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Waiting for Godot at the 2026 NPT Review Conference
September 2025
By William C. Potter and Sarah Bidgood
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 results-oriented, 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 Review Conference. This outcome paints a gloomy prognosis of what might be expected in 2026.
The 2025 preparatory committee, chaired by Harold Agyeman, Ghana’s UN ambassador, began on a promising note as UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu reminded delegates of the heightened nuclear risks confronting the world and the need for the NPT to evolve to meet them. Luck, she argued, is not a strategy, and one cannot afford to engage only with the challenges of yesterday. In addition, she observed how many states felt frustration that “nuclear disarmament was always viewed as something that would come later, when conditions were better.”1
Nakamitsu also called for states to “pay more attention to the intersection between nuclear weapons, new technologies, and new domains of conflict” and highlighted the link between the inalienable right to peaceful nuclear use and sustainable development. Moreover, she tellingly urged states to “be flexible and willing to compromise, and above all, engage in concrete and practical preparation.”2
Regrettably, her wise words appeared to fall mainly on deaf ears until the morning session of the last day when, at last, a meaningful interactive debate took place on strengthening the review process. This debate, facilitated by Agyeman, was the only closed session of the preparatory committee meeting and mainly revolved around the issues of transparency and accountability.3 The discussion, which continued over an unusual luncheon meeting to which all interested delegates were invited, led to a significant convergence of views, but consensus still proved impossible, largely due to China’s opposition over the issue of reporting. On this matter, the Chinese delegation was adamant that allies of nuclear-weapon states enjoying “nuclear umbrella” status also must report on their extended deterrence arrangements.4
In stark contrast to China’s assertive stance on most issues before the preparatory committee—often linked by the head of the delegation (who this year, unusually, was not of ambassadorial rank) to the issue of “nuclear sharing”—the United States was exceptionally restrained. This likely was due to the lack of senior arms control and nonproliferation leadership in the U.S. Department of State at the start of the second Trump administration and the corresponding absence of instructions. As a consequence, there was more continuity than change in U.S. positions on most issues. One exception was the more restrained U.S. interventions regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; the dangers posed by the Kremlin’s attacks on, and occupation of, Ukrainian civilian nuclear facilities; and bellicose rhetoric that eroded norms against nuclear weapons use.
It was not only the United States, however, that had little appetite to discuss the erosion of the nuclear taboo, the prospect of future proliferation, and possible state withdrawals from the NPT. None of the nuclear-weapon states were prepared to pay even lip service to the grave humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, much less the benefits of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). In addition, few states from any of the regional and political groupings, north or south, were ready to acknowledge the need to discuss concrete proposals related to the risks posed to all three NPT pillars by disruptive technologies, including artificial intelligence. Most states also were reluctant to focus on the importance of states adhering to past review conference obligations such as the action plan from 2010, the last review conference to produce a consensus final document.
Although the nuclear-weapon states deserve much of the blame for the collective amnesia about prior disarmament commitments, many non-nuclear-weapon states were willing to defer to the demands of those nations that regard themselves as responsible nuclear-weapon states. This acquiescence was most vividly on display when a number of disarmament “white knights” accepted the argument that an innocuous draft statement on disarmament and nonproliferation education, which initially enjoyed widespread support, was a TPNW stalking horse.5
To his credit, Agyeman circulated his “Draft Chair’s Elements Paper on Strengthening the Review Process” shortly before the start of the preparatory committee meeting. He also sought to build support for his recommendations by omitting from his subsequent draft papers many of the issues that had proved especially contentious in the past. These initiatives by the chair contributed to a less toxic atmosphere than was the case in 2023 and 2024. Nevertheless, he chose to conclude the preparatory committee meeting before its time expired, resigning himself to the fact that consensus recommendations were beyond reach. This led him to submit a working paper under his own authority. The paper still has not been publicly released, although presumably it corresponds closely to the recommendations in the “Revised Draft Recommendations to the Review Conference of the NPT” that was submitted on the penultimate day of the meeting.6 Therefore, as was the case in most prior third sessions of the review process cycle, the 2025 Preparatory Committee meeting ended with a whimper rather than a bang.
On to the Next Review Conference
Based on the outcome of this year’s meeting, it is hard to be optimistic about what awaits NPT states-parties next April. To be sure, many delegations will continue to express hope that progress on disarmament and nonproliferation is still possible, although others may conclude that the review process has become an end in itself. Yet it is also possible that the NPT states will be hard-pressed to agree on specific steps to achieve these objectives, or on language to characterize the progress they have made during the past review cycle.
Against a backdrop of multiple setbacks to the international nonproliferation regime, including multiple attacks on nuclear facilities in conflict zones, renewed interest among some ostensibly friendly states in proliferating, the absence of effective regional and political coalitions to bridge major divides among NPT stakeholders, and continuing toxic atmospherics in the review process, it is hard to imagine a 2026 NPT Review Conference outcome that most states-parties would regard as successful.
Israeli and U.S. Attacks on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities
Although Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and its attendant nuclear risks are likely to remain a contentious issue at the upcoming review conference, the June 2025 airstrikes by Israel and the United States against Iranian nuclear facilities are likely to share the spotlight. The precise impact of the strikes on the conference deliberations remains to be seen, but they already have precipitated renewed and more credible threats from Tehran to leave the treaty if international sanctions are snapped back into place.7 Should Iran act on these threats, either in the leadup to or at the review conference, it would exacerbate fissures that already threaten to derail conference negotiations.
Regardless, such attacks by a nuclear-weapon state on a non-nuclear-weapon state’s nuclear facilities could well become the issue over which the conference collapses. A majority of states likely will push for inclusion of language in any outcome document condemning the Israeli and U.S. attacks, which the U.S. delegation surely will oppose. Unless compromise language can be adopted to reconcile these views, which seems unlikely, the result could be a showdown similar the last review conference in 2022. There, the Russian delegation blocked consensus in large part because of objections to language referencing Russia’s occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine and the nuclear safety crisis that ensued.8
Expiration of New START
Another looming development that will complicate the tasks of review conference negotiators is the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in February 2026. Although this agreement is no longer being implemented following Russia’s suspension of participation in 2023, it remains the only bilateral arms control treaty still legally in place between Russia and the United States and is an important symbol of their disarmament commitments. If negotiations on a follow-on treaty are not in sight by the start of the review conference, many non-nuclear-weapon states may demand that the final document call on Russia and the United States to return to the bargaining table.9 Support for this measure would grow significantly should Moscow or Washington be perceived as preparing to resume nuclear testing.
Forging a consensus outcome also is apt to be impeded by the absence of obvious candidates among individual treaty members or regional and political groupings who effectively can bridge major divides among key stakeholders. Among the topics that will require creative bridge-building are the implementation of past review conference obligations, the relative urgency for concrete steps toward nuclear disarmament and nuclear risk reduction, the prospect and consequences of new nuclear proliferators, the lack of headway toward regional security in the Middle East and the Korean peninsula, and the importance of transparency and accountability in the review process.
A small group of states called the New Agenda Coalition had considerable success in mediating contentious nuclear disarmament issues in the past, notably at the 2000 Review Conference, but there are no obvious coalitions that can perform a similar function today. The lack of strong leadership and the fragmentation within traditional political groupings, including the Non-Aligned Movement, also reduces the ability of these bodies to display flexibility in negotiations and to bring their members on board in support of proposed compromise language. In recent years, a possible exception to this general tendency was the ability of countries from Latin America and the Caribbean to display considerable solidarity in promoting the disarmament interests of many non-nuclear-weapon states, but the cohesion of this regional grouping is likely to be diminished at the next review conference due to political changes and increased friction involving some key members.
Atmospherics
Identifying strategies to overcome these challenges would be difficult under the best of circumstances, but is likely to be made more so by the lack of respect, trust, flexibility, and empathy among key NPT stakeholders. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the toxic practice of delivering acrimonious and often unscripted rights of reply at many NPT sessions, a ritual that China, Iran, Russia, and the United States appear unlikely to abandon.
To some extent, the tenor of debate at NPT meetings is set by the heads of key national delegations and their overseers in capitals. It is hard to anticipate what the picture will look like at the upcoming review conference based on the low-level representation at the 2025 preparatory committee meeting on the part of China, Russia, and the United States; none had an ambassador present. The United States will almost certainly have a more senior head of delegation, possibly at the undersecretary level, who will advocate positions more closely attuned to the assertive ones being espoused by U.S. diplomats in other international fora. This is likely to take the form of very hostile U.S. interventions against all Chinese positions, a stance that will be met by equally aggressive anti-U.S. rhetoric from China.
It is less clear how vocal the United States will be with respect to Russian aggression in Ukraine and other Russia-led initiatives related to NATO, nuclear sharing, the Middle East, and North Korea. Conceivably, the United States will let other NATO members take the lead in pushing back on at least some of these issues.
Perhaps the wildcard issue with the greatest potential to disrupt the review conference and provoke widespread anti-U.S. interventions is U.S. opposition to all efforts to reference UN sustainable development goals, even if they relate to almost universally shared support for peaceful nuclear use. This issue has not been the subject of controversy at prior NPT meetings, but should it arise at the review conference, it could well doom any prospect of a consensus final document.
Potential Areas for Progress
If this non-consensus scenario materializes, then the final act of this NPT review cycle promises more of the same unsatisfying saga. Existing power disparities among nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapon states will only become more apparent and longstanding conflicts more entrenched, with little reason to believe the next review cycle will be any more successful than the two previous ones. Notwithstanding this gloomy prognosis, one can identify a few positive nuclear developments that the review conference might note and other areas where there may be potential for a significant convergence of views, even if it falls short of consensus.
One promising development is the decision in June by Syria’s new government to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit suspected nuclear sites. IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi has said that this action provides an opportunity to close a chapter of Syria’s past and “bring greater clarity” about its prior nuclear activities.10 The agency’s closure of its Syria “nuclear file” would remove a longstanding, contentious issue from the review process agenda.
Probably the greatest convergence of views among NPT members regarding core elements of the treaty pertains to the use of nuclear technology for nonmilitary purposes. Support for the “inalienable right” and access to peaceful use enjoys widespread support among nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapon states. Notwithstanding the possibility of controversy should some states seek to link an “inalienable right” to peaceful uses to UN sustainable development goals, it is conceivable that the review conference could carve out language that would enjoy consensus support.
Another area where near consensus may be possible concerns strengthening the NPT review process. Considerable progress was made at a special working group on this topic that met for one week in Vienna immediately before the 2023 preparatory committee meeting.11 Although Russia ultimately made it impossible to reach any consensus recommendations, it is conceivable that some creative formulation addressing the need for increased transparency and accountably could be found to overcome likely resistance by China and Russia at the 2026 Review Conference. This year’s preparatory committee chair suggested several possible approaches in his “Revised Draft Decision: Strengthening the Review Process.”12 That said, although transparency and reporting are important to many states, they are fundamentally procedural matters that do not address the most significant shortcomings of the nonproliferation regime.
Waiting for Consensus
Diplomats use language to both obscure and clarify, a practice that is evident in the annals of the NPT review process. Two words that merit special attention in this context are “success” and “consensus.” What, in fact, is meant by a “successful” review conference? Does it depend on the negotiation of a consensus outcome document? Should one equate consensus with unanimity or the absence of the need for a vote?
Adopting a final document without a vote has been the traditional benchmark by which NPT review conference success has been judged by diplomats and outside analysts. Yet, it is a dubious metric by which to assess the conference’s impact on the nonproliferation regime, especially considering the frequent failure of states to adhere to the consensus documents they negotiated.
In addition, a consensus outcome may indicate widespread and enduring support for disarmament and nonproliferation principles and actions, or it may simply signify acceptance of recommendations based on a very low common denominator. Importantly, fixation on the tradition of consensus decision-making ignores the fact that voting on substantive and procedural matters is explicitly permitted in the rules of procedure adopted at the first NPT Review Conference in 1975.13
The need to explore alternatives to consensus-based outcomes is not new, although most states are reticent to endorse the idea. The most detailed discussion of alternative modalities was produced by veteran U.S. State Department official Robert Einhorn ahead of the planned 2020 Review Conference. These proposals include adopting an entire document by consensus but resorting when necessary to formulations that reflect differences between parties (for example, “‘some believe’ X, while ‘others believe’ Y.”)14 He also suggests a final document that includes both consensus and non-consensus components, such as a “declaration issued at a very senior level … reaffirming the parties’ strong support for the treaty,” a series of recommendations that enjoy consensus, and a list of those that do not.15
In consultations with states-parties over the next nine months, the president-designate of the 2026 Review Conference, who is expected to be from Vietnam, could probe which of these or other alternative outcomes might be acceptable to states if it becomes clear that traditional consensus, for a third consecutive time, is likely to be out of reach.16
Critics have not been kind in their assessment of recent NPT review conferences, although some of the leading protagonists, such as the president of the long-delayed 2022 conference, received high marks for their performances. As the 2026 conference approaches, the challenge before states-parties is not whether they can reach a consensus final document regardless of its content. Rather, it is whether delegates can respond with practical recommendations that are commensurate with increasingly acute existential threats.
As with Beckett’s characters, NPT delegates appear content to pass their time tethered to routines and practices they cannot abandon and conversations they cannot resolve. It remains to be seen if the actors on the NPT stage still believe in the original treaty script. If not, the NPT review process and the 2026 Review Conference are in danger of becoming irrelevant.
ENDNOTES
1. Notes taken by one of the authors April 28, 2025, at the opening session of the third session of the preparatory committee for the 2026 Review Conference of Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
3. The irony of having a debate about transparency in a session that was closed to civil society was not lost on many of the delegates, including the French UN ambassador, who spoke forcefully but unsuccessfully against the procedure.
4. Commentary based on the notes taken at the closed session by one of the authors.
5. Personal observations of one of the authors.
6. Revised Draft Recommendations to the Review Conference of the NPT, NPT/CONF.2026.PC.III.CRP.4/Rev.1, May 8, 2025.
7. Yashraj Sharma, “What is the NPT, and Why Has Iran Threatened to Pull Out of the Treaty?” Al Jazeera, June 17, 2025; Tim O’Connor, “Iran Considers Leaving Nuclear Treaty if Snapback Sanctions Triggered,” Newsweek, July 23, 2025.
8. Gabriela Rosa Hernandez and Daryl Kimball, “Russia Blocks NPT Conference Consensus Over Ukraine,” Arms Control Today, September 2022.
9. Joint Statement on New START delivered by Austria on behalf of 24 states on May 9, 2025. In comments to reporters on July 25, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump called for maintaining the limits put in place by New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, observing, “That’s not an agreement you want expiring.” See “Trump says he wants to maintain nuclear limits with Russia,” Reuters, July 25, 2025.
10. Gavin Blackburn, “Syria to Give UN Inspectors Immediate Access to Former Nuclear Sites, IAEA says,” Euronews, May 6, 2025.
11. William C. Potter, “Behind the Scenes: How Not to Negotiate an Enhanced NPT Review Process,” Arms Control Today, October 2023.
12. Revised Draft Recommendations to the Review Conference of the NPT, NPT/CONF.2026.PC.III.CRP.4/Rev.1, May 8, 2025.
13. Surprisingly, few NPT diplomats or scholars appear to be aware that before the start of the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, intense deliberations took place among delegates about various contingencies for voting on the issue of indefinite extension of treaty, the outcome of which was by no means certain. At the time, much of the debate was not about the wisdom of voting but rather about the modalities that would be involved, and especially if a vote should be open or secret.
14. Einhorn cautions against an overreliance on this approach, noting that it would “highlight divisions among the parties rather than convey the impression that the parties were basically in agreement.” Robert Einhorn, “The 2020 NPT Review Conference: Prepare for Plan B” (Geneva, Switzerland: UN Institute for Disarmament Research, 2020): p. 17.
15. Robert Einhorn, “The 2020 NPT Review Conference: Prepare for Plan B,” UN Institute for Disarmament Research, 2020: p. 18.
16. At the time of this writing, the Non-Aligned Movement had yet to formally nominate Vietnam as its candidate for the NPT presidency, but it is expected that the Vietnamese Permanent Representative in New York will serve in that capacity.
William C. Potter, the founding director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, is the Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar professor of nonproliferation studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Sarah Bidgood is a postdoctoral fellow in technology and international security at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and a former director of the Eurasia nonproliferation program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.