March 2026 
By Mark Goodman

The peaceful use of nuclear energy is a central element of nuclear nonproliferation policy and will feature prominently in the 2026 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference April-May in New York. It  
can be a unifying issue when it is recognized as a shared benefit that rests on shared principles, but it can become divisive when it leads to disputes over rights.

Developing countries often complain that their legal rights to the peaceful use of nuclear technology are being infringed by export controls applied by technology holders. Such disagreements raise questions about the nature of those rights and whether they have, in fact, been infringed and practical questions about how to bridge differences between nuclear suppliers and developing countries.

Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy

In the context of nuclear nonproliferation policy, peaceful use of nuclear energy refers not just to nuclear reactors that generate electricity, but also to the non-power applications of nuclear science and technology in areas such as radiation therapy for cancer and food preservation in agriculture. Unlike nuclear power, which is currently used in 31 countries, these non-power applications are nearly ubiquitous.

The NPT is the legal foundation of efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. It recognizes five states—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—as nuclear-weapon states and commits all other parties to forsake nuclear weapons. As part of the bargain, the treaty recognizes the right of states to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and its parties agree to facilitate exercise of that right.¹

The treaty addresses this issue primarily in Article IV (see Figure 1), stating in its first paragraph that the NPT does not affect the right of states to develop and use nuclear energy. The treaty does not grant this right; it recognizes it as part of the broader sovereign right of states to use natural resources to serve their national interests. The NPT also does not expand this right; it says it must be exercised in conformity with the nonproliferation obligations in Articles I and II and subject to the international monitoring required by Article III. A nuclear program inconsistent with those articles—one that operates in secret or involves the production or transfer of nuclear weapons—is not protected by this right.

The second paragraph of Article IV expresses the right of states to engage in nuclear cooperation and commerce by participating in “the fullest possible exchange” of material, equipment, and information for peaceful use of nuclear energy. This provision does not just recognize rights; it also establishes specific obligations: that all NPT parties facilitate that “fullest possible exchange” and that states “in a position to do so” contribute to the further development of peaceful applications of nuclear technology “with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.” These two obligations provide concrete benefits for all NPT parties, recognizing the particular needs of developing countries.²

Article III, which provides for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to apply safeguards to monitor the peaceful nuclear programs of non-nuclear-weapon-states, contains a related provision. It states that “safeguards … shall be implemented in a manner designed to comply with Article IV of this Treaty, and to avoid hampering the economic or technological development of the Parties or international co-operation in the field of peaceful nuclear activities.” Although IAEA safeguards should not impede peaceful nuclear programs, this provision does not limit the ability to impose penalties if a state fails to comply with its safeguards obligation, or if the IAEA cannot verify that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

Differing Interpretations

Since the NPT was negotiated in the 1960s, there have been disagreements over specific rights to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The disputes center on what the rights in the NPT mean and, beyond what the NPT specifically provides, what rights states should have. Developing countries often complain that nuclear export controls,³ which reinforce the NPT but go beyond its requirements, infringe their rights, although there is little empirical evidence to support this.⁴

Some states have asserted not only the sovereign right to make decisions about their nuclear energy and fuel cycle programs, but also the obligation of other states to respect those decisions. Iran, in particular, claims that international sanctions imposed over its nuclear program and attacks on its nuclear facilities violate its rights under the NPT. When the nature of these rights is in dispute, it can clarify matters to focus on what the NPT requires, what it permits, and what it prohibits.

During the NPT negotiations and since, some states have sought explicit recognition of a right to all parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing. Uranium enrichment can be used to produce nuclear reactor fuel as well as highly enriched uranium for weapons, while reprocessing of spent fuel can be used to produce plutonium for weapons. The NPT is silent on this issue. Although the treaty does not establish an explicit right to any specific nuclear technology,⁵ it generally permits enrichment and reprocessing if these technologies are not used to produce nuclear weapons.

The NPT negotiating record and the U.S. NPT ratification record both support this understanding. The United States told other states during the NPT negotiations that enriching uranium and stockpiling enriched uranium were not prohibited if the enrichment process and the enriched uranium product were placed under IAEA safeguards to verify that the process was not misused and the product was not diverted for weapons. The Lyndon Johnson administration told the U.S. Senate the same thing during NPT ratification hearings in 1968.⁶

Although there is a presumption that nuclear activities carried out under IAEA safeguards are peaceful, that presumption is not absolute. If a state violates IAEA safeguards, either by diverting nuclear material or by carrying out nuclear activities in secret, that presumption would no longer be justified. In 2003, for example, the IAEA confirmed allegations that Iran was pursuing nuclear activities it had not declared to the agency, and its Board of Governors subsequently found Iran in noncompliance with its safeguards obligations.⁷ The United States concluded that Iran’s undeclared nuclear program was intended to produce nuclear weapons,⁸ a violation of its NPT Article II obligation, and the IAEA later reported information on the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.⁹ The Iranian case shows that the question of whether specific nuclear fuel cycle activities are permitted depends not on the rights expressed in Article IV but on the specific prohibitions and requirements in Articles I, II, and III.

Right of Access to Nuclear Technology

Developing countries also have asserted that third parties’ efforts to limit access to nuclear technology violate their right to develop all elements of the nuclear fuel cycle. They argue that the “fullest possible exchange” should entail giving states full access to nuclear fuel cycle technology. They object to restrictions on “sensitive” fuel cycle technologies, arguing that the NPT does not distinguish between “sensitive” and other nuclear technologies.

But Article IV does not spell out a right of access to any specific nuclear technology, nor does it impose an obligation on countries that hold such technology to provide it to others. The negotiating record shows that this lack of specificity was deliberate.¹⁰ Several countries proposed amendments that would have spelled out rights to fuel cycle technology and obligations to supply nuclear fuel, but those amendments were not adopted. The United States made clear that the undertaking to “facilitate the fullest possible exchange” of nuclear technology would not override existing laws, policies, or regulations, including intellectual property rights and export control policies, and was not intended to compel suppliers to provide nuclear material or technology.¹¹

Over the years, developing countries have charged that some nuclear export controls and sanctions measures violate Article IV. They do not object to all export controls, as the NPT itself requires IAEA safeguards controls on exports of nuclear material and specialized nuclear equipment, a form of export control.¹² The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has developed export control guidelines that go beyond what the NPT requires.¹³ The guidelines cover dual-use equipment and technology and impose stricter controls on sensitive nuclear technologies, including enrichment and reprocessing.

Although some countries object that these controls impede nuclear cooperation, most recognize that the NSG multilateral export control guidelines reinforce the NPT nonproliferation goals. Suppliers argue that export controls facilitate cooperation by building confidence that the fruits of that cooperation will not be misused or diverted to make weapons.¹⁴ The NPT does not bar states from imposing such controls or from entering into agreements that lay out the terms for nuclear cooperation between governments, as most NSG members do.

Sanctions have been used as a nonproliferation enforcement tool in cases of noncompliance. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions against Iraq, North Korea, and Iran in response to findings of noncompliance by the IAEA board. Those sanctions—based on provisions of the UN Charter giving the Security Council responsibility for maintaining international peace and security—imposed restrictions on nuclear activities and cooperation. The IAEA similarly suspended the rights and privileges of membership in cases of noncompliance. The UN and the IAEA predate the NPT, and the NPT did not affect their ability to impose those sanctions.

UN sanctions often begin with nuclear constraints but later expand to include broad economic measures designed to pressure a country to comply. States have also imposed sanctions that go beyond the UN requirements. Complaints about sanctions generally focus on their economic and humanitarian impact and their unilateral nature, rather than on the limits they place on nuclear cooperation.

Leading nuclear suppliers have sought to limit the spread of enrichment and reprocessing through export controls and  also by providing incentives for states to rely on international markets for nuclear fuel. They argue that reliable supplies of enriched uranium, backed by formal supply assurance mechanisms, would enable states to avoid the cost and technical challenge of developing domestic enrichment capabilities.¹⁵

However, when U.S. President George W. Bush proposed in 2004 to provide reliable access to nuclear reactor fuel to countries that would renounce enrichment and reprocessing,¹⁶ some reacted with suspicion that this was an attempt to deprive them of their right to nuclear fuel cycle technology. Yet voluntary participation in fuel supply assurances can contribute to nonproliferation and can help resolve cases of noncompliance.¹⁷

Practical Impacts

The historical record shows steady expansion of international cooperation that helps NPT parties enjoy the benefits of peaceful uses of nuclear energy, science, and technology. Although it predates the NPT, the IAEA has been one of the main vehicles for developing peaceful nuclear energy applications and providing assistance to help NPT members use nuclear technology to meet their national development needs in energy, health, agriculture, industry, and resource management.

Since the NPT opened for signature in 1968, the IAEA’s annual expenditures for such assistance have risen steadily from $2.5 million in 1968 to $156 million in 2024. This increase is about 50 percent more than can be explained by increases in prices, population, and IAEA membership; it is also roughly 50 percent more than the increase in global GDP.

The NPT helped drive this growth. Donors have given additional funds to IAEA projects that assisted NPT parties as a tangible benefit of joining the treaty and a concrete demonstration of their commitment to the NPT bargain. At the NPT Review Conference in 2010, the United States and Japan helped launch the IAEA Peaceful Uses Initiative and other donors have since contributed.¹⁸

Successive IAEA directors-general have launched a series of flagship initiatives to meet development needs using nuclear technology. For example, the Rays of Hope initiative is expanding access to radiation therapy to treat cancer in low- and middle-income countries.¹⁹ Another example is the sterile insect technique, which uses radiation to sterilize male insects and suppress diseases that plague people and livestock, such as sleeping sickness in Africa and screwworm in the Americas.²⁰

Most nuclear cooperation takes place through agreements between governments and contracts between companies. This type of cooperation spurred the expansion of nuclear power from just six countries in 1968 to over 30 countries today. In 2025, more than 30 countries set a goal of tripling nuclear power use by 2050 as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit climate change.²¹ The use of nuclear research reactors for research, training, and the production of radioisotopes for medical and other uses has spread to all corners of the globe, and the use of radioisotopes and other radiation techniques is practically universal.

Debates over the scope and nature of rights to the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes tend to be both bitter and pointless. Some states will object to text that asserts a right of access to certain technologies, just as others will object to text calling for constraints on such access. Expressions of rights have no practical effect, and the only text that can gain consensus is one that quotes or refers to provisions of the NPT without elaboration.

Rather than debating rights in the abstract, the 2026 NPT Review Conference would do well to focus on practical actions that help further realize those rights. In the multilateral context, the record is quite strong. NPT review conferences have provided the impetus to make additional resources available to meet developing countries’ needs. The last treaty review cycle saw a new focus on ways to better align the application of nuclear technology cooperation with development needs and to mobilize international development assistance to make that technology more widely available.²²

To reach consensus, the next review conference will need to navigate a few potential sticking points. Iran will likely assert that Israeli and U.S. attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities last June violated the NPT because they infringed upon Iran’s right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Many countries, but not all, consider attacks on nuclear facilities to violate the laws of war. The 2022 NPT Review Conference foundered because Russia blocked consensus over text critical of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine that year, including its attacks on and seizure of Ukrainian nuclear facilities. As with past review conferences, reaching consensus will depend on finding a formulation that treats this issue in a generic manner rather than insisting on text that explicitly criticizes any one of the participating countries.

Another delicate issue is how to address the uses of nuclear energy and nuclear technology for sustainable development in light of the U.S. positions on those issues. The United States sought to delete or limit references to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and climate change in the resolutions adopted by the IAEA General Conference in 2025. There is no path to consensus by isolating the United States, so negotiators will need flexibility to replace specific terms with more general references to international development assistance and national development needs, and to replace endorsement of disputed points with factual statements.

The upcoming review conference will face many issues on which views are divided, but there are time-tested ways to bridge those divisions if the parties have the political will to find them.

ENDNOTES

1. Mark Goodman, “Common misconceptions about the NPT: A practitioner’s guide,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 14, 2025.

2. The preamble to the NPT contains similar text, expressed in terms of principles rather than legal requirements.

3. Giovanna Maletta, Mark Bromley, and Kolja Brockmann, “Non-Proliferation, Nuclear Technology and Peaceful Uses: Examining the Role and Impact of Export Controls,” EU Nonproliferation Consortium, Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Papers, No. 95 (April 2025).

4. Goodman, 2025.

5. Henry Sokolski and Sharon Squassoni, “Actually, the NPT doesn’t guarantee a right to make nuclear fuel,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 15, 2025.

6. Mohamed Shaker, The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Origin and Implementation 1959-1979, Vol. I (1980), p. 251. The United States and the Soviet Union co-chaired the NPT negotiating committee, jointly drafted its text, and jointly decided how to respond to amendments proposed by other countries, so U.S. statements on this matter can be considered authoritative.

7. IAEA Board of Governors, “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Resolution adopted September 24, 2005 (GOV/2005/77).

8. U.S. Department of State, “Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments,” August 2025, p. 80; Gregory F. Treverton, “CIA Support to Policymakers: The 2007 NIE on Iran’s Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, May 2013, p. 16.

9. IAEA Director-General, “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” November 8, 2011.

10. Shaker, 1980, pp. 293-338.

11. U.S. Department of State, “The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency During the Johnson Administration,” Vol. II, Part II.B: “Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” FOIA Library case M-2018-04281, pp. 378, 426.

12. The Zangger Committee was established in 1971 to develop a common understanding of the NPT Article III.2 requirement to apply safeguards for exports of specialized nuclear equipment. It published its control list in 1974 and provides regular updates.

13. The Nuclear Suppliers Group was established in 1974 following India's nuclear test. It published export control guidelines in 1977 and provides regular updates to its control lists and guidelines, responding to changes in technology and proliferation-related events.

14. Kolja Brockmann, Mark Bromley, and Giovanna Maletta, “Implications of the UN resolutions on ‘international cooperation on peaceful uses’: Balancing non-proliferation and economic development,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, December 11, 2024.

15. IAEA, “Nuclear fuel assurance,” webpage accessed February 13, 2026.

16. The White House, “President Announces New Measures to Counter the Threat of WMD,” remarks to the press by President Bush at the National Defense University, February 11, 2004.

17. Frank von Hippel, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian, and Seyed Hossein Mousavian, “A nuclear consortium in the Persian Gulf as a basis for a new nuclear deal between the United States and Iran,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 2, 2025.

18. IAEA, Peaceful Uses Initiative (PUI), webpage accessed February 13, 2026.

19. IAEA, Rays of Hope, webpage accessed February 13, 2026.

20. IAEA, Sterile Insect Technique, webpage accessed February 13, 2026.

21. IAEA spokeswoman Mary Albon, “Two More Countries Join Global Pledge to Triple Nuclear Energy by 2050,” November 24, 2025.

22. UN Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, “Update on the Sustained Dialogue on Peaceful Uses to Support Enhanced Cooperation as Envisioned under Article IV of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” working paper submitted by 37 countries, August 1, 2023 (NPT/CONF.2026/PC.I/WP.29).

March 2026
By Georgi Ivanov

A growing narrative within U.S. strategic circles frames the deepening partnership between China and Russia as a monolithic, coordinated threat, particularly in the military domain. This perspective finds support from various analysts who posit the two nations as a single challenge and explore ways to counter their alignment. More importantly, this view is embedded in official U.S. strategic documents, notably the 2022 National Defense Strategy focus on a “near-simultaneous conflict with two nuclear-armed states,” a concept that the Atlantic Council discusses as “collaborative Chinese-Russian aggression in both theaters.”¹

This might be a misleading construct, however. A closer examination reveals that Beijing and Moscow are not a joint military peer but separate and distinct competitors whose differing doctrines and competing strategic objectives prevent any meaningful integration of their strategic military capabilities.

The perception of a combined threat serves as a valuable political narrative. It rationalizes the U.S. military buildup by framing the separate modernization efforts of China and Russia as a unified challenge, which in turn justifies a significant portion of U.S. defense spending and the need to maintain its dominant military position. One example is the U.S. development of expensive hypersonic weapon programs such as the Army’s Long-range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), which is positioned as a necessary counterweight to China’s growing medium-range systems (including the Dongfeng-17 and the latest Dongfeng-26 variants) and Russia’s medium-range hypersonic missiles, such as the Zircon and Oreshnik.

Yet these Chinese and Russian systems were designed to provide attack options against potential regional adversaries, not the United States itself. Both countries already have intercontinental ballistic missiles to hold the U.S. homeland at risk. In contrast, according to a Congressional Research Service report, the Army’s new Multidomain Task Force, in which the LRHW is a key component, is explicitly structured to counter China and Russia.² It is planned that the second task force, which supports the European theater of operations, will be deployed in Germany, while the first, third, and fourth task forces will be deployed to the Indo-Pacific region.

‘Us versus Them’

This “us versus them” framework allows the United States to further set agendas and rally resources effectively at both domestic and international levels. At the same time, this perception also introduces substantial dangers. It can misguide policymakers, lead to unrealistic strategic assessments, and deepen distrust in the strategic environment, ultimately undermining arms control and escalating risks to strategic stability.

The core of the narrative is the overstated potential for nuclear cooperation between China and Russia. Their nuclear doctrines are fundamentally misaligned: Russia employs a nuclear first-use strategy backed by a nuclear-sharing policy that asserts the right to use tactical nuclear weapons,³ while China adheres to a strict no-first-use policy, viewing its arsenal as a minimal deterrent. Although China’s nuclear modernization program prompts speculation about a future doctrinal shift, no concrete evidence suggests that such a change is currently under consideration by Beijing.

Crucially, there is no integration of both states’ command-and-control systems—the most sovereign of military functions—thus precluding joint operational planning in the strategic nuclear domain. For both states to be considered a dual threat, the last requirement necessarily must be met. Relying on concepts such as sequential nuclear deterrence, the process of testing each other’s boundaries step-by-step, is a risky strategy. Rather than reinforcing stability, it undermines arms control and acts as an obstacle to strategic predictability. Furthermore, Chinese and Russian nuclear postures reflect different stages of development: Russia possesses a mature, large-scale arsenal built over decades, while China has just begun expansion of its strategic forces. This adds to the problem of differing military capabilities, which inform different strategies and make it more complicated for further cooperation in the military sphere.

The operational divide between Beijing and Moscow is compounded by divergent and often competing foreign policy priorities. Militarily, Russia remains predominantly oriented toward Europe and Ukraine, despite its claimed “pivot to the East.”⁴ China, on the other hand, directs its resources and attention to the Indo-Pacific region as the primary theater of competition with the United States. This divergence is evident in the Chinese and Russian approaches to regional disputes: China maintains a position of neutrality on the military conflict in Ukraine, seeking to preserve a relative status quo in economic relations with the European Union, while Russia is deepening cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,⁵ some of whom, such as the Philippines, are in a confrontation with China in the South China Sea.

Russia’s Own Agenda

These factors demonstrate that Russia’s goal in the region is not to support China’s strategic interests but to pursue its own agenda of diplomatic and economic cooperation.⁶ The same could be said for China regarding its European interests. Beijing actively avoids formal obligations of a potential military alliance with Moscow, understanding that such a pact would demand significant resources and run the risk of having Western sanctions imposed on its business affairs.⁷ Thus, a defense agreement, essential for conducting joint military operations in any domain, automatically would raise the question of entangling both states in each other’s regional issues.

Simultaneously, a military alliance between the two states would not only include integrated planning of potential conventional military scenarios but would carry a nuclear dimension. The last issue remains an area where both states are far from agreement, as it would raise the question of hierarchy and directly infringe upon their sovereignty. A formal alliance would also impose legal and policy constraints that are difficult to reconcile with the need to preserve consensus, not only on external conflict issues, but also on cooperation with third parties. Taken together, these factors risk undermining their longstanding separate identities as autonomous centers of power.

A more precise interpretation would be to consider the two countries not simply as a cohesive counterweight to the West, but rather as autonomous strategic players with often divergent interests. That is not to say that China and Russia do not share similar trajectories or interests in countering and deterring U.S. influence. Still, it would be a significant misinterpretation to present them as interconnected, dependent forces, informal military, or even nuclear-weapon allies. They enjoy close political ties, perform joint military drills, exchange technologies, and cooperate economically, yet they also harbor hidden insecurities about each other. As highlighted in a 2022 Center for Strategic and International Studies report, these underlying weaknesses, including enduring historical distrust and a significant power imbalance, fundamentally define their relationship.⁸

Acknowledging that strategic overextension resulting from a dual-threat policy is unsustainable, U.S. President Donald Trump´s administration has shifted from a “Pax Americana” to a “Pact Americana” framework.⁹ Although the core U.S. strategic objective of deterring two competitors on two fronts is retained, the operational and tactical approaches to its implementation were revised. This new model entails a deliberate delegation of military and economic responsibilities to allied and partner nations.

Consequently, deterrence within the dual-threat framework would be maintained not primarily through direct, unilateral U.S. engagement, but via a network of empowered regional collaborators, meaning that alliances must deliver measurable benefits rather than rely predominantly on U.S. commitments. European NATO allies offer a notable example, as they are now increasing defense spending and making concerted efforts to assume greater responsibility for their own security.

The August 2025 U.S.-Russia summit produced slight signals of a shift away from the U.S. dual threat policy toward diplomatic engagement between the two nuclear-armed states. Nonetheless, these overtures remained circumscribed to the diplomatic domain and did not alter core military posturing. Concurrent military modernization initiatives, such as the Trump administration’s “Golden Dome” missile defense program, continue unabated. As specialists note, such programs could alter the foundational calculus of strategic deterrence, indicating that military preparedness for dual-front engagement remained an overriding priority for the United States.¹⁰

Similarly, recent developments such as heightened diplomatic engagement among China, North Korea and Russia, including public pledges for deeper ties, are cited sometimes as evidence of a consolidating bloc.¹¹ Yet, a symbolic demonstration of unity also should not automatically be interpreted as a sign of underlying strategic unanimity. States can show strength and cooperate closely in certain areas while maintaining fundamental conceptual disagreements on core issues of foreign policy and military strategy. This is evident even within established alliances. One example is NATO, where members Hungary and Slovakia have diverged from consensus on issues such as support for Ukraine, thus prioritizing distinct national interests over bloc solidarity.

No Guarantee of Strategic Alignment

In other words, an alliance is not a guarantee of strategic alignment and readiness for coordinated action, let alone a strategic partnership without any formal military obligations. Although ties between China and North Korea, and between North Korea and Russia may be deepening, the foundational bilateral concerns between China and Russia persist. A show of strength is precisely that—a diplomatic and strategic signal; it does not automatically resolve inherent divergences in national interest or fully integrate complex security architectures. A true military integration between China and Russia would require binding measures far exceeding their current cooperation, compelling them to act as a single entity. At the moment, such a development remains doubtful, given political and economic circumstances.

To frame Beijing and Moscow as a monolithic threat rather than independent strategic actors is to engage in a strategic overassessment, one that risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy by driving policies that push these separate competitors closer together than their natural interests would dictate. Formulating national strategies through a dual‑threat lens, constructing adversarial narratives, and operationalizing them in policy produces precisely the expected result. The adversaries constructed by such discourse are compelled to respond to the measures enacted against them.

Recent developments, such as missile defense consultations between China and Russia in November 2025,¹² illustrate this dynamic. These discussions, meant as a signal to Western policymakers, can plausibly be traced to prior U.S. deployments of strategic and tactical offensive missile systems in proximity to both states’ borders—most notably, the Typhon Missile System deployed in the Philippines and Denmark in 2024, followed by deployments in Australia and Japan in 2025; the LRHW system in Australia in 2025; and M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System sales to the Baltic States and Taiwan.

No comparable deployments of Chinese or Russian systems exist near U.S. borders. The hypothetical reaction of the United States to such developments, were they to occur, would be unimaginable, underscoring the profound asymmetry inherent in this dynamic. Yet the subsequent protests to U.S. missile deployments issued by Beijing and Moscow,¹³ coupled with their joint declaration to undertake coordinated countermeasures,¹⁴ are often dismissed or ignored, further exemplifying the operational logic of the dual-threat approach. Within this cycle, the initial state actor’s decisions and anticipatory framing provoke responsive actions from the targeted states. These actions are then cited as confirmation of the original threat narrative—despite the first actor’s foresight regarding the likely consequences of its own measures.

The Russia-North Korea case serves as a counterexample that fundamentally calls into question the dual-threat notion. Moscow’s alliance treaty with Pyongyang includes an explicit military clause (Article 4), promising immediate assistance by any means disposable to the parties, in the event of an armed attack on either of them.¹⁵ This provides a factual basis for analyzing a nascent alliance between two nuclear-armed states. In contrast, the status of the China-Russia relationship remains a strategic partnership, lacking any formalized military obligations. Understanding this critical distinction between a binding military commitment and enhanced situational cooperation is essential for crafting pragmatic and effective policy grounded in reality.

ENDNOTES

1. Greg Weaver and Amy Woolf, “Requirements for nuclear deterrence and arms control in a two-nuclear-peer environment,” Atlantic Council, February 2, 2024.

2. Congressional Research Service, “The Army’s Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF),” Library of Congress, December 17, 2025.

3. Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, and Mackenzie Knight, “Russian nuclear weapons,” 2025. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 81, No. 3, 2025, p. 213.

4. Nivedita Kapoor, “Russia’s Pivot to Asia – A 10-Year Policy Review,” Valdai Discussion Club, March 21, 2022.

5. Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, “Russia and ASEAN countries to sign new Strategic Cooperation Program in September 2025,” August 22, 2025.

6. Richard J. Heydarian, “Fallout: Ukraine Crisis Upends Russia’s Role in the South China Sea,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 25, 2022.

7. Vita Spivak, “How Sanctions Have Changed the Face of Chinese Companies in Russia,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 18, 2023.

8. ChinaPower Project, “What Are the Weaknesses of the China-Russia Relationship?” Center for Strategic and International Studies, accessed February 24, 2026.

9. Jahara Matisek and James Farwell, “Trump’s national security strategy: from Pax Americana to Pact Americana,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute, May 2, 2025.

10. Daryl G. Kimball, “Golden Dome: Doubling Down on a Strategic Blunder,” Arms Control Today, June 2025.

11. Nectar Gan, Yoonjung Seo, and Yong Xiong, “Xi and Kim pledge deeper ties a day after unprecedented show of unity with Putin at Chinese military parade,” CNN, September 5, 2025.

12. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, “Russia and China held consultations on missile defense and missile aspects of strategic stability,” November 11, 2025.

13. President of Russia, “Joint statement by the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on deepening comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation entering a new era in the context of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries,” May 16, 2024.

14. President of Russia, “Joint Statement by the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on further deepening comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation in a new era in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War, the Victory of the Chinese people in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the formation of the United Nations,” May 8, 2025.

15. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, “North Korean-Russian Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” December 4, 2024.

March 2026 
By Jean du Preez

Many nonproliferation pundits predict that the 2026 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, scheduled for April 27-May 22 in New York, will again fail to reach consensus, following the failures of the last two review cycles. Some say that another failure would render the treaty irrelevant, consigning the centerpiece of the international nonproliferation regime to the ever-increasing list of relics of Cold War agreements.

The divides among delegations on issues central to the NPT since its inception are as wide, if not wider, today than they were in 1995, when solemn promises were made to secure an indefinite extension of the treaty, without which it was argued the treaty would face a rather unstable future. As it turns out, 26 years later, the future of the treaty still looks rather bleak.

The 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference is one of the most significant moments in treaty history, and possibly most controversial. Its outcome was crucial for subsequent review conferences, including the successful meetings in 2000 and 2010. Yet key agreements achieved at these conferences have been long forgotten, if not shredded. Despite major differences among delegations before the 1995 Review and Extension Conference and the failed NPT preparatory committee meeting in 1999, the goals of the 1995 and 2000 conferences were to secure the NPT’s relevance and future. These outcomes were not easily achieved. They required strong commitment from states-parties to seek visionary solutions and creative leadership from key diplomatic participants.

As a South African delegate involved in his country’s preparations for the conferences in 1995 and 2000 and the agreements reached there, I have unique insights into how those events evolved and into the contributions of the late ambassador Peter Goosen, the visionary behind South Africa’s influential role. They could be useful lessons for delegates to this year’s upcoming review conference.

South Africa’s Role

Volumes have been published about South Africa’s role at the 1995 and 2000 review conferences, and the motivations and decision-making behind the outcomes produced there. Very few, if any, of these articles offered insight into the real story from the perspective of a delegation member.

South Africa was widely heralded as one of the saviors of the 1995 NPT Review and Extension conference. The conference president, Jayantha Dhanapala, acknowledged afterward that the second-most important factor leading to the indefinite extension of the NPT (the most important being unanimous resolve among states-parties to extend the treaty in some form) was that “South Africa came up with the very imaginative proposal of having a statement of principles and a strengthening of the review process. This enabled us to have the seed of an idea that led to the other two parallel decisions that were taken together with the indefinite extension.”¹

As South Africa acceded to the NPT in 1991 after dismantling its small nuclear weapons arsenal, the runup to 1995 Review and Extension Conference was the first exposure to NPT diplomacy for South African diplomats. Goosen, the principal foreign ministry official tasked with nuclear matters, participated in all but the first preparatory committee meeting. He was also the first South African to be invited to informal meetings of the former Programme for Promoting Nuclear Non-proliferation. Goosen was in listening mode at these events, in particular to understand the positions of members of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). At the time, there was very little, if any, high-level South African political interest in the NPT review process.

At the time of the third preparatory committee meeting held in September 1994, two alternative proposals emerged from the NAM: a 25-year rollover of the NPT with or without a vote of the states-parties. The meeting chair² tasked South Africa with preparing and submitting to the fourth session a legal analysis of the various extension options.³ Goosen presented the legal opinion at the January 1995 preparatory committee and identified a third, rolling option of successive periods, which would extend the treaty in perpetuity based on a positive vote of the states-parties between each of the succeeding periods.

This third option was quickly, but incorrectly, interpreted as South Africa’s position, which had not yet been considered. Analyses by the Disarmament Times and the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy further fueled this interpretation.⁴ Since this option addressed the core elements of all sides, it began to gain traction among several delegations. By proposing to extend the NPT in perpetuity, it added leverage for those seeking a mechanism to pressure the nuclear-weapon states to fulfill their commitments to disarmament under the treaty’s Article VI.

Early Strategy

A February 1995 memorandum to South African Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo recommended that the government adopt the third option as its formal position at the conference.⁵ It was noted that South Africa joined the NPT to ensure national and regional security, and that not extending the treaty in perpetuity would significantly undermine this objective. To “gain maximum political mileage” from this option, the memo recommended that “care should be taken not to expose South Africa’s tactics and position at too early a stage” because this would undermine opportunities for Pretoria to play the role of mediator between states that favor indefinite extension and the majority that did not.

The memo recommended that the legal opinion be shared with a few states, including members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), African members of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Brazil, and Indonesia, as well as Iran, India, and Pakistan, even though the latter two are not NPT parties. The memo proposed a conference strategy that would support extension of the NPT in perpetuity through rolling fixed periods with a positive vote; oppose any extension option less than in perpetuity because it would weaken the treaty; and seek support from delegations that opposed indefinite extension. It is notable that at that time, various states-parties supported periods ranging from a 5-year fixed period to 25-year long rollover periods. The memo suggested that each rollover period would last 15 years.

As is often the case in bureaucracies, especially one in which political leaders were not yet aware of the finer legal and political ramifications of the NPT, the February 27 memorandum was never officially approved by the foreign minister. Yet speculation emerged that South Africa was leaning toward supporting indefinite extension.

One factor contributing to this misconception was the use of the term, “in perpetuity,” which some delegates interpreted as meaning indefinite. As set out in the legal opinion, the third option would extend the treaty in perpetuity, with successive periods requiring a positive vote at each stage. The phrase “in perpetuity” was specifically used to differentiate this option from the flat-out indefinite extension. A second, more concise memorandum was subsequently submitted to the foreign minister to clarify that the prior recommendation did not propose indefinite extension or any of the other proposals floated by the NAM at the time.⁶

The U.S.-South Africa Binational Commission—or the Gore-Mbeki Commission, named after the two vice chairs, U.S. Vice President Al Gore and South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki—was established in 1994 to foster cooperation in areas such as health, education, and economic development. Although arms control and nonproliferation were not key features of the commission, several meetings of a sub-working group on these matters were held to discuss, inter alia, South Africa’s membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, and other related issues. The NPT extensions were never a focus of these discussions.

In the context of seeking to enhance relations between the two countries, two letters were sent to South African President Nelson Mandela in February 1995, one from the recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell, and one from President Bill Clinton, seeking South Africa’s support for an indefinite NPT extension. Apparently, Thomas Graham, a senior State Department official who led the U.S. delegation to the 1995 Review and Extension Conference, suggested that Powell write a letter to Mandela addressing the importance of an indefinite extension of the treaty in the context of U.S.-Russian bilateral arms control. It stated that, “We can improve the NPT, but history will not be kind to us if we fail to make the treaty permanent at the 1995 NPT Conference.”⁷

The letter from Clinton to Mandela on February 13 contextualized U.S. support for an indefinite extension in relation to several South African priorities: completion of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) negotiations, the commencement of negotiations on a treaty banning fissile material for nuclear weapons, and further reductions in Russian and U.S. nuclear stockpiles. Both letters were referred to Mbeki’s office, which, in turn, referred them to the author, who was then the foreign ministry desk officer for the NPT. The letters had no direct influence on South Africa’s eventual position, but they prompted a high-level meeting with the deputy president, the foreign minister, and selected senior foreign ministry officials.

High-Level Briefing

The high-level meeting with Mbeki April 1 and 2, 1995, at the Diplomatic Guest House in Pretoria, was aimed to brief Mbeki on the review and extension conference and to discuss South Africa’s position. In addition to Mbeki and his legal adviser, the meeting was attended by Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo and his adviser, Abdul S. Minty. The meeting was chaired by the head of the foreign ministry, Rusty Evans, with several ministry officials, including Goosen and Du Preez, in attendance. Goosen led the briefing and presented a chart outlining five possible options for NPT extension, the likely proponents of each, and the implications for South Africa, other countries, and the future of the treaty. The five possible options were: indefinite; fixed period (treaty will terminate after one single period); fixed periods automatic (fixed period with automatic rollover unless otherwise decided by a review conference); fixed periods with a positive vote of the NPT conference (leading to the next period); and fixed periods conditional (each review conference to set and review specific conditions, e.g., progress toward disarmament. The third option, a variant of fixed periods with a positive vote, was also explained. The chart below is a scan of the original viewgraph Goosen presented at the meeting.⁸

Chart Showing Options, Supporters for Extending NPT

Following a discussion, Mbeki sought input from his colleagues. Nzo preferred a limited extension, a position he advocated during consultations in Cairo at the end of March 1995. Minty, who accompanied Nzo to Cairo, argued for a single, fixed-period extension, believing that South Africa should support the NAM position. To the foreign ministry group’s surprise, Mbeki adamantly maintained that the treaty was too important to be jeopardized by a limited or one-time extension. He emphasized that the right of all people to not be threatened by nuclear annihilation could be equated to a basic human right, and that South Africa would therefore have no choice but to support indefinite extension without conditions. Given this principled position, Mbeki proposed that South Africa’s support for an indefinite extension be grounded in a set of “principles” that would have moral weight and could be regarded as binding without jeopardizing the NPT’s existence.⁹

Goosen and Du Preez were tasked with developing, overnight, a set of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation principles as well as measures to strengthen the NPT review process. After carefully reviewing the treaty and bearing in mind important additional related issues, Goosen prepared a concept paper on “Issues to Be Taken into Account When Considering the Proposal for Principles for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament,” with a framework proposal on how to potentially strengthen the review process, was presented to Mbeki and other high-level officials.

The set of principles was relatively simple and largely embedded in the treaty itself, including commitments to strengthen and adhere to IAEA safeguards agreements; provide access to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes; make progress on a fissile material ban convention, reducing nuclear arsenals and concluding the CTBT. Other commitments covered establishing regional nuclear-weapon-free zones and enforcing negative security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon-states.

The paper also recommended that South Africa propose the establishment of a committee to examine the existing NPT review process and recommend concrete ways to improve and strengthen it. The committee was to report to the third preparatory committee meeting for the 2000 NPT Review Conference.

In addition, the high-level meeting agreed on an implementation strategy that included a letter—from Mbeki to Gore, and drafted by Goosen—in which South Africa’s position was explained. The letter effectively responded to those sent to President Nelson Mandela by U.S. officials in February 1995. In the letter, Mbeki emphasized that “South Africa sees its nonproliferation and arms control policy as being integral to its commitment to democracy, human rights, sustainable development, social justice and environmental protection.”¹⁰ This line drew a linkage between the new democracy’s belief in fundamental human rights and values, with the freedom from nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction integral to individual rights.

The strategy also included regional discussions within SADC, the OAU, and NAM, but South Africa kept its options open and held its position close to its chest. For instance, letters to SADC foreign ministers and outreach to European Union member state ambassadors were only sent on the day the conference began.

Meanwhile, Goosen and Du Preez were dispatched to attend the NAM senior officials meeting in New York just before the start of the 1995 conference to “convince” the NAM of South Africa’s position. The NAM ministerial meeting held months earlier in Bandung, Indonesia, was supposed to adopt a common position in support of a 25-year rollover NPT extension with either a red light (rollover agreed to by majority vote) or green light (automatic rollover unless majority decides to block) approach. Having joined the NAM only in 1994, South Africa did not yet have the political gravitas to influence decisions on important issues such as international security. Despite its best diplomatic efforts to promote South Africa’s newly minted position, the delegation could at best prevent a common NAM position in support of a 25-year rollover.

Hence, there was no common NAM position going into the review and extension conference April 17, 1995. This deep divide between South African and key NAM members did not bode well for building bridges within the context of the NPT review process. In addition, senior leaders at the South Africa’s UN Mission, supported by a key adviser to the foreign minister, put significant pressure on the delegation to change Pretoria’s position and support the emerging consensus within NAM.

Nzo’s Speech and Conference Negotiations

The first draft of Nzo’s general statement to the conference was prepared by Goosen and stayed mostly intact despite efforts by a senior delegation member to change its main thrust: South Africa’s support for indefinite extension of the NPT based on a set of principles for nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. Last-ditch efforts to reach Mbeki in Pretoria, to revise the position before delivery of the statement on the second day of the conference (April 19, 1995), failed.

The statement emphasized that “South Africa took the decision to destroy its nuclear weapons and to join the NPT because it saw its security being guaranteed by its provision.”¹¹ It stressed that the NPT remains the only nuclear disarmament instrument to which all five recognized nuclear-weapon states are bound, and that although criticism of the inequities inherent in the treaty is valid, the “security that the NPT provides” should not be undermined. Then came the announcement that many delegates in the room feared and others welcomed loudly: “South Africa therefore in principle supports the view that the NPT should be extended indefinitely. The termination of the treaty—whether this comes about by placing conditions on its future existence or by extending it only for a fixed period—is not an acceptable option,” Ngo said.

The statement also clearly emphasized South Africa’s opposition to voting since a simple majority would weaken the treaty. Ngo proposed identifying a mechanism to address concerns about treaty implementation, which could be achieved by adopting a set of principles, including those agreed at the Pretoria meeting. He emphasized that these principles would not amend the treaty, but they would rather be a “lodestar which would focus attention on the importance of these goals.” Ngo proposed that these principles be reviewed at every review conference and be used as the “yardstick by which all [states-parties] can measure their nonproliferation and disarmament achievements.” He also announced South Africa’s proposal to strengthen the review process as laid out at the Pretoria meeting a few weeks earlier.

The statement created a visible stir in the UN Assembly Hall, with many delegations expressing support for South Africa’s approach. The delegation was invited to the office of the conference president, where Dhanapala requested that the proposal be used as the basis for his consultations. As he put it, the proposals “offered a new, achievable approach to secure agreement on the existence of the treaty.”¹² Dhanapala tasked the delegation with preparing a first draft of what would later become Decision 2, Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, adopted by the conference. From this point onward, the dynamics within the South African delegation shifted from adversarial among some members to more collaborative. Goosen and Minty were instrumental in advancing achievable common positions that ultimately enabled Dhanapala to secure agreement on the NPT’s indefinite extension.

The purpose of this reflection is not to analyze the conference’s working methods and outcomes. Suffice it to say that the review part of the conference, especially in Main Committee I, failed, with the result being that by the end of the second week, the focus shifted to the parallel negotiations in the presidential group of “friends.” This group of roughly 25 delegations began negotiating based on a draft provided by South Africa, on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament principles and “strengthening the review process of the Treaty.” Main Committee I, as a result, became orphaned because key delegations pulled their most senior diplomats into the president’s consultations.

Negotiating the draft Declaration on Principles for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament went through 11 versions, including the original proposal that the South African delegation drafted for Dhanapala. The original eight principles agreed to in Pretoria and proposed in Nzo’s speech remained intact (with the need for a CTBT, a fissile material cutoff treaty, and bilateral arms control included under “disarmament”), and a new “universality” principle added. The final version was agreed to by the informal group May 3, 1995.¹³ The title was changed to include “objectives” after the declaration was submitted to the conference drafting committee as a whole. Dhanapala was well on his way toward reaching an agreement on indefinite extension.

The process leading to the strengthened review process (Decision I) was more transparent and evolved from the concept originally proposed in the Nzo statement. As Goosen said in a later interview with the Nonproliferation Review, “Originally, we thought that [it] would not be possible to accomplish this at the conference fully. However, we began work in Pretoria on the concept of a mechanism to strengthen the review process. We further refined the concept in New York before presenting the document to more fully incorporate the views of other states. Thus, the ideas in the original South African draft of the review mechanism were not South Africa’s alone, as was the case with the draft on principles. It made good sense for us to work with others in developing the draft on the review process, because, after all, this was South Africa’s first NPT review conference.”¹⁴

Despite widely held views that indefinite extension would have been approved if there had been a vote, this was by no means a given. The Canadian delegation claimed to have secured 103 signatures out of the 175 delegations at the conference on an indefinite-extension sponsorship list. Because the Canadian list was not made public, many of those who signed, especially from NAM states, likely would have voted against indefinite extension in a public vote. Most NAM delegations likely would have voted for either a 25-year extension with rollover options, or the original South African third option. In private discussions, many of these delegations acknowledged that they signed the list but had not received instructions from their capitals about what official position to take.¹⁵

The Campaign for the NPT and the Nuclear Age Foundation, two advocacy groups, surveyed individual statements of all delegations at the conference, as well as statements by the NAM, and their estimates showed that between 63 and 73 delegations were in favor of unconditional, indefinite extension, with about 92 favoring alternative proposals or undecided.¹⁶ The South African delegation did not sign onto the Canadian list despite the urging of Ottawa’s representatives. Although the delegation did not actively lobby against the list, it publicly maintained the position, as expressed in Nzo’s opening statement, that a simple majority vote would weaken the treaty. Observers may have concluded that there was an adversarial relationship between the South African and Canadian delegations, but the cloak-and-dagger diplomacy between Peter Goosen and Sven Jurschewsky from Canada¹⁷ on the margins of conference served to keep both delegations informed of developments in their respective political groups and to coordinate their shared goals for the conference outcome.

It has often been speculated that Mbeki’s decision to move South Africa’s position to support the NPT extension resulted from his meetings with Clinton and Gore in the context of the U.S.-South Africa Binational Commission just a few weeks before the high-level briefing in Pretoria. Discussions at the time (and in subsequent years) with colleagues at the South African foreign ministry, the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C, and the U.S. Department of State show no evidence that Mbeki’s decision was influenced by U.S. pressure. Instead, his belief that the human rights of all people of the world are threatened by nuclear annihilation was the driving factor behind his decision. This linkage was also established in the Mandela government’s 1994 policy on the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.¹⁸

The New Agenda Coalition and the 2000 Review Conference

The success of South Africa’s conference diplomacy brought the country into the spotlight in the international disarmament and nonproliferation arena. As reported by The New York Times, South Africa became the germ of the compromise plan and emerged as a new leader in the developing world.¹⁹ Goosen’s visionary approach enabled South Africa, from this time onward, to play a significant role, punching well above its weight in an arena dominated by big powers and nuclear-weapon states.

Driven by the successes at the 1995 conference and based on close collaborations with a few key individuals from middle-power delegations, including Goosen, the New Agenda Coalition (NAC) was established in 1998 at the foreign-minster level to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world through the pursuit of mutually reinforcing measures at the bilateral and multilateral levels.²⁰ The coalition played a decisive role in the runup to and at the 2000 review conference by securing historic agreements from the nuclear-weapon states on 13 “practical steps” for nuclear disarmament, including an “unequivocal undertaking” by the nuclear-weapon states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. Agreement between the coalition and the nuclear-weapon states on these steps directly contributed to the conference’s successful outcome.

Although the coalition is often lauded for providing the basis for the 2000 conference success, there are four other important factors that are mostly ignored. First was the role of the nuclear-weapon states, specifically the leaders of the U.S. delegation, to actively engage with the NAC states to seek achievable nuclear disarmament related goals. Second was the impact of broad NAM support for the NAC proposals. For instance, the voting results of the UN First Committee resolution sponsored by the NAC in October 1999²¹ showed that other than Ireland, New Zealand, and Sweden, all the positive votes came from NAM members and observers. Third, although Conference President Abdulla Bali had no role in initiating or participating in the negotiations between the NAC and the nuclear-weapon states, he realized that the outcome of this collaboration could provide the basis for a successful outcome. He ensured that these negotiations were held in private. The fourth important factor was the key role of Norwegian moderator Steffen Kongstadt,²² who guided the negotiations with diplomatic tact while also quietly pushing his own delegation’s disarmament agenda.

The 2000 experience showed that cooperation between non-nuclear-weapon states and nuclear-weapon states is possible, and that such cooperation not only solidified the controversial indefinite extension decision, but gave new hope about the future of the treaty and its review process. Unfortunately, that hope no longer exists. Instead of collaboration between key middle-power countries and the nuclear-weapon states, the relationship between these groups has become poisonous. The nuclear-weapon states have long lost their ability to give clear direction to review conferences. Instead, their relationship is at its all-time worst. The NAM is also no longer the strong anti force that it has traditionally been. It lacks leadership, and geopolitical influences, including the impact of the war in Ukraine, and new alliances such as BRICS, have seriously undermined NAM’s strength as a cohesive force in the NPT review process. Although the NAC still represents a credible middle-powers group, the key role it played in past conferences has been diminished. As with the NAM, individual NAC members are influenced by geopolitical relationships, and the group seems to have lost its vision.

Lessons for 2026 and Beyond

Was the decision to indefinitely extend the treaty a mistake? It is true that by adopting the indefinite extension option, the treaty was made permanent, and as such eroded the leverage built into Article X of the NPT. However, if one makes an honest assessment of the lack of commitment to past agreements, coupled with a general apathy toward lasting solutions to serious nuclear threats that undermine basic human rights, one might rightfully conclude that no matter whether extended indefinitely or for specific periods, the treaty’s future relies on the manner in which states remain committed to it.

If South Africa pursued its third option to extend the treaty in perpetuity, linked to succeeding rollover periods, or if the NAM position of a 25-year rollover prevailed, states-parties would have been confronted with the challenge of agreeing to another fixed period at the 10th NPT Review Conference in 2022. The legacy of that conference and the deteriorating international security environment in which it was held suggest that such a rollover decision may have been impossible.

One can only speculate about the consequences of such failure. The reality is that the treaty is permanent, but it is equally important to recall the statement made by 1995 conference president after adopting the indefinite decision that “permanence of the treaty does not represent a permanence of unbalanced obligations, nor does it represent the permanence of nuclear apartheid between nuclear haves and have-nots.”²³

As states-parties and the conference president-designate make final preparations for the 2026 review conference, it is hoped that the legacy of the 1995 and 2000 conferences, the solemn undertakings given at those milestone events, and the memory of the many diplomats who made such agreements possible will guide them in their quest to defy the odds and achieve a successful outcome.

It is understandable that every review conference president is ambitious. However, the bar for the 2026 conference should be set low. What is needed more than new undertakings or ways to further strengthen the review process is a reset by all parties of their obligations under the NPT and the core undertakings given during past conferences, especially in 1995.

Instead of seeking consensus (in what likely will be a highly divisive atmosphere) on how to record implementation of the treaty, the 2026 conference should consolidate around the treaty’s basic principles, while recognizing the threats posed by changes in the geopolitical security environment.

Rather than tinkering with the strengthened review process adopted in 1995 and further enhanced at the 2000 conference, participants should focus on the core challenges facing the treaty. The 1995 review process was never meant to be a focus on how the treaty is implemented or reviewed. It was simply a mechanism to strengthen and advance agreements in 1995 and beyond. The reasons the last two review conferences (2015 and 2022) failed to reach consensus have nothing to do with process but with the lack of commitment among states-parties to seek meaningful outcomes, even modest ones.

Another failed conference may not directly impact the existence of the NPT, but it would most certainly further undermine, if not erode, its efficacy and relevance as the cornerstone of the nonproliferation regime. The cracks in the foundation are more visible than ever. The solemn undertakings given in 1995 and 2000 have been relegated to history books.

Potentially, two wars²⁴ will directly impact many NPT parties. Aggressive nuclear postures backed by a new arms race, no bilateral arms control agreements, and a doctrinal shift in French nuclear posture,²⁵ are of serious concern. And even more threatening is the possibility of resumed nuclear testing by a number of states, potentially including India and Pakistan.

NPT members should be seriously alarmed about the treaty’s future. They need to wake up from apathetic sleepwalking and find ways to deal with these and other threats. If not, the treaty’s relevance for many non-nuclear-weapon states, especially from the global majority, may be lost forever. There may also be a real danger that some states will consider exercising their sovereign rights protected under Article X by withdrawing from a treaty that is no longer in their supreme national interests.

ENDNOTES

1.  Susan B. Welsh, “Delegate Perspectives on the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference,” a series of interviews, Nonproliferation Review, Spring-Summer 1995.

2. Ambassador Isaac Ayewah of Nigeria.

3. In addition to the indefinite extension option outlined in ArtX(2), the Treaty also envisaged one fixed or multiple fixed-period extensions.

4. Disarmament Times, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, February 1995; “Extending the Non-proliferation Treaty: The Endgame,” a report on the fourth preparatory committee meeting of the NPT Review and Extension Conference, New York, January 23-27, 1995, ACRONYM, No. 5, February 1995.

5. Internal memorandum from Jean du Preez to Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo based on consultations with Ambassador Peter Goosen in Geneva, February 27, 1995, from the author’s personal files.

6. Internal memorandum from Jean du Preez to Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo, March 2, 1995, from the author’s personal files.

7. Letter from Gen. Colin Powell dated February 8, 1995, from the author’s personal files.

8. From Peter Goosen’s personal files.

9. From the author’s personal notes.

10. Thabo Mbeki, “Letter to Vice-President Al Gore,” dated April 10, 1995, from the author’s personal files.

11. Statement by H.E. Alfred Nzo, South African Foreign Minister on 19 April 1995.

12. From the author’s personal notes.

13. Peter Goosen, drafts and annotated notes in his personal files.

14. Delegate Perspectives on the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference” a series of interviews by Susan B. Welsh, Nonproliferation Review, Spring-Summer 1995.

15. Personal experience by the author and members of the South African delegation.

16. Since all but 11 of the 175 parties to the treaty were represented at the 1995 Review and Extension Conference, a simple majority would have required 89 votes in support of indefinite extension.

17. Sven Jurschewsky was a central member of the Canadian delegation and the senior advisor for nonproliferation and deputy director for nonproliferation arms control and disarmament in the Canadian foreign ministry.

18. The South African cabinet adopted South Africa’s Policy on the Non-proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction on August 31, 1994, in response to a proposal by Foreign Minister Nzo.

19. The New York Times, May 9, 1995.

20. New Agenda Coalition was established in June 1998 by means of a joint declaration by the foreign ministers of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, Slovenia (withdrew from the group soon after it was established), South Africa, and Sweden (withdrew in 2013).

21. “Towards a nuclear-weapons-free world: the need for a new agenda, U.N. General Assembly resolution 54/54 G of 1 December 1999, adopted by 114 in favor, 13 against, and 39 abstentions

22. Steffen Kongstadt was a key member of the Norwegian delegation and served as minister in the Permanent Mission in Geneva at the time. He has since retired.

23. Statement by Jayantha Dhanapala, president of the 1995 Review and Extension Conference at the conclusion of the conference, May 12, 1995.

24. The ongoing war in Ukraine and the second round of U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, including against its leadership and nuclear facilities.

25. Michele Rose, Reuters, “France to boost nuclear arsenal, involve European allies in deterrence,” March 2, 2026.

March 2026
By Kelsey Davenport

The United States and Israel launched military strikes on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and prompting Iranian counterstrikes against Israel, U.S. military bases in the region, and Persian Gulf states. The strikes occurred two days after U.S. and Iranian negotiators met in Geneva for what Omani mediators described as productive negotiations on a nuclear deal.

U.S. President Donald Trump and top administration officials have offered different justifications for why the strikes, which began Feb. 28 as Operation Epic Fury, were necessary. Trump did not obtain an authorization for the use of military force from Congress prior to the strikes.   

In a video on his social media site after the strikes commenced, Trump said that Iran “can never have a nuclear weapon” and suggested its leaders had “attempted to rebuild their nuclear program” and develop long-range ballistic missiles that “could soon reach the American homeland.”

Trump, however, presented no evidence that Iran was engaged in a nuclear weapons development effort or was taking any specific steps to rebuild its program. Recent satellite imagery of key nuclear sites suggests that Iran conducted some cleanup activities at locations struck by the United States and Israel in June and continued activities at facilities that were not attacked, but there was no indication that Iran restarted proliferation sensitive nuclear activities.

In a March 2 press conference, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said that “we don’t see a structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons” in Iran. The IAEA said in a March 3 social media post that based on satellite imagery it could confirm some recent damage to entrance buildings of Iran’s underground Natanz fuel enrichment plant.

Grossi noted in a March 2 statement to the agency’s Board of Governors that in addition to Iran’s nuclear reactors, other states in the region have operating nuclear power and research reactors. He urged “utmost restraint in all military operations” to prevent a nuclear accident and called for a return to diplomacy as “quickly as possible.”

Trump suggested in the Feb. 28 video that the U.S. strikes offered an opportunity for regime change in Iran and urged the Iranian people to “seize control of your destiny.” Shortly afterward, reports emerged that Khamenei and key military advisors were killed during a strike, which Iranian media outlets later confirmed.

Trump said March 1 that the new leadership wants to talk and he “agreed to talk” to them. But it is not clear to whom Trump was referring. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a new supreme leader would be chosen in the coming days.

Iranian officials also offered contradictory assessments of their counterstrike objectives. Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said Iran would continue to “deliver such devastating blows” that the United States will be “driven to beg” for a ceasefire. Araghchi, however, said he urged Gulf states to press the United States and Iran to end the conflict.

In addition to targeting U.S. military bases in Gulf states, Iran also struck non-military targets, including energy production infrastructure.

Prior to the strikes, the United States and Iran held three rounds of nuclear negotiations mediated by Oman. During that time, Trump sent additional U.S. military assets to the Persian Gulf and suggested that he was considering a limited strike to pressure Tehran to “negotiate a fair deal.”

After the third round of talks on Feb. 26, Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi told CBS News that the United States and Iran made “substantial progress” toward a nuclear deal and an agreement is “within our reach.” Araghchi was similarly optimistic, but Trump said Feb. 27 that he was “not happy” with the progress or the “way they’re negotiating.”

Iran did not publicly release its proposal, but an official familiar with the negotiations told Arms Control Today that Iran was offering to pause uranium enrichment and then scale its future enrichment for fueling nuclear reactors. Iran also would agree to monitoring and would not accumulate enriched uranium gas. Uranium stored in gas form poses more of a risk because it can be fed back into centrifuges and enriched to weapons-grade levels.

In a Feb. 28 press call, unnamed U.S. officials said that there was “no seriousness to achieve a real deal.” The officials suggested that Washington offered “free nuclear fuel forever,” but Tehran rejected that offer, saying it needed uranium enrichment. The official said it “makes absolutely no sense” for Iran to enrich uranium. It is not clear if the negotiators discussed the technical and legal complexities of fuel supply, or the assurances the United States would offer Iran that fuel supplies would not be disrupted.

The U.S. official said that Iran refused to talk about its ballistic missile program and that “we cannot continue to live in a world where these people not only possess missiles but the ability to make 100 of them a month.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also pushed for any U.S-Iran deal to include missiles and zero uranium enrichment. In a Feb. 15 address to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, he said he told Trump that any deal must require Iran to dismantle its uranium enrichment program, ship its enriched uranium out of the country, and include “no-lead time inspections.”

Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium, including about 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent uranium-235, just shy of the 90 percent U-235 considered weapons grade, are likely intact but currently inaccessible due to the military strikes in June.

Netanyahu also said a deal must address Iran’s ballistic missiles and suggested that Iran must adhere to a range of 300 kilometers, as set by the Missile Technology Control Regime for defining nuclear-capable systems. A deal also must end Iran’s support for proxy militias in the region, he said.

March 2026
By Xiaodon Liang

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expired Feb. 5 without a U.S. response to a Russian offer to continue informally abiding by the central limits of the agreement, leaving the two nuclear superpowers with no legally binding curbs on deploying their strategic weapon.

The United States will instead seek a “new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future,” U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Feb. 5 social media post.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov informed the Russian parliament Feb. 11 that “For now, Russia complies with its moratorium on respecting the central quantitative limitations as per this treaty. We have reasons to believe that the United States is not in a hurry to reject these indicators and will abide by them in the foreseeable future.”

Lavrov stressed, however, that Russia will maintain its moratorium “only as long as the United States does not exceed the above limits.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed Sept. 22 that the two sides continue abiding by the treaty’s central limits informally for one year. Although Trump initially said the proposal was a “good idea,” the Russian foreign ministry confirmed Feb. 4 that the United States had not formally responded to Putin’s initiative.

Representatives of the two sides reportedly discussed a potential six-month informal understanding to abide by the treaty and the resumption of arms control negotiations during talks in Abu Dhabi, Axios reported Feb. 5. The discussions were confirmed by Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, but not by U.S. officials.

“President Trump wants to find a better agreement,” the U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, Thomas DiNanno, said in a speech to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva Feb. 6.

That same day, the U.S. Department of State briefed officials from the embassies of China, Russia, and certain U.S. allies on the main points of DiNanno’s address, according to diplomatic sources who spoke with Arms Control Today on the condition of anonymity.

In his address, DiNanno described Russia’s numerical superiority in tactical nuclear weapons as an “intolerable disadvantage” to the United States and criticized New START for not including that category of weapons within its scope.

DiNanno emphasized two priorities for U.S. arms control diplomacy in his statement: “taking into account all Russian nuclear weapons, both novel and existing strategic systems, and addressing the breakout growth of Chinese nuclear weapons stockpiles.”

DiNanno also suggested that the United States could, following the expiration of New START, increase the size and diversity of its nuclear arsenal. “The United States also retains non-deployed nuclear capacity that can be used to address the emerging security environment, if directed by the president,” he said.

“China will not take part in nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage,” Shen Jian, China’s ambassador for disarmament affairs, said Feb. 6 in response to Di Nanno. He reiterated the long-standing Chinese position that Russia and the United States have “special and primary responsibilities” to make cuts to their arsenals first.

Shen called on the United States to “respond positively” to the Russian freeze proposal, while also labeling Washington the “culprit for the aggravation of [the] arms race.”

A previous attempt by the first Trump administration to include China in nuclear arms control talks foundered in 2020. (See ACT, September 2020.)

In November 2023, senior U.S. and Chinese officials held talks on nuclear weapons matters in Washington but the dialogue was not sustained. (See ACT, December 2023.)

Trump said in a Jan. 7 interview with The New York Times that “I think it would be appropriate for the Chinese [to be part of a new arms control treaty], but I would do a deal with Russia without the Chinese.” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control and Nonproliferation Christopher Yeaw indicated, however, that the administration may be prioritizing a multilateral strategy.

“Following the expiration of [New START] the United States proposed multilateral strategic stability talks as a means to achieving future nuclear arms control,” Yeaw said at a Feb. 17 Hudson Institute event.

Trump spoke with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, by telephone Feb. 4, but neither the U.S. nor Chinese readouts of the conversation mentioned nuclear arms control. Trump and Xi aim to hold a summit in early April.

“[M]any important subjects were discussed, including Trade, Military, [and] the April trip that I will be making to China,” Trump said in a Feb. 4 social media post. Beijing has warned Washington privately that approval of a potential $20 billion arms sale to Taiwan in the coming weeks could derail the trip, the Financial Times reported Feb. 6.

On the eve of New START’s expiry, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Bin met in Beijing Feb. 3 in the latest in a series of bilateral consultations. According to a Chinese statement, the two officials “had an in-depth exchange of views on the current global strategic stability situation and multilateral arms control issues.”

The Pentagon released Jan. 23 a National Defense Strategy that shed little light on U.S. plans for nuclear forces after the expiration of New START.

The document eschews a formal Nuclear Posture Review or equivalent section, opting instead for a brief passage.

“We will modernize and adapt our nuclear forces accordingly with focused attention on deterrence and escalation management amidst the changing global nuclear landscape,” the strategy document says.

The language contains a key departure from an otherwise identical statement on nuclear forces by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Dec. 6 at the Reagan Defense Forum, in which he said that the United States “will develop additional options to support deterrence and escalation management.”

With the expiration of New START, Congress has taken a keener interest in nuclear weapons and arms control in the absence of negotiated limits.

The Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees held expert hearings on the issue Dec. 10 and Feb. 3, respectively.

Speaking before the Armed Services Committee, Rose Gottemoeller, the former lead U.S. negotiator on New START, cautioned that Russia could sprint ahead in a race to upload new warheads on missiles if the United States ignores the Russian proposal to continue to respect the treaty’s central limits and decides instead to begin expanding the number of U.S. deployed strategic nuclear warheads.

Democrats in the House and the Senate have introduced resolutions calling on the president to engage with Russia on a follow-on agreement to New START, to engage with China in nuclear risk reduction talks, and to forgo increasing the size of the deployed U.S. strategic arsenal.

In a Jan. 13 letter to the State Department, House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), the chair of the Europe subcommittee, wrote that “The Committee stands ready to work with the Trump administration and its efforts to modernize arms-control approaches.”

March 2026
By Xiaodon Liang

A top U.S. State Department official has accused China of conducting a nuclear explosive test June 22, 2020, and says the U.S. government believes Beijing also is preparing for nuclear tests with yields in the range of hundreds of tons.

Thomas DiNanno, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, made the allegation in a speech at a Feb. 6 meeting of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

It is the first direct accusation by the United States of a violation of China’s obligations as a signatory to the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The United States “is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons,” DiNanno said.

China is widely known to have conducted 45 nuclear-test explosions between 1964 and 1996.

The State Department previously expressed “concerns” in an August 2019 compliance report about Chinese testing-related activities, including at a former test site at Lop Nur. At the time, the United States said China “probably carried out multiple nuclear weapon-related tests or experiments in 2018,” but fell short of concluding that China had violated the CTBT.

In the Feb. 6 speech, DiNanno alleged that China “sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions [through decoupling] because it recognized these tests violate test ban commitments.” Decoupling involves conducting a nuclear explosion in a large underground cavity to mask its observable yield.

Although China, like the United States, is a CTBT signatory, it has not ratified the agreement, thus delaying the treaty’s formal entry into force.

The treaty prohibits all nuclear explosions, which the negotiating parties all understand are nuclear explosions that produce a self-sustaining, supercritical chain reaction of any kind whether for weapons or peaceful purposes.

“The U.S. accusation of Chinese nuclear explosive tests is completely groundless,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Feb. 11 at a regular press briefing. The U.S. statement is a “fabrication of pretexts for its own resumption of nuclear tests,” he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Oct. 30 that the United States, which has honored a voluntary testing moratorium since 1992, would resume testing of nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” as other countries. (See ACT, November 2025.) DiNanno noted the president’s announcement in his Feb. 6 statement immediately before discussing the alleged Chinese tests.

“China urges the U.S. to renew the commitment of the five nuclear-weapons states to a moratorium on nuclear testing” and “uphold the global consensus on the ban on nuclear testing,” Lin said in his Feb. 11 statement.

The Chinese test occurred at 9:18 Greenwich Mean Time on the specified date and had an approximate magnitude of 2.75, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Yeaw said Feb. 17 in a talk at the Hudson Institute.

The International Monitoring System operated by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization “detected two very small seismic events, twelve seconds apart” on June 22, 2020, said Robert Floyd, head of the organization in a Feb. 17 statement.

In the statement, Floyd said that the monitoring system “is capable of detecting nuclear test explosions with a yield equivalent to or greater than approximately 500 [tons] of TNT. These two events were far below that level. As a result, with this data alone, it is not possible to assess the cause of these events with confidence.”

“Mechanisms which could address smaller explosions are provided by the Treaty but can only be used once the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty enters into force. That is why it is important that the nuclear arms control framework includes the entry into force of the CTBT. The need is more urgent now than ever,” Floyd wrote. “Any nuclear test explosion, by any state, is of deepest concern.”

International and national seismic networks can detect events that produce shockwaves at much lower levels in certain areas of particular concern, such as former nuclear test sites. For example, the existence of seismic templates—comparable data on past seismic events—from known nuclear test sites may “enable the detection of new explosions today by [the monitoring system] down to a few tons of TNT yield or less for an underground explosion,” according to a 2020 report by Anna Péczeli and Bruce Goodwin, two experts with the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

NORSAR, the Norwegian seismology foundation, independently identified a small signal at 9:18 GMT from the region of Lop Nur but cautioned that “the precise epicentral location cannot be tightly constrained,” in a Feb. 19 press release.

NORSAR said the event displayed “strong compressional waves compared to shear waves, a feature that can be consistent with explosive sources.” However, “[n]atural earthquakes can produce similar patterns, particularly when observations are limited to a single high-quality station.”

The foundation “cannot confirm or refute the allegation that a nuclear test took place.”

According to a 2012 National Academies of Sciences (NAS) report on technical issues related to the test ban treaty, the maximum effectiveness of decoupling on record—in a salt dome—was a reduction in the measured yield of a nuclear test by a factor of 70.

This would reduce the observed yield of a test from several hundred tons to a single-digit ton of TNT equivalent.

But the NAS report noted that decoupled underground tests in rock would have a much lower effectiveness than in salt, reducing the observed yield by a factor of 20 to 40. China’s tests at its former Lop Nur test site were conducted in granite or other types of rock.

The 2012 NAS report concluded that “the uncertainty in the actual amount of decoupling would present a difficult technical challenge.”

If China were able to conduct an undetected test, the 2012 NAS report noted that explosions with yields under 100 tons could be useful for safety tests and developing low-yield, unboosted fission devices.

Tests between 100 tons TNT equivalent and 1 kiloton TNT equivalent could be used to “pursue improved implosion weapon designs,” “validate some untested implosion weapon designs,” and proof-test compact weapons.

If the alleged Chinese test was a hydronuclear experiment just above the criticality threshold, however, the usefulness of the test would be limited to safety tests, addressing some design code issues, and “validation of some unboosted fission weapon designs.”

China in recent years has resumed visible, above-ground drilling and infrastructure work at its Lop Nur test site, The New York Times reported in December 2023, citing imagery analysis by analyst Renny Babiarz.

March 2026
By Kelsey Davenport

The United States negotiated a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that does not require a more intrusive monitoring arrangement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and may allow some type of uranium enrichment, according to a report the Trump administration sent to Congress that was obtained by Arms Control Today.

Saudi Arabia is expanding its civil nuclear program and announced plans to build two power reactors and fabricate nuclear fuel, including uranium enrichment. (See ACT, November 2023.) The United States had been reluctant to sign a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia over the proliferation risks posed by uranium enrichment without additional IAEA monitoring, due in part to Saudi threats to develop nuclear weapons if Iran does. (See ACT, April 2018.)

According to congressional sources, the United States and Saudi Arabia reached a compromise after years of negotiations, but it is unclear if Congress, which can review and block nuclear cooperation agreements, also known as “123 agreements,” will accept the nonproliferation obligations in the accord.

The administration has said little about the terms of the proposed 123 agreement, which must be negotiated before U.S. companies can transfer certain materials and technologies to a foreign country.

During Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington in November, the White House announced a U.S.-Saudi framework for nuclear cooperation that “builds the legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar nuclear energy partnership” between the two countries “in a manner consistent with strong nonproliferation standards.” (See ACT, December 2025.)

The existence of the report to Congress on the agreement appears to confirm that the Trump administration relaxed U.S. demands that Saudi Arabia negotiate an additional protocol to its legally required safeguards agreement. The additional protocol would give the IAEA greater access to information about Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program and more tools to provide assurances that the program is peaceful.

According to a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2020, the administration must provide a report to Congress if a state has not negotiated and implemented an additional protocol with the IAEA. The president must submit the report on waiving the additional protocol to Congress 90 days before sending a Nuclear Proliferation Assessment Statement to Congress. The statement assesses how the nuclear cooperation agreement meets nine nonproliferation criteria set out in the Atomic Energy Act. Under the Atomic Energy Act, Congress has 90 days to review a nuclear cooperation agreement.

Arms Control Today reviewed a copy of the report, which was submitted to Congress around Nov. 24. According to the report, Saudi Arabia and the United States will enter into a “Bilateral Safeguards Agreement,” which will include additional verification measures and asserts that the agreement will give the IAEA the “necessary tools to verify the absence of diversion of nuclear material.”

The report does not specify how the bilateral agreement will compare to the additional protocol, but it does say that the bilateral safeguards will only apply to nuclear facilities where sensitive U.S.-Saudi nuclear cooperation is taking place. The additional protocol would have applied to the entire nuclear program and sites that support it.

The report does not explicitly state that the proposed agreement will allow a domestic Saudi-run enrichment program, but the text suggests it will. According to the report, the bilateral agreement, “with the involvement” of the IAEA, will employ “additional safeguards and verification measures to the most proliferation sensitive areas of potential nuclear cooperation between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States (enrichment, conversion, fuel fabrication, and reprocessing).”

The report goes on to say that “nuclear material, equipment, or components will not be transferred to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia subject to the 123 agreement until the proposed Bilateral Safeguards Agreement has entered into force.”

The NDAA states that the report must also describe “the manner in which such agreement would advance the national security and defense interests of the United States and not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.”

The Trump administration argues that the proposed agreement will benefit U.S. interests, saying in the report that U.S. involvement in the Saudi nuclear program will “prevent strategic competition from seizing an opportunity to undermine United States national security interests for decades to come.” The report also argues that the United States must seize the opportunity to expand nuclear cooperation to “reestablish our leadership in the global civilian nuclear energy market and reap the benefits of expanded influence in foreign countries hosting our reactors.”

The Trump administration may face obstacles in Congress, where there is longstanding bipartisan support for negotiating a so-called gold standard nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. The gold standard refers to a nuclear cooperation agreement similar to the one negotiated between the United States and the United Arab Emirates. Under that deal, the UAE committed to forgo uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing and adopt an additional protocol.

After the White House announced the Saudi framework for nuclear cooperation in November, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sens. James Risch (R-Idaho) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), respectively, said independently that any nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia must meet the gold standard.

Once the 123 agreement is delivered to Congress, members will have 90 days to review it. Congress can block the deal if both houses pass a resolution of disapproval; otherwise it will enter into force.

March 2026
By Libby Flatoff

In a major shift in policy, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a new nuclear strategy that would allow for temporary deployment of nuclear air forces outside of France and ordered an increase in France’s nuclear arsenal.

“I have ordered an increase in the number of nuclear warheads in our arsenal,” Macron stated March 2. “We will no longer communicate on the figures of our nuclear arsenal, unlike what may have been the case in the past.”

Macron stressed that, “My responsibility is to ensure that our deterrence maintains — and will maintain in the future — its assured destructive power.” He said called the approach “dissuasion avancée,” or advanced deterrence, noting that this new French approach creates opportunities for European allies.

France and Germany also announced Mar. 2 their intention to create “a ‌joint steering group to coordinate strategic doctrine and exercises,” in a move to increase cooperation on nuclear deterrence.

Comments from other European leaders in recent weeks provided hints of greater European defense and nuclear coordination. In a Jan. 29 speech, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said European states were “discussing the development of a joint nuclear umbrella with European allies,” although he insisted “Germany will not possess nuclear weapons.”

The shift in German government thinking is particularly significant. Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of France’s Strategic Research Foundation, noted that, “Germany’s mention of nuclear capabilities would have been unimaginable just five years ago.”

Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Estonian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, suggested that the “most logical, fastest, and most cost-effective option would be to use France’s nuclear capability as the foundation for an independent European nuclear deterrent,” according to Politico Feb. 5.

Meanwhile, in response to a question about hosting nuclear weapons on Swedish soil, Defense Minister Pål Jonsson stated Feb. 27 on Swedish radio SR, “If there were to be war, we would naturally consider any option that could secure Sweden’s survival and Swedish security.”

The shift in French and European policy is a response to growing NATO concerns that they can no longer rely on U.S. defense commitments in the event of an attack by Russia, including the potential employment of U.S. nuclear weapons,  such as the 100 plus forward-deployed U.S. nuclear gravity bombs that are stationed at bases in five countries in Europe.

Last July, France and the United Kingdom, which both possess nuclear weapons, issued a statement called the Northwood Declaration that commits them to coordinate nuclear policy and notes that their “nuclear forces are independent, but can be coordinated.” (See ACT, September 2025.) The declaration also established a nuclear steering group, co-chaired by French and UK officials, which held its first meeting in Paris Dec. 10.

European concerns deepened following U.S. President Donald Trump's statements threatening acquisition of Greenland and the new U.S. National Defense Strategy document, released in January. Despite the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine and its asymmetric intrusions on European infrastructure, the strategy document describes Russia as a “manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members” and calls on Europe to take “primary responsibility for its own defense.”

At the February 2025 NATO defense ministers meeting, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, responding to a reporter’s question, reinforced European concerns. Hegseth said that, “without burden sharing, without creating the right set of incentives for European countries to invest, then [the United States] would be forced to attempt to be everywhere for everybody all the time, which in a world of fiscal restraints is, again ... just not reality.”

At the World Economic Forum, Jan. 21 in Davos, Switzerland, Trump reiterated that he was “not sure [if NATO] would be there for us” if there were an attack against the United States. That has become a frequent Trump complaint despite the fact that NATO invoked Article 5 for the only time in its history after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001.

France has about 290 nuclear weapons and the UK has 225, according to independent estimates by the Federation of American Scientists. Neither country currently deploys its weapons within the borders of other nations.