Every five years, officials from state parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, gather to review the operations of the treaty and make recommendations for further action to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The latest such Review Conference wrapped up last week at U.N. headquarters without an agreed-upon outcome document—the third time in a row this has happened.
Disarmament analysts, civil society organizations and media outlets have uniformly painted this as a troubling failure. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons blames the nuclear weapons states and their allies for the deadlock. The U.S. blames countries who did not support its stance on Iran. Some observers view the failure as another step in the “crumbling” of the nuclear order. But this view, while understandable, is neither fair nor entirely accurate.
To be sure, the nuclear nonproliferation system is under strain. Of the 191 states that have ratified the NPT, the treaty permits five—the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K. and France—to possess nuclear weapons on the condition that they will work together to prevent others from obtaining them and take good-faith steps toward disarmament. (India, Pakistan, Israel and South Sudan have not signed the NPT, while North Korea initially ratified it but withdrew in 2003.) The other signatories pledged not to acquire the weapons at all, in exchange for the right to peaceful nuclear technology. Today, however, key nuclear-armed states are slowing or reversing decades of progress toward disarmament.