“The Disarmament Deficit and the Risk of a New Arms Race: A Call for Action to Implement Unfulfilled Article VI Obligations”

April 30, 2025

As Prepared for Delivery by Shizuka Kuramitsu, Research Assistant, Arms Control Association

The success of the global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament system and our collective efforts to avert nuclear catastrophe have always relied on effective dialogue and diplomacy between the nuclear-weapon states to reduce the role, number, and salience of nuclear weapons.

With encouragement and pressure from non-nuclear-weapon states and civil society, tangible progress has been achieved to reduce the nuclear danger, cut the number of nuclear weapons, halt, and then ban nuclear explosive testing through the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), curb the spread of nuclear weapons, and conclude the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

But today, as we approach the 80th anniversaries of the first nuclear test detonation and the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear risks are growing once again.

Human civilization remains precariously tethered to the existence of nuclear weapons and to the threat they might be used again.

As Pope Francis reminded us in his address in Nagasaki in November 2019: “Peace and international stability are incompatible with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual destruction or the threat of total annihilation.”

Nuclear disarmament is possible and necessary. Unfortunately, for more than a decade, the NPT’s five nuclear-armed states have failed to engage in productive talks on disarmament.

Nuclear-armed states are spending tens of billions of dollars each year to modernize, upgrade, and, in some cases, to expand their deadly nuclear arsenals as if they intend to keep nuclear weapons indefinitely.

Russia and the United States - which continue to hold approximately 90 percent of the global total number of nuclear weapons - have dithered, delayed on new disarmament talks, and failed to resolve disputes involving implementation of successful arms control agreements, which have helped ease tensions and reduce nuclear risks.

None of the five can credibly claim they are meeting their key NPT Article VI commitment to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,” and the goals and objectives agreed to at the 2010 and 1995 NPT Review Conferences.

While President Trump has recently spoken about his interest in “denuclearization” talks with Russia and China, and President Putin has noted his interest in discussions ahead of the expiration of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which is less than ten months away, there are no negotiations underway between the United States and Russia on nuclear arms control and disarmament.

Meanwhile, Chinese officials have stubbornly rejected U.S. proposals to engage in regular, direct talks on nuclear risk reduction or arms control. China is engaged in an effort to rapidly build up the size of its smaller but still deadly nuclear force, which independent researchers estimate to consist of more than 300 warheads on long-range missiles and perhaps 600 in total, and there is open-source information indicating that the size of China’s nuclear force may grow significantly in the coming years.

Refusing to engage at the negotiating table, combined with building an even greater nuclear destructive capacity, is a violation of China’s Article VI NPT obligations.

Progress on nuclear disarmament is stalled, and an unconstrained three-way nuclear arms race is on the horizon. The world now stands on the cusp of reversing decades of declines in nuclear stockpiles. Halting the cycle of spiraling nuclear tensions is in every nation’s interest.

Other crucial nonproliferation and disarmament agreements are being ignored or taken for granted. For example, the 1996 CTBT has effectively ended nuclear testing by the NPT nuclear weapon states, but China, the United States, and six other states have failed to ratify and have held up the treaty’s formal entry into force. Russia’s decision to de-ratify the CTBT was a counterproductive, cynical, and irresponsible action. In the United States, some former government officials who once advised President Trump have proposed a resumption of U.S. nuclear testing on the basis of the false rationale that it is necessary to maintain the U.S. arsenal.

Our civil society organizations, representing millions of voices around the globe, call on every delegation at this conference to press all NPT states-parties, in particular the nuclear five, to fully respect and accelerate the implementation of their NPT disarmament commitments and to make good on their joint commitment, issued at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, to achieve the “complete elimination of nuclear weapons.”

Specifically, as you prepare for the 2026 Review Conference, we urge all states parties to come together around the following priority action steps:

1. Demand that the United States and the Russian Federation immediately return to the nuclear arms control and disarmament negotiating table, fully implement their obligations under New START and agree on new arrangements to cap and reduce their nuclear arsenals before New START expires in 2026.

The 1987 INF Treaty is gone and the last remaining treaty limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals, the 2010 New START agreement, will expire in less than 281 days.

Without a new understanding between the United States and Russia not to build up their arsenals beyond the current New START limit of 1,550 nuclear warheads on long-range missiles and bombers, each side could, in theory, double the size of their currently deployed strategic nuclear arsenals within about two years by uploading additional warheads kept in reserve onto existing missiles.

Failure to reach such a modest and basic accord to maintain or further reduce U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear ceilings risks a complete collapse of the nuclear arms control architecture.

Negotiations between the United States and Russia on nuclear arms control have always been difficult. Achieving a new comprehensive framework could require sustained talks over many months, if not longer. The two sides have sparred for years about further cuts to their strategic stockpiles, the now-defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, sub-strategic nuclear weapons, and missile defenses, which Russia believes could negate much of its offensive retaliatory force.

The smartest approach would be for Putin and Trump to strike a simple, informal deal to maintain the existing caps set by New START (1,550 deployed warheads on no more than 700 strategic delivery systems) after the treaty expires, as long as the other side agrees to do so. They could agree to resume data exchanges and inspections, or should that not be feasible, monitor compliance through national technical means of intelligence.

Such a deal would reduce tensions, forestall a costly arms race on long-range nuclear missiles that no one can win, and buy time for talks on a broader, more durable, framework deal.

So long as Russia and the United States agree to cap their strategic deployed nuclear arsenals and work to negotiate a new nuclear arms reduction framework, the NPT’s other nuclear-armed states, China, France, and the UK, should pledge to freeze the overall size of their nuclear arsenals and to halt production of fissile material for weapons purposes.

Such an arrangement would lessen dangerous nuclear competition and create space for more intensive and wide-ranging arms control and disarmament negotiations not only between the United States and Russia, but also involving China, France, and the UK.

2. Call upon all five of the NPT’s nuclear-armed states to engage in a serious high-level dialogue that leads to a joint commitment to reduce nuclear risks and to halt and reverse a new nuclear buildup.

We urge the five NPT nuclear-armed states to raise the level of their discussions through the “P5 Process” or through other fora to negotiate and achieve tangible outcomes that help meet their Article VI-related obligations.

For example, the five could discuss China’s concept for a five-party pledge or agreement to refrain from the first use of nuclear weapons. Such a discussion would be more productive if China would provide a more specific proposal for review and would explain how its own no first use policy is consistent with its increasingly sophisticated and growing nuclear force.

In addition, the five NPT nuclear-armed states should consider how to update, implement, and multilateralize the 1973 U.S.-Soviet Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War, which requires that “if at any time there is the risk of a nuclear conflict [each side] shall immediately enter into urgent consultations…to avert this risk.”

Such a dialogue would be an important and overdue way to operationalize the January 2022 joint statement from the NPT's five nuclear-armed states that a “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

3. Jointly reaffirm their support for the de facto moratorium on nuclear testing and call upon the remaining nine CTBT hold-out states to take concrete action before the 2026 NPT Review Conference to ratify the CTBT.

The CTBT is a foundational element of the NPT system. The resumption of nuclear testing by any NPT state-party would lead to a dangerous chain reaction of nuclear testing and could likely blow apart the NPT regime.

NPT states-parties, and the five nuclear-armed states-parties in particular, should issue joint statements reaffirming their support for the de-facto global nuclear test moratorium and compliance with and entry into force of the CTBT itself.

The last such statement from the five NPT nuclear-armed states in support of the CTBT was issued in the form of UN Security Council Resolution 2310 in September 2016.

In the meantime, NPT states-parties should also demand that the nuclear-armed states refrain from threats to resume nuclear testing and actively press them to agree on new technical measures to build confidence that any ongoing nuclear experiments at their former test sites are fully compliant with the zero-yield CTBT.

Work to advance these and other disarmament goals must continue well beyond this meeting and be pursued at the UN General Assembly, at the UN Security Council, and at the highest levels in bilateral and multilateral meetings, and beyond.

4. Condemn threats of nuclear use as “inadmissible” and illegal.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States issued various kinds of nuclear threats and alerts, before the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and after. In recent years, the world has witnessed a resurgence of irresponsible nuclear rhetoric.

In August 2017, President Trump engaged in a dangerous round of tit-for-tat taunts with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, threatening North Korea with nuclear “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Following his decision to illegally invade Ukraine in 2022, President Putin issued a series of threats of nuclear use, which were designed to shield its assault against a non-nuclear-weapon state. Such rhetoric is irresponsible and as the G-20 Group of Nations declared in 2022 and 2023, “it is inadmissible.”

The leaders of the world’s nuclear-armed states must recognize that for the majority of the states-parties to the NPT (which are non-nuclear-weapon states), nuclear weapons and the deterrence strategies of the nuclear-armed states represent a grave threat to their security.

As explained in a new report issued by states-parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, “the nuclear policies of all nuclear-armed States are based on implicit or explicit nuclear threats, which create an aggregated and interconnected set of global and existential risks that undermine the security of States not engaged in this practice. From this perspective, the theory of nuclear deterrence is a highly precarious gamble: one that no human being or Government should be entrusted to make.”

Presidents Trump, Putin, Xi, and the other leaders of the nuclear-armed states are gambling with the lives of every person on the planet. At some point, nuclear deterrence will fail, with catastrophic results.

To improve humanity’s odds of survival, we demand that they follow through on their obligation under Article VI of the 1968 NPT to engage in good-faith negotiations to reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons and to achieve nuclear disarmament.

Embarking on a safer path through disarmament diplomacy is imperative.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rebecca Eleanor Johnson, Executive Director, Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy (AIDD)       

Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director, Arms Control Association

Thomas Countryman, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control, Chair of the Board of Directors, Arms Control Association

Peter Wilk MD, Administrative Chair, Back from the Brink Coalition

Tong Zhao, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace*

Fmr. Congressman John Tierney, Executive Director, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and Council for a Livable World

Oliver Meier, Policy andResearch Director, European Leadership Network*

Hans Kristensen, Director, Nuclear Information Project, Federation of American Scientists*

Matt Korda, Associate Director, Nuclear Information Project, Federation of American Scientists*

Goetz Neuneck, Prof. Dr., Chair, Federation of German Scientists*

Melissa Parke, Executive Director, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Carlo Trezza, Ambassador, former Italian ambassador for Disarmament and Nonproliferation and Chairman of MTCR

David Cortright, Visiting Scholar, Cornell University, Fourth Freedom Forum*

Balkrishna Kurvey, Indian Institute for Peace Disarmament & Environmental Protection*

Marc Finaud, Vice President, Initiatives pour le Désarmement Nucléaire (IDN)

Blaise Imbert, Treasurer, Initiatives pour le Désarmement Nucléaire (IDN)

Mathilda Caron, Secretary General, Initiatives pour le Désarmement Nucléaire (IDN)

Patrick Zahnd, Professor, Board member, Initiative pour le Désarmement Nucléaire (IDN)

Kenji Urata, Professor Emeritus, Waseda University, retired Vice-president International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms*

Michael Christ , Executive Director, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)

Chuck Johnson, Director, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War - Geneva Liaison Office

Mario D'Acunto, Scientist, Institute of Biophysics, Italian National Research Council (CNR)*

Carmela Trimarchi, Doctor, Italian National Research Council (CNR)*

Francesco Lenci, Retired CNR Research Director, Italian Union of Scientists for Disarmament (USPID)

Hideo Asano, Coordinator, Japan Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Dr. Deepshikha K Vijh, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Maria Grazia Ortore, Prof, PhD, Marche Polytechnic University*

Benetick Kabua Maddison, Executive Director, Marshallese Educational Initiative

Kazumi MATSUI, President, Mayors for Peace*

Susan F. Burk, former Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation, and Member of U.S. Delegations to 1985, 1995, and 2010 NPT Review Conferences

John Holum, former Director, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, former Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security

Aaron Tovish, Senior Adviser, NoFirstUse Global

Dr. Abdul H. Nayyar, Pakistan Peace Coalition

Akira Kawasaki, Executive Committee member, Peace Boat

Dr. Tatsujiro Suzuki, President, Peace Depot

John Hallam, Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner, People for Nuclear Disarmament/Human Survival Project

Brian Campbell, Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility

Denise Duffield, Associate Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles

Sean Arent, Nuclear Weapons Abolition Program Manager, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Washington

Emma Belcher, President, Ploughshares

Frank N. von Hippel, Professor of Public and International Affairs emeritus, Princeton University, Program on Science and Global Security

Emma Claire Foley, Defuse Nuclear War Campaign Director for Roots Action

Francesco Calogero, Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy, former Secretary General, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs*

Hirotsugu Terasaki, Director General for Peace and Global Issues, Soka Gakkai International

Dr. Jennifer Allen Simons, The Simons Foundation Canada

Scott Yundt, Executive Director, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs)

Velia Minicozzi, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, University of Rome Tor Vergata*

Francesco Stellato, Professor, University of Rome Tor Vergata*

Giorgio Rispoli, Professor, University of Ferrara*

Andrea Laforgia, Professor at University of Rome, retired, Università di Roma*

Eleonora Alfinito, Professor, Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy*

Elena K. Sokova, Executive Director, Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation*

Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation

Camilla Braito and Ayleen Roy, Representatives, Youth Fusion Abolition 2000

*Institution listed for identification purposes only.