted Contacts
Since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, senior-level contacts among the P5 nations have all but stopped, on a bilateral basis and also within the P5 process that was intended to be compartmentalized from the broader political context. In the last three years, the P5 nations have been limited to less frequent meetings of officials two bureaucratic levels lower and they focused on only two important topics: nuclear posture and risk reduction. These meetings have been the only meaningful contact between Russian nuclear officials and their Western counterparts. Some participants say discussion at this level is often more substantive than at the senior level.
Despite the breakdown in contacts, the current moment offers an opportunity that the 2025-2026 chairman of the P5 process, the United Kingdom, must seize.2 Maximizing such an opening will require ambition and decisiveness, traits not commonly associated with multilateral diplomacy or the P5 process, but of which the UK is more than capable.
The UK could inject new value into the process program that would increase the frequency of P5 meetings, expand the topics for discussion, raise the level of participation, and build on past success.
Ambition will be required because the P5, as with nearly all multilateral processes, operates on the basis of consensus. Extended disagreement over timing, venue, agenda, and participation level have long provided the excuse for avoiding more intensive engagement. A more ambitious process would be supportive of, and consistent with, U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent statements favoring a renewed denuclearization effort.
Reviving the P5 Process
As the new chair, the UK should lay out for its partners a schedule of nine or 10 meetings per year, to be held either in the UK or at a mutually agreeable site. The UK would need to insist firmly that disagreements over the best site not be allowed to interfere with the regularity of meetings. If there is a complaint that this schedule is too intense, then it should be noted that none of the disarmament officials in the five ministries are overworked in the current period.
The UK also could lead additional dialogues among arms control officials outside of national capitals. Without labeling them as official P5 meetings, or publicizing them, the UK ambassadors in Geneva and Vienna could host monthly lunches or coffees for counterparts, as was done before 2022.
No discussion topics should be forbidden, which is to say no one should have a veto over the agenda. The UK could prepare a list of specific topics with the aim of covering one in each of the regular meetings. Importantly, the list should include the topics that the UK is most eager to discuss, such as threats to use nuclear weapons, and also those it has been more reluctant to discuss, such as the potential for multilateral negotiations among the five states. (See box below for examples.) Having one topic as the primary subject does not imply that participants could not explore other topics on a consensual basis or continue discussion from a previous month.
To encourage the most open discussion possible, the primary goal of each meeting should not be to agree on a joint statement or communique. Although such joint statements are welcomed by other states, they tend to detract time and attention from the P5 effort to fully explain and understand each other’s positions. Each participant’s focus should be on substance, rather than on preparing post-meeting press statements. Although the greatest possible transparency about nuclear postures and policies is in principle desirable, excessive media focus on any single meeting is not conducive to a frank exchange of views.
In each P5 capital, concerns about certain policy issues such as Ukraine, NATO, and Taiwan have increased resistance among governments to conducting business as usual, whether bilaterally or in a multilateral process such as the P5. The UK should seek to break through this impasse in the last few months of its 12-month term by inviting officials at the level of undersecretary and vice foreign minister—the level that attended previous meetings before the P5 process broke down—for the final session.
In the last three years, political leaders in London, Moscow, Paris, and Washington have resisted this kind of senior-level contact on a wide range of issues, insisting on “no business as usual” while the Russian war in Ukraine rages. To overcome this resistance, the UK would need to take a clear stance on the urgency of addressing the risk of nuclear conflict. Failure to assign this priority would be understood correctly by non-nuclear-weapon states as demonstrating lack of serious interest in arms control.
Consensus is as important in this process as in any other multilateral diplomatic process, but consensus should not mean simply allowing any one of the five states to avoid senior-level discussion of nuclear issues. UK insistence on elevating the discussion level ultimately would bring the others to participate at senior levels.
A Possible Outcome
Although the current focus of the P5 process should be on understanding one another’s positions, rather than on negotiating joint statements, there are some important topics on which P5 members share consensus, or near consensus, and could add value with their public reinforcement. These topics include building upon their 2022 statement that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The P5 states also should expand upon and embrace a 2022 declaration by Group of 20 leaders on the inadmissibility of nuclear threats.
In addition, the P5 should reaffirm a statement based upon the 1973 U.S.-Soviet Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War, which is still in effect. It pledges that 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” and commits them to consult during crises.
Other constructive moves would be a reaffirmation of P5 support for the de facto moratorium on nuclear testing and for entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and for the principle of prenotification of ballistic missile launches. They also should prepare a joint statement for the 2026 NPT Review Conference, as they did in 2015, and plan for how to achieve a consensus outcome at that conference.
The bottom line is that the international arms control architecture is broken. The P5 process is the handiest tool with which the major world powers can begin to repair it.
Topics for P5 Process Discussion No-first-use policy: China has circulated a paper advocating that all nuclear-weapon states commit to a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, yet has not engaged in substantive discussion on this topic with other nuclear-weapon states. Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the nuclear test moratorium: The U.S. Senate is unlikely to ratify the CTBT in the near future. A strong P5 consensus on sustaining the moratorium would at least preserve that option, and the entry into force for the CTBT for a future date. China has not ratified the treaty; Russia “de-ratified” it. Fissile material cutoff treaty: The nuclear-weapon states need to discuss how to overcome the impasse in initiating negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament. Radiological weapons: The P5 states should commit to making progress on a new treaty involving these weapons at the Conference on Disarmament. Negative security assurances: Threats of nuclear use in the context of the Ukraine war have raised doubts about the credibility of P5 promises not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states. The nuclear-weapon states should be able to commit to begin negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament on a binding treaty providing such negative assurances. Intermediate-range missiles: Russia insists that President Vladimir Putin’s offer of a moratorium on deploying nuclear- and conventionally armed intermediate-range forces remains on the table. All of the nuclear-weapon states share an interest in limiting such deployments. Nuclear risk reduction: The valuable work of the last three years to reduce the risk of inadvertent nuclear war must continue, such as new mechanisms of crisis communication among the five capitals. Structuring a multilateral arms reduction negotiation: The United States seeks to include China in nuclear negotiations with Russia, whereas Russia seeks to include Britain and France in any such negotiations. Rather than repeating stale formulae, the nuclear-weapon states should discuss the concept of linking successful Russian-U.S. negotiations to a future five-way negotiation. Doctrine/force posture/transparency: The nuclear-weapon states should seek to achieve greater mutual understanding about each other’s readiness to use nuclear weapons, particularly at a time when China is expanding its arsenal, and Russia, and perhaps the United States, are modifying their declaratory policy. Ballistic missile defense: The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty limiting Soviet and U.S. deployment of ballistic missile interceptors provided an essential basis for the gradual reduction of Russian and U.S. arsenals. The U.S. withdrawal from the treaty in 2002 began dissolving the arms control architecture. With Beijing, Moscow, and Washington all investing heavily now in ballistic missile development, the P5 states could contribute to stability by discussing the potential for limits on deploying these missiles. Nuclear “fail-safe” reviews: Valuable work has been done in a “track-two” context on reviewing national procedures to prevent accidental nuclear war. The same work should be done, on a common procedural basis, by all five nuclear-weapon states and the results reported publicly. Artificial intelligence in nuclear command and control: A China-U.S. agreement on the principle that humans must be kept in the loop on nuclear-use decisions should be extended to all P5 process members and actualized. The principle already has been embraced by France and the UK. Proliferation challenges in Iran and North Korea: Without detracting from the focus on NPT Article VI and disarmament, the five nuclear-weapon states should continue their efforts to cooperate on preventing Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons and dealing with the implications of North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal. |
ENDNOTES
1. The author prefers the term “N5” to distinguish the status of the five nuclear-weapon states under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty from their status as permanent members of the UN Security Council; however, this article uses the name “P5 process” in keeping with its official name.
2. The author shared many of these ideas with Chinese officials at the outset of China’s 2024-2025 chairmanship.