January/February 2026
By Jeff Abramson

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania completed their withdrawal from the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty in December and Finland and Poland will follow suit in early 2026, marking the largest number of exits from a humanitarian disarmament treaty.

Departing states claimed their decisions were in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The 1997 Ottawa Convention, also known as the Mine Ban Treaty, outlaws the production, use, storage and transfer of victim-activated anti-personnel landmines worldwide. It entered into force in 1999 and, before the recent withdrawals, had 166 states-parties, with the Marshall Islands and Tonga joining last year.

UN officials and many delegations criticized the withdrawals at the annual meeting of Mine Ban Treaty states-parties held Dec. 1-5 in Geneva. The special envoy to the convention, Prince Mired Raad Zeid Al-Hussein of Jordan, warned that the treaty risks losing its “teeth” and called for stepping up collective efforts to universalize and fully implement it.

In a separate development, the Washington Post reported Dec. 19 that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a directive Dec. 2 for a forthcoming policy to allow for expanded use by the United States of weapons banned by the accord. This directive will essentially reverse the approach adopted during the Biden administration.

The withdrawals, although controversial, were expected as foreign ministers of the Baltic states and Poland recommended in a March joint statement that their countries should leave the treaty. (See ACT, April 2025.) In April, Finland’s prime minister made a similar statement, and between June 27 and August 20, all five countries deposited instruments of withdrawal, starting six-month clocks after which their exits could become official.

At the Geneva meeting, some delegations acknowledged the security concerns of the withdrawing states, while others emphasized the indiscriminate nature of the weapons and rejected any claimed military utility when compared to the human harm landmines cause. In the final report of the meeting, state-parties expressed “regret” over the withdrawals and said they “represent[ed] a setback and challenges in universalization efforts.”

After the report’s adoption, the New Zealand delegation, speaking on behalf of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Panama, said that the final text was not strong enough on this point and did “not reflect the significant repercussions of these withdrawals for the Convention’s aims.”

Even more controversially, Ukraine, a state-party to the treaty, had communicated a decision to “suspend the operation” of the treaty in July. Ukraine did not attend the Geneva meeting, but states-parties rejected Kyiv’s action. In the final report, they affirmed that the treaty “does not allow the suspension of its operation and consequently its obligations” and called for “Ukraine … to further engage within the framework of the Convention.” The treaty does not have a provision for suspension and only allows withdrawal for countries not engaged in armed conflict.

In November and December 2024, under President Joe Biden, Washington announced it would provide treaty-prohibited anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine under a “limited exception” to its anti-transfer policy. (See ACT, December 2025.) It is unclear whether Trump has continued those transfers.

Hegseth’s Dec. 2 memo delivered another blow to the Mine Ban Treaty by rescinding the Biden administration’s more restrictive 2022 policy so that the United States may deploy landmines without geographic restriction and allow combatant commanders to decide where and when “non-persistent” (but still banned) landmines may be deployed.

Although President Bill Clinton in the 1990s was an early champion of a treaty banning landmines, the United States never joined the convention, arguing that such weapons were still needed on the Korean peninsula. As presidents have since gone back and forth as to whether to eventually join the treaty, the United States had refrained from transferring treaty-prohibited landmines except to Ukraine in 2024, did not use them except in one isolated incident Afghanistan in 2002, did not produce new landmines, and was the global leader in funding humanitarian demining.

Trump’s policy will further complicate global anti-landmine efforts, as will plans by Finland, Lithuania, and Poland to begin new landmine production after their withdrawals are finalized.

January/February 2026
By Daryl G. Kimball

A months-long investigation by the France 24 news organization found strong evidence of the use of chlorine gas as a chemical weapon near the al-Jaili refinery, north of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, by the Sudanese Army Forces Sept. 5 and 13, 2024.

When used as a weapon, chlorine is a choking agent that can cause severe respiratory issues, lung damage, and death. Its use as a weapon is prohibited by the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

According to the investigation by France 24, published Oct. 29 in cooperation with C4ADS, a nonprofit organization with a mission to defeat the illicit networks that threaten global peace and security, army forces dropped barrels containing chlorine gas from the sky in their attempt to recapture the refinery from the Rapid Support Forces militia, their opponents in the brutal and ongoing civil war.

The use of chemical weapons represents a new low in a conflict in which both sides have been accused of commiting war crimes on a wide scale. The army is the only armed group in Sudan with the aerial military capacity to carry out such attacks. Similar tactics were employed by the military forces of former dictator Bashar al-Assad during the civil war in Syria.

On Jan. 16, 2025, the United States under the Biden administration sanctioned Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, commander of the army and Sudan’s de facto head of state, alleging that the army had used chemical weapons, but did not publish any evidence for the claim.

On April 24, the U.S. Department of State announced that it had determined that the Sudanese government used chemical weapons in 2024, triggering the imposition of sanctions, including restrictions on U.S. exports to Sudan and on access to U.S. government lines of credit.

Sudan’s ministry of foreign affairs denied the allegations and complained that the United States did not raise the issue through the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as required. Both countries are members of the CWC and Sudan serves on the OPCW Executive Council.

The France 24 investigation traced documents showing that an Indian company, Chemtrade International Corporation, exported the chlorine to Sudan. Chemtrade told France 24 that the Sudanese importer assured them that the chlorine would be used “only to treat potable water,” which is an important civilian use for this product in Sudan where clean water is scarce. It is estimated that 17 million people in Sudan do not have access to safe drinking water, which has exacerbated disease outbreaks. During the course of the war, the rebel militia has destroyed water treatment facilities and power plants.

On Nov. 29, Sudan’s pro-democracy Civil Democratic Alliance for Revolutionary Forces demanded an immediate investigation by the OPCW into reports that the army has used chemical weapons.

January/February 2026

U.S. President Donald Trump has asserted a noncommittal attitude toward the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which expires Feb. 5.

“If it expires, it expires. We’ll just do a better agreement,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times published Jan 8. “You probably want to get a couple of other players involved also.”

The new comments suggest Trump would allow the last U.S.-Russia strategic arms control treaty to lapse without accepting a formal offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin to continue to respect the central limits of the agreement for one year if the United States also agreed to do so. When asked by a reporter Oct. 5 what he thought of Putin’s proposal, Trump said it “sounds like a good idea to me,” but the White House has not formally responded to the Kremlin offer.

Trump’s Jan. 8 remarks to the Times about the expiration of New START stand in contrast with comments he made in July when he said, “We are starting to work on that.… That is a big problem for the world, when you take off nuclear restrictions.”

Since taking office last January, his administration has neither outlined a strategy for negotiating a new nuclear arms control agreement with Russia nor outlined how it would bring China into nuclear risk reduction or arms control talks.—DARYL G. KIMBALL 

January/February 2026

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that a drone strike last February compromised nuclear safety at the mothballed Chernobyl nuclear complex after a visit to the Ukrainian site in November.

The IAEA conducted a comprehensive safety assessment at Chernobyl at the request of Ukraine’s nuclear regulator. The objective of the mission was to evaluate the status of the containment structure built in 2016 to prevent further radioactive release at a reactor unit destroyed in the infamous 1986 accident. The structure, known as the new safe confinement structure, was struck by a drone in February 2025. The strike caused a fire in the outer cladding of the structure but did not result in the release of radiation, according to the IAEA.

However, the agency’s November assessment suggests that, without repairs, the structure is at risk. IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Dec. 5 that the agency concluded that the containment structure “lost its primary safety functions” due to the strike, but “there was no permanent damage to its load-bearing structures or monitoring systems.”

Grossi said there were limited repairs to the roof of the structure, but “timely and comprehensive restoration remains essential to prevent further degradation.”

The Dec. 5 statement said that there will be additional repairs on the structure in 2026 to “support the re-establishment of [its] confinement function.”—KELSEY DAVENPORT 

Janyuary/February 2026

Sabrina Dallafior of Switzerland was chosen the next director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) by the states-parties Nov. 27. She is the first woman appointed to the four-year position, which begins July 2026.

“As Director-General, I will accord the highest importance to upholding the norm against chemical weapons. Ensuring its long-term sustainability requires us to investigate all credible allegations of use, establishing the scientific facts, and to denounce all confirmed cases […] This is non-negotiable, as it touches the very core of the [Chemical Weapons] Convention,” Dallafior said in a statement released by the OPCW.

Currently, Dallafior is the Swiss ambassador to Finland. She has been a career diplomat since 2000 and has extensive multilateral experience regarding security and defense policy, disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation.

Dallafior will succeed Fernando Arias, who has served as the fourth director-general since 2017. Under Arias, the OPCW has taken on investigations of chemical weapons use by the former government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the illegal use of riot-control agents during the war in Ukraine. He also oversaw the elimination of the last declared chemical weapons stockpile by the United States.—DARYL G. KIMBALL

January/February 2026

For the first time since 1998, the U.S. Air Force is moving to take back from the Navy the Airborne Command Post mission, an important nuclear command, control, and communications function.

The mission, called “Looking Glass,” is designed to ensure that the United States can control its intercontinental ballistic missile nuclear forces even if land-based control centers are attacked.

From 1961 to 1990, the Air Force deployed at least one EC-135 plane in the air on 24/7 alert for this purpose but in 1998, the mission was transferred to the Navy’s E-6B Mercury aircraft, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine Dec. 11. For the past 27 years, the Navy E-6B fleet also has carried out the “take charge and move out” (TACOMO) mission, which is similar to Looking Glass but focuses on receiving, verifying, and relaying orders to the Navy’s nuclear submarines.

On Dec. 9, the Air Force announced a defense industry day to begin acquisition for “Looking Glass-Next,” and JJ Gertler, an analyst at the Teal Group consultancy, told Breaking Defense Dec. 12 that “the Air Force [will have] to find someplace else for Looking Glass.” Since the Air Force is already upgrading the “Doomsday” plane from the E4-B Nightwatch aircraft to the E4-C model, it “wouldn’t be too surprising to see the [Looking Glass] mission back on that plane,” Gertler said.—LIBBY FLATOFF