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Out of the Ashes: How to Re-energize the NPT
October 2026
By Oliver Meier
Member states of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at the 2026 NPT Review Conference failed to agree on steps to strengthen the treaty, putting the entire review process—and potentially also the treaty itself—in crisis mode. The visible disagreement over how to address Iranian noncompliance with its nuclear safeguards obligations and the Israeli-U.S. military attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities ostensibly prevented agreement on a final conference outcome document.1 But the dispute masked deeper structural problems that have plagued the treaty, cornerstone of the international nonproliferation regime, for years. States-parties need to address these problems if they want to reverse the NPT’s slow but steady slide into irrelevance.
Admittedly, the outcome could have been worse. Ahead of the review conference, some observers feared that Iran might withdraw from the treaty.2 Others worried that North Korea could steal the meeting spotlight by conducting a nuclear test. When, at the beginning of the conference, the United States objected to Iran being assigned as one of 25 largely ceremonial vice president posts, many participants were concerned that the maneuver would delay or derail the proceedings.3
In the end, no such drama took place during the four-week-long conference, which ran April 27-May 22. U.S. opposition to Iran holding a post overseeing the review conference proceedings was overcome. Other states-parties pledged their support for the treaty.4 In the final plenary session, all delegations regretted the impasse over the draft outcome document and approved a continuation of the review process, with three preparatory committee meetings scheduled in the lead up to the 2031 review conference.5
In his closing remarks, conference president Do Hung Viet, of Vietnam, captured the prevailing mood well: “It may not have been enough, but it was not nothing.”6 Yet, the failure of the third consecutive review conference to agree on any substantive outcome document accelerates the treaty’s downward trend since at least 2010, when states-parties last agreed on steps to strengthen the NPT.
States-parties and the broader NPT community, including civil society, the private sector, and other stakeholders, must do things differently in the next review cycle. They should build on best practices from previous meetings of states-parties, use initiatives on the sidelines of NPT meetings to inject new energy into diplomatic processes and build support structures that are able to address current issues and underlying problems consistently.
Over the next five years, the world is likely to face new proliferation crises, further nuclear buildups, possible renewed nuclear testing and maybe withdrawals from the treaty. The NPT is the best place for the international community to come together to address these issues politically. Yet, business as usual will be insufficient to deal with these challenges.
The NPT’s Structural Crisis
The review conference laid bare three worrisome, related, and mutually reinforcing problems around the nonproliferation regime, namely the prevalence of spoilers, the lack of political leadership, and the drag of outmoded procedures. If left unaddressed, these issues will intensify questions about whether a critical number of states will continue to see the NPT as the bedrock framework for effectively governing nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
The first worrying trend that surfaced at the 2026 review conference in New York was the increased willingness of some countries to single-handedly stand in the way of compromise. Obstructionists in the past have occasionally prevented agreement, but these days, the problem has become endemic, with more states apparently less concerned about being isolated.
In 2015, the United States, along with Canada and the United Kingdom, let the review conference fail over the issue of holding a conference on the establishment of a Middle East nuclear-weapon-free zone that would have addressed Israel’s status as a nuclear-armed state outside the NPT and as a U.S. protégé.7 At the 2022 review conference, Russia was the sole state objecting to the adoption of the draft final document that would have taken note of its war on Ukraine, including attacks on nuclear facilities.8 In 2026, the conference president shied away from putting the final draft up for adoption because neither Iran nor the United States was willing to back down over how to address Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. and Israeli attacks on it.9 Viet was sure that either Tehran or Washington would object no matter how he altered the draft and did not want to put either country on the spot. Thus, at the last three review conferences, nuclear-weapon states put their own interests in avoiding censure above the goal of having a good review conference outcome.10
Obstructionism is not limited to high-profile review conferences, however. At the 2023 NPT preparatory committee meeting, China successfully slow-walked—and thus prevented agreement on—a much-needed reform of NPT procedures, including those that would have ensured better transparency and accountability by nuclear-weapon states. China even objected to an informal reading of the proposed procedures into the meeting record.11
All of this demonstrates that nuclear-weapon states are now among the worst spoilers. Russia and the United States are particularly robust in single-handedly preventing consensus and can seemingly withstand pressures others cannot. The fact that they are among the five NPT-recognized nuclear-weapon states (along with China, France, and the UK) that wield veto power, and thus can prevent any censure in the UN Security Council, partly explains the challenge and the brazenness of the behavior.
The problem is broader than Russia and the United States preventing criticism of their regional wars and hegemonic ambitions, including their attacks on nuclear facilities, however. All nuclear-weapon states have in recent years resisted binding and more specific disarmament commitments. At the 2026 review conference, “There were nuclear-weapon states that did not want to implement past commitments or even reiterate and reconfirm them,” Viet noted after the meeting.12 Although the high-profile dispute over Iran was the center of attention, other issues lurked in the background. Viet specifically mentioned that nuclear-weapon states were “not ready to make progress on disarmament,” even if the Iran stalemate had been resolved.13
It is not surprising then that the New Agenda Coalition (NAC), a disarmament-minded group comprised of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand and South Africa, in its final statement explicitly noted that “the NAC does not consider disarmament language of the draft 2026 outcome document … as a new baseline or ‘new normal.’”14 All of this makes it much harder to use the tentative convergence around some issues in the draft final document as a reference for future NPT discussions.
A related challenge is the lack of leadership within the NPT. Success at multilateral conferences is facilitated if capable states are willing to invest in consensus-building, which can be politically costly and tedious. For good or bad, in the NPT context, this role of shepherding 191 states-parties to agreement usually fell to the United States, although occasionally others, including the European Union or the New Agenda Coalition, have offered positions that attracted widespread support and served as catalysts for agreement.15
Things have changed dramatically. The 2026 review conference was the first with the Trump administration representing the United States. The shift in behavior was predictable. Ahead of the conference, former U.S. diplomat Matthew Sharp warned that at the 2025 meeting of the UN General Assembly’s First Committee, which deals with disarmament affairs, Washington had already made clear “its comfort with diplomatic isolation.”16 Thomas Countryman, a former top U.S. State Department official on arms control, had cautioned that “the U.S. administration’s ideological approach to, well, almost everything, portends new battles at the RevCon over topics that have previously been considered settled, and even non-controversial.”17
At the review conference itself, some participants found the U.S. delegation surprisingly amenable. Yet, it all came crushing down in the final session, when John Zadrozny of the U.S. delegation delivered a blistering speech and ominously warned that “we may have witnessed the end of the relevancy of the review conference process.”18
Russia, Iran, and others also appeared unwilling to work toward meaningful compromises, but the U.S. turn from the NPT—and multilateralism—is a particular problem because the United States is one of the two largest nuclear-weapon states and because no other state or group of states has been able and willing to fill the leadership vacuum that the Trump administration created.
Many states-parties are afraid of supporting middle-ground initiatives simply because they might anger the Trump administration. This was noticeable, for example, in the number of countries signing on to the 2026 “joint statement on integrating gender perspectives in the NPT review cycle.”19 A similar statement at the 2022 review conference was supported by the United States and many allies, including Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Romania, and South Korea.20 None of these countries signed on at 2026 conference, after the United States in January justified its withdrawal from 66 international organizations citing their alleged “gender equity” campaigns.21
The problem of pre-emptive acquiescence to positions of populist leadership is not limited to U.S. allies. Some observers have noted how China used the Non-Aligned Movement to shield itself from criticism.22 It is likely to further diminish the relevance of the NPT review process if important norm entrepreneurs are perceived as acting as mere agents of powerful states and not engaging honestly on the basis of their own preferences and interests.23
Finally, dysfunctional procedures complicate the process of agreeing on a good outcome at NPT meetings. Russia and the United States, in particular, have turned diplomatic practices to their own advantage. They abuse the consensus rule, which was created as a safeguard for smaller states to avoid being overruled or pressured, and use it as a tool to prevent any agreement they dislike. In this way, Russia in 2022 avoided being called out for its attacks on Ukrainian nuclear facilities and the United States in 2026 countered criticisms of its attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities by pointing the finger at Iran.
The misuse of the consensus principle goes hand-in-hand with a tendency toward cherry picking—that is, trying to force progress on a favorite topic while ignoring issues of importance to others. Once upon a time, the understanding that “nothing is agreed until everything agreed” was a way to get closer to consensus. It created opportunities and pressures for trade-offs among issues under the NPT’s three pillars: disarmament, nonproliferation, and cooperation on peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Now, some states have turned linkages into a tool to prevent overall agreement. The give-and-take attitude that is necessary to keep multilateralism alive has given way to a “what’s-in-it-for-us” attitude, undermining the grand bargain that has underpinned the NPT.
These three structural problems cause a cascade of other, related issues, including a reduction of political and media attention. Six countries were represented at the 2026 review conference at the minister level or higher. That is less than half of the high-level representation at the conference in 2022. When Viet and Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN high representative for disarmament affairs, gave a press conference at UN headquarters on the final night of the 2026 conference, the vast majority of journalists came from Japan. International reporting on the conference was sparse and, according to many longtime NPT watchers, has been in decline for many years.
A New Way Forward
Going into the next review cycle, the question is what can be done differently to achieve better results at the next review conference in 2031. There are no easy answers because most responsibility for the lack of progress rests with the three largest nuclear-weapon states: China, Russia, and the United States. Locked in competition and governed by nationalists, they are no longer willing to address nuclear dangers through multilateral instruments, such as the NPT. Instead, they misuse their privileged position as nuclear-weapon states to advance their regional hegemonic ambitions in Ukraine, the Middle East, and East Asia. As a result, states-parties and civil society working toward a better review process and stronger NPT should prepare to focus on three different settings: inside the review process, on the sidelines of NPT meetings, and outside of NPT diplomacy.
Those interested in tackling proliferation challenges and advancing nuclear disarmament through diplomacy will have to assume that for the time being they have to work around Beijing, Moscow, and Washington in the next review cycle. The nationalist ideology and hegemonic policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are incompatible with the international law-based approach to disarmament and nonproliferation embodied in the NPT. China’s nuclear build-up and its resistance to more transparency and accountability also remain stumbling blocks for progress on disarmament.
NPT states-parties, therefore, must be prepared to seek solutions and outcomes at NPT meetings that circumvent populist opposition to consensus outcome, even, or maybe particularly, if such resistance is coming from the three main nuclear-weapon states.
Given the recalcitrance of some states, conference chairs may want to consider voting to get to an outcome. The rules of procedure do provide for votes on procedural and, with a 48-hour cooling off period, substantive matters. Although review conferences have never used voting to adopt decisions, NPT participants in recent years have given greater consideration to voting, including conference presidents.24
The president of the 2022 review conference, Gustavo Zlauvinen, said that he was “tempted” to put the final document up for a vote for adoption when it became clear that Russia would object to a consensus outcome.25 Viet also acknowledged that “there were questions” directed at him “about why not put the [2026] draft outcome document out there for one country to break the consensus, or even put it up for a vote.” Although Viet argued that “to maintain the principle of consensus is paramount,” he said that he “floated the idea to states-parties that if they came to me with a proposal about a separate decision, I could certainly facilitate a discussion about that.”26
Yet, dividing a final document into separate elements and putting them up for adoption separately, possibly by voting, is a risky proposition. It could play into the hands of those who want to divide the three pillars on which the treaty rests and focus on their favorite parts only. The nuclear-weapon states, in particular, have been trying to reinterpret the NPT and downplay their disarmament commitments. In his closing statement at the 2026 conference, Zadrozny of the U.S. delegation bluntly argued that the NPT “is called the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, not the nuclear disarmament treaty;”27 other nuclear-weapon states share that sentiment.
Once broken, it may be difficult to re-establish the holistic approach to nuclear issues that the NPT has so successfully embodied over the last 66 years. As Nakamitsu warned after this year’s conference, “It is simply wrong for nuclear-weapon states to assume that nonproliferation obligations will be adhered to without nuclear-weapon states’ commitment to and implementation of disarmament commitments under [the NPT] Article VI.”28
Importantly, the 2026 review conference offered glimmers of hope that nonproliferation diplomacy can be made livelier and more interesting. This was largely due to the conference president’s way of chairing the meeting. Viet’s decision to strictly enforce speaking time limits and table the opening draft of the outcome text at an earlier point in the process were procedural changes that many observers felt brought fresh air into stuffy procedures and created more space for actual discussions and negotiations.
Yet, some innovations also had downsides. Thus, the attempt to improve inclusivity by having more discussions in plenary sessions and fewer in exclusive, behind-closed-door talks in small groups came at the price of a largely unstructured endgame. Some delegations apparently felt that they did not have sufficient skin in the game because they had not been able to implant their pet topics in the draft outcome document, which in the past often has happened in small group discussions. Future chairs of NPT meetings will have to carefully review the track record of such changes and weigh the pros and cons of more inclusivity.
Injecting New Energy from the Sidelines
States-parties should also be more creative in using the space around regular NPT meetings. The trend of using such meetings as forums, where ideas are presented and agendas shaped, rather than specific steps agreed to tackle nuclear risks and advance nuclear disarmament, is regrettable. It undermines the importance of multilateral diplomacy.
Yet, if that pattern is inevitable, the drift toward more informality may also offer opportunities: Governments and other stakeholders can be more creative in using NPT meetings to present their ideas and engage in open formats. Many conference participants found the input from nongovernmental organizations and business representatives during side events relevant and interesting because they had more liberty to address problems directly, offer new perspectives, and propose novel solutions.
“Minilateral” groupings, a subset of countries that is committed to making progress on a specific problem or set of problems through multilateral institutions, can help address the problem of the lack of political leadership.29 Such groups have been load-bearers of the substantive NPT agenda for some time. Some take forward the collective views of groups of states that are like-minded on a specific issue. Others, such as the European Union, have been important catalysts of consensus by clustering divergent views and providing a microcosm of positions held among the wider NPT membership.
The important work by the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative on transparency or the new group on Reducing the Risk of Nuclear Conflict about ways to avoid accidental or unintentional nuclear weapons use have advanced discussions on current problems by putting forward specific proposals. The New Agenda Coalition has promoted nuclear disarmament in ways that connect to broader debates.
Over time, certain initiatives, including some initially carried by the United States, have gone out of fashion. The cross-regional Stockholm Initiative, created to give life to a step-by-step approach on nuclear disarmament, has fallen into disrepair. But in this current review cycle, the role of minilateral formats in clustering views, connecting different states, and pushing issues, is likely to grow. Their ability to keep debates alive between NPT meetings and to involve civil society, states-parties, and other stakeholders can at least help to fill the leadership gap. These groups may want to consider ways of better deconflicting and coordinating their work.
Establishing an NPT Support Structure
Finally, the NPT needs support structures outside of formal NPT diplomatic processes. Given the deadlock at the past three review conferences, Nakamitsu emphasized that future work to strengthen the treaty should use “all avenues inside and outside of NPT processes.”30 She mentioned the first review conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, set for November 30-December 4, and the First Committee as examples of such processes where progress can be made, even without the consent of nuclear-weapon states.
In addition, a civil society group of eminent NPT experts that can react to nuclear crises, support NPT diplomacy, and drive issues forward could help to support NPT disarmament and nonproliferation goals. The next five years are likely to be stormy for the treaty. China, Russia, and the United States have been taking steps to resume testing, should one of the others go first. Threats of withdrawal from the treaty are lingering and proliferation pressures are building, including among countries that traditionally have supported the NPT. Regional wars, including those against Ukraine and in the Middle East, are taking place under the shadow of nuclear threats. Cooperation on peaceful uses of nuclear energy has become a geopolitical battleground, rather than a shared endeavor, as intended.
A group of senior experts, from different regions, could help build political support for tackling such challenges through the NPT and associated institutions.31 They could develop practical ideas for key middle powers to take forward within the NPT structure and build consistent support over time.
With the next NPT preparatory committee scheduled to take place in 2028, the temptation for governments to move on to other issues will be great, but this would be a mistake. Multilateral structures need constant tending. Nakamitsu warned that “we are really on a trajectory toward a very dangerous path” when it comes to nuclear weapons.32 The time to tackle the nonproliferation regime’s problems is now, even if the resumption of formal NPT diplomacy still seems far away.
ENDNOTES
1. Libby Flatoff, and Daryl G. Kimball, “2026 NPT Review Conference Stymied by Disputes,” Arms Control Today, June 2026.
2. Adam Scheinman and Mark Goodman, “How to salvage the NPT Review Conference,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 27, 2026.
3. David Brunnstrom, “US, Iran clash at UN after Tehran gets nuclear non-proliferation role,” Reuters, April 27, 2026.
4. Different perspectives on the outcome of the review conference can be found in “Experts Assess NPT Review Conference,” Arms Control Today, June 2026; and “ELN reflections: 2026 NPT Review Conference,” European Leadership Network, May 13, 2026.
5. The meetings will take place in 2028 in Vienna, in 2029 in Geneva and in 2030 in New York. See “Decision on the next Review Cycle,” 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, NPT/CONF.2026/DEC.2., 2026.
6. United Nations, “(17th Meeting) Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, UN Web TV, May 22, 2026.
7. Daryl Kimball and Kingston Reif, “NPT Conference Fails to Reach Consensus,” Arms Control Today, June 2015.
8. Gabriela Rosa Hernandez and Daryl Kimball, “Russia Blocks NPT Conference Consensus Over Ukraine,” Arms Control Today, September 2022.
9. “Implementation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons for Its Twelfth Review Cycle,” 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, NPT/CONF.2026/CRP.4, May 21, 2026.
10. Mark Goodman, “The 11th NPT Review Conference ends with a whimper,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 27, 2026.
11. William C. Potter, “Behind the Scenes: How Not to Negotiate an Enhanced NPT Review Process,” Arms Control Today, October 2023.
12. Ways to address attacks on civilian nuclear facilities was the other issue where “brackets were not visible,” as Viet noted after the conference had closed. See “NPT Review Conference Fails to Reach Agreement for Third Consecutive Time - Press Conference,” United Nations on YouTube, May 22, 2026.
14. “New Agenda Coalition (NAC) Closing Meeting Statement,” New Agenda Coalition, May 22, 2026.
15. Matthew Sharp, “The U.S. Has Been Central to the NPT Since the Beginning. What Will It Do in 2026?” Arms Control Today, April 2026.
17. Thomas Countryman, “P5 perspectives on the 2026 NPT Review Conference: United States,” European Leadership Network, March 27, 2026.
18. UN Web TV final session video recording on May 22, 2026.
19. “Joint Statement on Integrating Gender Perspectives in the NPT Review Cycle,” Government of Canada, April 29, 2026.
20. “Joint Statement on Gender, Diversity and Inclusion at the 10th NPT Review Conference,” Government of Canada, August 4, 2022.
21. Marco Rubio, “Withdrawal from Wasteful, Ineffective, or Harmful International Organizations,” U.S. Department of State, January 7, 2026.
22. Diya Ashtakala, “How China uses the Non-Aligned Movement to avoid nuclear accountability,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 8, 2026.
23. On the concept of norm entrepreneurs in the NPT, see Harald Müller and Carmen Wunderlich, “Not lost in contestation: How norm entrepreneurs frame norm development in the nuclear nonproliferation regime,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 39, No. 3 (2018), pp. 341-366.
24. Adedeji Ebo and Katherine Prizeman, “Revisiting consensus in multilateral disarmament negotiations: Trends, challenges and the way forward,” UN Office for Disarmament Affairs Occasional Papers, No. 47 (February 2026).
25. Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung conversation with Gustavo Zlauvinen, “Webinar: The NPT Review Conference,” Multilateraler Dialog KAS on YouTube, September 8, 2022.
26. European Leadership Network, “ELN Webinar: Three strikes and we’re out? What’s next for the NPT Review Process?” European Leadership Network (ELN) on YouTube, August 25, 2026.
27. UN Web TV final session video recording on May 22, 2026.
28. “NPT Review Conference Fails to Reach Agreement for Third Consecutive Time.”
29. On the role of minilateral formats in the NPT see for example Megan Dee, “Minilateralism and effective multilateralism in the global nuclear order,” Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2024), pp. 494-524.
30. NPT Review Conference Fails to Reach Agreement for Third Consecutive Time.
31. In the 1990s, the Programme for Promoting Nuclear Nonproliferation played a similar role around the 1995 review and extension conference. See Michal Onderco, “The Programme for Promoting Nuclear Non-Proliferation and the NPT Extension,” The International History Review, Vol. 42, No. 4 (2020), pp. 851-868.
32. “NPT Review Conference Fails to Reach Agreement for Third Consecutive Time.”