January/February 2025
By Mike Albertson

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) will expire on February 5, 2026, with little likelihood that any of its provisions will remain in force. Accepting this fact should allow for clear-eyed thinking about the realities of what follows.

There will be short-term pressures as the treaty enters its endgame over the next year and in the anticipated interregnum thereafter. These largely will distract from the serious homework needed to determine what arms control, if any, comes next. The early 1980s, a period of deterrence competition and arms control stalemate, offers insights into how an interregnum can generate useful ideas, but pouring current complexities into the old bottle of “peace through strength” attempts to recreate a past that cannot be recreated. Unpleasant questions must be faced: What does the United States want, what do China and Russia want (and fear), and what is the U.S. strategy for getting them to the table? With the end of New START and a host of other agreements over the last decade, many people have said the world should move on from arms control. Yet, after considering alternatives, a legally binding approach may be the least implausible option for what comes next.

Recognizing the Inevitable

Some analysts express hope that New START can be retained somehow or extended further beyond its expiration deadline. Ideas have surfaced. Unfortunately, these alternatives range from impossible to implausible.

One alternative is extending the treaty. The 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) was negotiated and ratified with a provision on future extension beyond its initial duration. The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty had an unlimited duration. Simply put, New START cannot be extended. It was concluded with a 10-year duration that began in 2011 and a single five-year extension that was exercised in 2021.

The duration rationale was simple. Policymakers expected that the treaty would be replaced by some future agreement, following the natural progression of strategic arms control agreements over previous decades. Replacement was prevented, however, by Russia’s refusal to engage substantively on U.S. terms, set by Democratic and Republican administrations, for a successor to New START.

Another alternative is continuing just the New START verification provisions, such as inspections and notifications, after the treaty expiration. In this way, the two sides would have at least some transparency into what the other was doing with its strategic modernization programs. Unfortunately, such provisions are largely dependent on the legally binding agreement. Due to Russian domestic laws on state secrets, Moscow would argue that it cannot provide classified nuclear weapons-related information via notifications or data declarations to the United States absent a legally binding agreement. The United States would not host Russian military inspectors at their bases willingly without a treaty directing them to do so. Cost payments, protections, and immunities are the gears of complex agreements. All are extremely difficult to implement absent the forcing function of New START.

Replacement by an entirely new treaty or agreement theoretically is another alternative, but it has proven impossible even in better geopolitical times. One year remains before New START expires. Even achieving New START, in an era when there was mutual desire, a long history of work, and a precedent document in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), proved difficult to negotiate in this time frame. The next year looks far less promising for rapid action. There is a lack of focus and goals in Moscow and Washington. Arms control is hostage to Russian hostilities in Ukraine. Even a short negotiated treaty, such as the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, would lack an underlying agreement such as START I or New START on which to base verification obligations. A bilateral fig leaf can be agreed anytime, but it would not substitute for the comprehensive agreement that is about to disappear.

The last alternative would be a mutual agreement to stay below New START limits.¹ This is what Russia and the United States have stated as a possibility over the last several years, despite all the challenges in the bilateral relationship. In engineering terms, this is a point of unstable equilibrium.² Internal or external factors could lead either party to upend such an agreement by declaring a unilateral willingness to exceed or by concretely exceeding New START limits. Russia has tried numerous ways through its nuclear rhetoric to deter Western military support to Ukraine. Moscow lacks other bilateral mechanisms or dialogues to take hostage or rip up to signal displeasure and attract U.S. attention. Threatening to bust New START limits probably is too tempting an eventual target for Moscow to ignore.

Moreover, China’s growing nuclear arsenal is spurring talk of the United States needing to move beyond New START limits. The 2023 Strategic Posture Commission report described the U.S. nuclear program as being “necessary but not sufficient” to deter potential adversaries.³ Pranay Vaddi, senior director for arms control at the U.S. National Security Council, remarked that “absent a change in the trajectory of adversary arsenals, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required and we need to be fully prepared to execute if the President makes that decision.”⁴ Vipin Narang, acting assistant defense secretary for space policy, commented that this process was underway: “We have begun exploring options to increase future launcher capacity or additional deployed warheads on the land, sea and air legs that could offer national leadership increased flexibility, if desired, and executed.”⁵

Navigating the Coming Endgame

As New START enters its endgame, competing short-term pressures of urgency and worry can be expected. The United States needs to lead on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation issues even if expectations should be set appropriately low. There is a moral imperative to do so and downsides to not doing so, primarily in letting adversaries dictate the boundaries of future negotiations.

Some analysts and legislators argue that the United States needs to get out of the treaty as soon as possible because Russia is in violation and the United States is held back from taking the necessary deterrence steps to respond numerically to China and Russia. Weighing the pros and cons, this late in the game there appears to be little strategic advantage gained by withdrawing. The treaty is not holding back the United States because it probably cannot do much concretely this year to move beyond the New START limits. The United States can take steps while the treaty is in force to prepare for the future because U.S. advantages that were negotiated into New START make it easier for Washington to increase the size of its arsenal, for example by reconverting launchers that were taken off the books and uploading warheads from the uncounted reserve onto deployed systems. Yet, executing these steps still takes time and money, likely pushing their completion and thus an increase in the number of deployed weapons beyond the treaty limits past the February 2026 expiration.

How treaties end matters for what deals come next. New START’s natural death offers a clean slate. Conversely, a U.S. decision to prematurely terminate the agreement would incur costs. China and Russia would occupy the global high ground on arms control and nonproliferation matters. The United States would face challenges in pushing its own agenda if it must spend time responding to the criticisms of others. Other states would have difficulty trusting the political whims of U.S. nuclear deals. It would be more difficult for Washington to set the table for what comes after New START.

Whether the treaty ends naturally or abruptly, the focus inevitably will be on the numbers of weapons as the New START limits end. The expert discourse will focus on the dangers unleashed by unrestrained nuclear competition. Talk of arms racing will grow. Buildups, whether in China, Russia or the United States, will be termed “rapid,” “unnecessary,” “mindless,” and “costly.”

The end of New START will not usher in a new arms race. The nuclear competition will not arrive when the treaty ends or because it ends. The new arms race is underway. Competitive contours among the Chinese, Russian, and U.S. nuclear programs already are set; and it will be Chinese force expansion, a factor not even captured by New START, that will be the dominant factor after the treaty expires.

What unfolds post-New START is unlikely to seem much of a race. If so, it will be a 10-kilometer race over the next decade rather than a dash in 2026. Only China is really racing to some unknown point. Russia has hot warhead and missile production lines, but has completed much of its modernization program. It suffers from a host of economic and military challenges, which may be prioritized before another major nuclear weapons expansion. Although the United States can increase the size of its arsenal by doing reconversions and uploading, its nuclear infrastructure challenges are well understood.⁶ The near-term U.S. nuclear question is less “How much is enough?” than “What can be done?”

In the decade after New START expires, the players likely will move to higher numbers of weapons. Numbers will dominate the headlines, but the real loss will be the intangibles that the strategic arms control process provides, the little things that are taken for granted when agreements are in place and that have deeper impacts when they are missing. Without New START data, both sides will rely more on national technical means, that is, intelligence gathering by satellite, radar, and other remote technology, to estimate what the other side is doing. Where national technical means are more difficult, these estimates will have greater uncertainties and broader ranges. Theories and assumptions about an adversary’s capabilities will have fewer checks. People-to-people engagements, involving treaty implementers, inspection teams, host-nation escorts, and technical experts, will end as well, leaving all sides less prepared to sit down and seriously engage on what comes next.

The Temptations of ‘Peace Through Strength’

Given the near-term challenges post-New START, some arms control interregnum should be anticipated.⁷ It will be an uncomfortable period without guardrails. The desire of those seeking to avoid the dangers and costs of competition will be for quick fixes, such as political agreements; but deep systemic problems have caused the interregnum; and they will require more reflection to diagnose and a stronger prescription to cure.

The last major interregnum was almost four decades ago. The Soviet-U.S. détente ended after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That is when, after a decade of work, the agreement reached during the second round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) was withdrawn from U.S. Senate ratification. Both sides stated their commitment to the SALT II limits, but there was little confidence it would last. Serious Soviet-U.S. military incidents occurred. Gerontocracy and economic stagnation created domestic political problems in Moscow. Negotiations were curtailed as NATO deployed countermeasures to Soviet nuclear deployments. Western governments faced domestic pressure from anti-nuclear protests.

A romanticized story has coalesced to explain what happened next. The United States was weak. There was consensus among the United States and its allies on how to fix the problem. The United States built more nuclear weapons. It worked with allies to deploy them. The Soviets grew worried and returned to the negotiating table. The United States bargained from a position of newfound strength. Agreements favoring the United States were reached. The Cold War was won. When faced with an arms control stalemate and nuclear competition again, the prescription seems to be that the United States should revisit this 1980s “peace through strength” formula.

In reality, little from roughly 1980 to 1985 was easy or straightforward. It was a time of contentious soul-searching in the U.S. deterrence and arms control community.⁸ Many articles were written.⁹ Many workshops and discussions were convened.¹⁰ There was little consensus among top policymakers and experts on what to do next. Some wanted to revive the SALT process. Others saw arms control as lost or at a dead end. Some wanted to build new nuclear delivery systems or deploy more warheads. Others proposed cuts. Some wanted to emphasize non-nuclear systems such as the Strategic Defense Initiative to break the nuclear stalemate.

Attempting to create a “peace through strength” redux after New START lacks necessary elements. Peace requires a willing and desirous negotiating partner. Russia and China today lack a counterpart to the reform-driven Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and the next people in charge of those political systems are unlikely to be one either. Strength requires a robust U.S. defense industrial base to build the systems that the adversary cares about limiting. The U.S. industrial base today is far reduced from its 1980s equivalent. “Through” involves understanding the use of competition and cooperation together to leverage a desired outcome. The “redux” formula suggests that mere repetition will duplicate results. It oversimplifies the challenges and complexities with allies, adversaries, and domestic politics that it took to get from strength through to peace in the 1980s.¹¹

There are useful lessons from the intellectual discussions on arms control in the 1980s that have applicability to the upcoming questions to be faced. First, determining the place of arms control in broader U.S. policy requires understanding bigger strategic objectives vis-à-vis adversaries. Lawrence Freedman was blunt and correct when he wrote in 1983 that “[a]rms control has become an incompetent and inadequate alternative to the reappraisal of strategic objectives and an honest confrontation of political differences.”¹² In addition, the United States must know what it wants arms control to accomplish. Concepts such as risk reduction are uncontroversial in arms control discussions, but they have proven to be unhelpful in finding concrete ways forward. In 1981, U.S. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft stated, “Unless we get below this level of ethereal abstraction that everyone can agree on, and decide in fact what we want arms control to achieve, we’re not going to get anywhere.”¹³

Arms control must balance complacency and alarmism. Advocating for a reassessment of the 1980s arms control discourse, Thomas Schelling challenged arguments that nuclear war was imminent or inevitable and made more so by the absence of formal arms control. “There is no prudential wisdom in exaggerating the danger of nuclear war by an order of magnitude, as both sides of the political spectrum in this country have been doing for half a dozen years,” he wrote.¹⁴

Moreover, the desired balance between competition and cooperation is not about finding absolute comfort, but some degree of mutually acceptable discomfort. James Schlesinger wrote in 1985, “Although I am a strong proponent of arms control, it can never reduce the Soviet threat to a point at which we would be comfortable…. There is no conceivable set of arms control measures that would persuade the Soviet Union to ease the discomfort that the United States feels in bearing risk. For to do so means that the Soviets would be obliged to accept what would appear to them to be an intolerable level of risk.”¹⁵

Arms control should be asked to do less rather than more in times of flux. Although some U.S. experts in the aftermath of SALT II advocated for a “a new set of grandiose goals for a new round of negotiations,” Richard Burt, later chief START I negotiator, saw value in 1981 in “asking arms control to do less instead of more.”¹⁶ A goal could be as simple as “registering and codifying an existing balance of forces,” a useful outcome given the uncertainties that plagued U.S. political leaders and military planners during the early 1960s.¹⁷

Finally, the United States must articulate a simple proposal grounded in the realities of strategic modernization cycles. George Kennan wrote a short article in 1981 titled “A Modest Proposal,” in which arms control negotiations were conceived as “not a way to escape from the weapons race; they are an integral part of it.”¹⁸ Kennan’s proposal was geared to his moment: immediate, across-the-board 50 percent reductions of nuclear arsenals, affecting in equal measure all parts of their delivery.

The Least Improbable Option

The end of New START represents an important moment, asking arms control and deterrence experts to avoid temptations toward alarmism and silver bullets. If something is to take the place of this treaty, it needs to be a meaningful proposal. It needs to reflect an understanding of why New START itself was meaningful.

New START worked for several reasons. It was suited for the moment, when each side was set on its strategic modernization track and when New START knew where it was headed over the next 15 years. In the United States, the treaty represented a bipartisan consensus, balanced between the desire for a follow-on agreement and for a nuclear recapitalization program. It was well constructed and durable, providing needed predictability and dialogue for a problematic relationship over 15 years. It was limited in scope to what it could do well and left thornier issues to other dialogues.

What then should replace it? Arms control can take many forms. Legally binding treaties are difficult, risky, and time consuming. Unsurprisingly, lengthy searches have been made to find easier paths. Yet, making political agreements with Beijing and Moscow have been just as difficult as legally binding ones. Those states have shown little interest in following U.S.-proposed norms. U.S. conceptions of transparency, strategic stability, and risk reduction have largely failed as organizing principles. Curbing non-nuclear technologies has proven challenging amid competition for advantage.¹⁹

As a result, alternative paths to legally binding agreements have not been found. There is the famous Sherlock Holmes line, “[W]hen you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” The truth is that legally binding arms control remains improbable in the short term and yet likely the best path forward in the long term.

The value is due to process. Process forces agencies to do their homework on what systems to limit and what the limits should be. Process creates mutual buy-in within the U.S. interagency bureaucracy, between the U.S. executive and legislative branches, between the United States and its allies, and between the countries participating in the negotiation. Process encourages the sides to table and agree on a framework before real negotiations begin, forcing a balance between desirable and achievable goals. Process generates the formation of a group of people who participate in something tangible that solders deterrence and arms control together.

After New START ends, the United States should take the lead in proposing a new legally binding agreement. It should be on the one thing where the contours of nuclear competition are clear: Over the next decade, China, Russia, and the United States will move together toward a multilateral world at higher levels of nuclear weapons. At the end of this road, they will all be at higher numbers but with the same deterrence challenges as today. The goal would be to offer a U.S.-proposed vision of how to manage the transition to this new point and what we should do when we get there.

The U.S. vision should be developed in consultation with Congress because nothing meaningful can be done without its support. There is a new bipartisan consensus to build between those preparing for the complexities of the “two-peer” deterrence environment, those desiring to focus on China and its nuclear expansion, those seeking renewed diplomacy with allies and partners, and those wanting to limit the costs of defense spending or nuclear modernization. With limited means, the United States must decide on what to focus, and a sound arms control policy plays a role in this choice.

The United States should make the framework of the negotiation clear: it is prepared to talk about numerical limits grounded by its own internal calculations of U.S. deterrence requirements if China and Russia come to the table and are clear about what they have in their arsenals and where they are going with those weapons systems. The parties then can talk about how best to manage this process together. If only one of those two adversaries comes to the table, the United States should be willing to discuss an information-based agreement without numerical limits. The United States should not constrain itself numerically if one of the other major parties is not constrained.

The United States also should bring France and the United Kingdom to the table. They should be unafraid to come. A united effort among these three allies would create more leverage on China and Russia. It would improve bipartisan consensus in Washington. It would highlight France and the UK as independent centers of nuclear decision-making. It would transform the P5 format recognized under the NPT into a productive venue for discussing this framework.

The United States also should be willing to discuss non-nuclear weapons systems of concern to the nuclear balance and bring its own list of concerns to the table. There is no harm in listening, in seeing what adversaries fear, and in discerning how much they are willing to pay in other areas to alleviate those fears. The United States should make clear that this is an agreement centered on nuclear weapons. Progress on other issues, if proven fruitful, can be spun off onto their own tracks.

Many policymakers and analysts are likely to judge such a modest proposal as too limited. Yet, it is meaningful and realistic, something the moment requires. This legally binding agreement can be criticized as codifying the anticipated future status quo at higher numbers, but such a future is likely beyond the power of arms control to alter. If arms control is asked to do less, it can help make the probable transition to higher numbers more stable.

Such a proposal also is probably too vague for many people. An agreed proposal takes real time, bandwidth, and energy to develop and execute. Specifics cannot be anticipated in advance or exist independent of internally calculated deterrence requirements. They also will take time to negotiate. The most important point after an end is where 
to begin.

China and Russia might very well dismiss this modest proposal. The United States should not chase after them. It simply should make clear that absent a finished agreement, it will continue with its nuclear modernization program. It will cooperate closely with London and Paris. When other countries press Washington for further action, it should point to its post-New START proposal and suggest that their diplomats engage Beijing and Moscow directly. If nothing else, the United States will have put out its marker on what should follow New START.

ENDNOTES

1. New START central limits are 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments; 1,550 nuclear warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments; and 800 deployed and nondeployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.

2. Science Direct, “Unstable Equilibrium,” n.d., (accessed December 31, 2024).

3. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, “America’s Strategic Posture,” October 2023.

4. “Adapting the U.S. Approach to Arms Control and Nonproliferation to a New Era,” remarks 
at the Arms Control Association meeting, June 7, 2024.

5. Theresa Hitchens, “DoD ‘Exploring’ Options for Nuclear Buildup as Part of Strategic Review,” Breaking Defense, August 1, 2024.

6. Brad Roberts and William Tobey, eds., “The Inflection Point and the U.S. Nuclear Security Enterprise,” Center for Global Security Research, October 2023.

7. For a discussion on the arms control interregnum topic, see Mike Albertson, “Facing the Coming Arms Control Interregnum: Workshop Summary,” Center for Global Security Research, n.d., (workshop held August 9-10, 2022).

8. This insight is increasingly finding its way into speeches by U.S. officials. See Alexandra Bell, “The Future of Arms Control,” U.S. Department of State, September 19, 2023.

9. For one excellent compilation of essays from this period, see Bernard F. Halloran, ed., “Essays on Arms Control and National Security (25th Anniversary Edition),” U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, No. 123, 1986.

10. A notable one took place at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in May 1981. For the conference discussions, see Warren Heckrotte and George C. Smith, eds., Arms Control in Transition: Proceedings of the Livermore Arms Control Conference (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983).

11. For an excellent recent publication, see Susan Colbourn, Euromissiles: The Nuclear Weapons That Nearly Destroyed NATO (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022).

12. Lawrence Freedman, “Arms Control: No Hiding Place,” SAIS Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter-Spring 1983): 4.

13. Heckrotte and Smith, Arms Control in Transition, p. 11.

14. Thomas Schelling, “What Went Wrong With Arms Control?” in Bernard F. Halloran, ed., “Essays on Arms Control and National Security (25th Anniversary Edition),” U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, No. 123, 1986, p. 336.

15. James Schlesinger, “Maintaining Global Stability,” in Bernard F. Halloran, ed., “Essays on Arms Control and National Security (25th Anniversary Edition),” U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, No. 123, 1986, p. 395.

16. Richard Burt, “Defense Policy and Arms Control: Defining the Problem,” in Bernard F. Halloran, ed., “Essays on Arms Control and National Security (25th Anniversary Edition),” U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, No. 123, 1986, p. 201.

17. Ibid., pp. 200-201.

18. George Kennan, “A Modest Proposal,” in Bernard F. Halloran, ed., “Essays on Arms Control and National Security (25th Anniversary Edition),” U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, No. 123, 1986, p. 133.

19. For an excellent recent analysis, see Anna Peczeli, “Recalibrating Arms Control for Emerging Technologies,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 4 (2024): 155-175.

January/February 2025
By Alexander Kmentt

Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) promise to benefit humanity, making tasks faster, easier, and more accessible. Yet, like all innovations, AI poses serious risks, especially in life-and-death decisions, such as those involving autonomous weapons systems. Many experts and developers urge caution, calling for reflection and regulatory measures. Integrating AI into weaponry will alter fundamentally how conflicts are fought and call into question the role of humans within them. Early examples in Ukraine and Gaza reveal this shift, but the future holds even greater change. Militaries want these systems for their speed, efficiency, and ability to minimize soldier casualties, fueling global investment. Their widespread adoption appears imminent, with costs expected to drop and their use likely to proliferate across conflicts worldwide.

This trajectory raises urgent ethical questions and presents challenges to compliance with international humanitarian law and human rights law. Experts warn of an arms race in autonomous weapons systems, especially amid rising geopolitical tensions, with significant risks of proliferation, unwanted escalation, and difficult-to-predict shifts in global power dynamics. Although AI offers extraordinary potential, the arrival of these systems demands immediate action to ensure legal norms, ethical boundaries, and global security.

There is no agreed definition of autonomous weapons systems, but in essence these are weapons systems that once activated by a human, select and engage targets without further human intervention. These weapons systems make “decisions” over life and death based on preprogrammed algorithms. These systems might be built on AI elements that cannot be understood fully by their human operators, and so really their actions cannot be predicted by those who should be responsible. This makes the arrival of autonomous weapons systems a watershed moment for our entire species.

This critical juncture demands urgent political leadership to create regulations and safeguards. Yet, the contrast between the rapid development of AI-powered weapons and the slow pace of regulatory discussions is stark. Mistrust among states and a potentially flawed confidence in technological solutions hinder progress. If the global community fails to act swiftly, the opportunity to establish legal guardrails will be lost before autonomous weapons systems become widely deployed, potentially leading to devastating consequences.

A Decade of Discussions

The issue of autonomous weapons systems first formally appeared on the agenda of the international community in a report by Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, to the Human Rights Council in 2013.¹ In 2016 the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) established a group of governmental experts to explore regulatory options. The group has met regularly since 2017, fostering greater understanding of the challenges posed by these systems, largely thanks to the contributions from civil society and academia.

In 2019, the CCW agreed on 11 guiding principles, including the full applicability of international humanitarian law to these systems and the need to retain human responsibility for decisions on the use of these systems and human accountability across their entire life cycle.² Discussions within the expert group have focused largely on ensuring compliance with international humanitarian law, a body of law that was designed around humans and human decision-making. Autonomous weapons systems challenge the legal requirements to distinguish between civilians and combatants, assess proportionality, and take necessary precautions in attacks. Systems that are not understood sufficiently, whose behaviors cannot be predicted reliably, or that cannot be limited contextually pose challenges for ensuring the level of control required for compliance with international humanitarian law as well as for retaining human legal accountability in the decision-making processes of increasingly autonomous systems.

One proposed response to these problems is the so-called two-tier approach, which has garnered growing support albeit no consensus yet. This framework combines prohibitions on systems that cannot be used in accordance with international humanitarian law with strict regulations for other systems to ensure adherence to legal standards. Central to this debate is defining the nature and level of “meaningful human control” and “appropriate human judgement.” Defining adequate human involvement, however, is contentious. Disagreements persist over what constitutes adequate predictability, understanding, and control, so there is disagreement also as to where any lines of prohibition should be drawn. A small group of states would prefer not to draw any lines at all.

In 2023, the experts group mandate was extended until 2026, with a slightly expanded focus to develop by consensus “a set of elements of an instrument, without prejudging its nature.” The group chair, Robert In den Bosch of the Netherlands, compiled a “rolling text” summarizing possible regulatory elements and offering a foundation for potential agreement. The group is engaged in these discussions, and if the rolling text³ from November 2024 is the measure, then progress appears to be made on the substance.

Yet, beneath the surface, the picture is less encouraging. The scope of the group discussions is limited, hampered by substantive disagreements and ineffective working methods imposed by CCW rules. Most importantly, the geopolitical backdrop has stymied decisive action. Rising tensions, mistrust, and diverging priorities among states have resulted in alarmingly slow progress.

Despite a decade of discussions, the global community has little to show in terms of concrete outcomes. The mismatch between the rapid development of autonomous weapons systems technologies and the sluggish pace of international regulation is troubling. Strong political leadership, guided by ethical principles and a commitment to international humanitarian law, is essential to meet this unprecedented challenge.

The Challenge of Comprehensive Regulation

The Martens clause of international humanitarian law calls for the public conscience to guide consideration of what is acceptable and unacceptable in warfare. The law needs to be responsive to wider societal needs. The regulation of autonomous weapons systems is demanded by factors and considerations that extend beyond the law and armed conflict. Although international humanitarian law remains central, broader concerns related to human rights, ethics, and global security also need attention.

These systems raise critical questions under international human rights law, particularly regarding the “right to life” and legal accountability. Their development and use likely will extend beyond warfare, where these rules tend to be applicable, and encompass law enforcement and border control. New rules that might be sufficient from an international humanitarian law perspective are not aligned necessarily with human rights law requirements. The potential for systems to make lethal decisions without human oversight amplifies concerns about who bears responsibility for errors or unlawful killings. Ethically, the automation of force challenges core principles of human dignity.

One of the most pressing areas of ethical concern is the direct targeting of individuals. This risks depriving humans of their dignity, dehumanizing the use of force, and violating the right of nondiscrimination. Key protections, such as the need to distinguish combatants from civilians or to protect soldiers wounded in combat, may be lost if they are inconvenient to the drive for automation. Systems programmed to distinguish between demographic groups risk having societal biases embedded in their datasets, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities. Errors stemming from such biases could lead to severe violations of rights and exacerbate inequalities.

In addition to presenting moral hazards at the level of human targeting, the systems may pose risks to global peace and stability. Where they reduce the risks to a state’s own soldiers, they may reduce the political threshold for deploying or using force. They promise operational speed, but this often comes at the expense of meaningful human control. These factors can heighten the risk of conflict escalation through rapid, machine-driven interactions. The systems are likely to feature prominently in asymmetric conflicts, potentially becoming weapons of choice for terrorists and nonstate actors. Controlling their proliferation will require coordinated legal, political, and technical measures.

All this is to say that there are important aspects of the issue that go beyond the international humanitarian law dimension that has been the focus of discussions thus far. Even if the experts group rapidly fulfills its international humanitarian law-focused mandate, only one set of challenges from autonomous weapons systems is likely to be addressed. The wider ethical challenges of targeting people and the proper limits on systems in border security or policing, for example, look unlikely to be fully explored or addressed. Many states have voiced the need to expand discussions, but opposition from certain actors has prevented meaningful action.

The 2016 decision to address autonomous weapons systems within the CCW framework, emphasizing international humanitarian law, reflected the urgency of tackling these legal challenges swiftly. It also was promoted by a few states that know that the CCW working method can be exploited to block progress. After nearly a decade of discussions and rapid technological development, it is fair to question the wisdom of this decision. The experts group has yet to transition from discussions to negotiations, and its narrow mandate has curtailed the comprehensive approach required to address challenges posed by autonomous weapons systems. The current mandate presents an important test.

A key issue is consensus-based CCW decision-making, which allows individual states to block progress. Russia, for example, has employed procedural tactics to delay discussions and reject progressive proposals or expressions of urgency in the group reports. Other states actively developing systems also have shown limited interest in advancing negotiations of a legally binding agreement, leaving the experts group in a cycle of substantive annual discussions without substantive outcomes.

This failure reflects a troubling procrastination. As technology evolves, the gap between regulation and reality widens further. Comprehensively regulating autonomous weapons systems requires a holistic approach that integrates international humanitarian law, human rights, ethics, and security considerations. Yet, the group is blocked from effectively addressing only the international humanitarian law considerations in the CCW, and there is also not yet a sufficient partnership for taking up discussions elsewhere.

The political landscape of the group risks perpetuating a Groundhog Day dynamic of stalled discussions. States must now prioritize building shared recognition of what a legal instrument could look like in the near term and expanding the scope of dialogue to promote a comprehensive, long-term response. It is a global priority to ensure that the international legal framework develops in step with technological advancements; the procedural barriers are, in the end, excuses for political choices.

Geopolitical Rule

The unsatisfactory state of affairs is frustrating for those who recognize the urgency of this issue. Yet, states developing such systems, along with their allies, vigorously defend the experts group process as the only suitable venue for discussions. Proposals to broaden the focus beyond international humanitarian law or involve other forums are met with skepticism. A common argument is that all militarily significant states must participate to ensure effective regulation. Although there is general agreement on the need for rules governing these systems, geopolitical tensions and eroded trust make many states reluctant to adopt regulations that their competitors might ignore.

This hesitancy is particularly evident among certain Western states, which share frustrations about the lack of progress but remain wary of initiatives that they fear could exclude major powers and lead to legal instruments that do not align with their perceived military interests. This caution, however understandable on the surface, is probably shortsighted.

First, the experts group’s proposed two-tier approach aims to prohibit autonomous weapons systems that do not align with the requirements of international humanitarian law and to regulate the use of others to enable compliance with that law, emphasizing understandability, predictability, and spatial-temporal limits on use in order to exert human control. The military advantage of systems beyond human judgment and control remains unclear at best. Many likely would argue that there would be no advantage; after all, the rules being discussed in the CCW have had more than 10 years of military interests being vocally represented. At a practical level, clarity of international legal rules also allows for clarity and direction for operational military commanders and private sector stakeholders.

From a legal perspective, the corollary of not accepting rules unless all states participate means accepting for themselves or their adversaries systems that they believe would violate international humanitarian law. Can states committed to international humanitarian law and universal values agree to delegate life-and-death decisions to systems lacking capacity for compliance, control, and accountability? Arguably, these principles are vital and must be upheld, regardless of universal participation, to maintain international humanitarian law and shared values. At a time when international rules and norms are in a critical condition, giving power to only the most militarized states is a political failure.

Relying on universal consensus before taking regulatory steps is ultimately a disingenuous stance that invites inertia. Few international issues today enjoy universal agreement, and insisting on unanimity in regulating autonomous weapons systems effectively guarantees standstill. This approach allows states to appear committed to multilateralism while shifting blame for inaction to others.

Such procrastination ignores the narrowing window of opportunity to establish legal and normative safeguards before these systems become widespread. The longer regulatory efforts are delayed, the more difficult it will be to reverse course once these systems proliferate globally. Democratic states, in particular, must recognize that this delay is against their own long-term interests and the broader interests of humanity.

The Road Ahead

The immediate priority should be to bring the experts group’s work to a successful conclusion. The group must recommend the initiation of negotiations for a legally binding instrument based on the two-tier approach, encompassing prohibitions and regulations for autonomous weapons systems. Although it does not tackle concerns regarding antipersonnel systems effectively, the group chair’s rolling text of November 2024 shows that many states are close to agreeing on the key rules needed to preserve human control.

The group mandate extends to 2026, with the CCW review conference set as the deadline for a final report, but progress should be accelerated to conclude by the end of 2025. Substantive recommendations on prohibitions and regulations are on the table. Continuing discussions ad infinitum without committing to action would represent a failure of political responsibility, especially for states that claim to uphold international humanitarian law and universal values.

In parallel, efforts to generate political momentum for regulating these systems must intensify. Participation in the experts group remains limited. Many countries of the Global South are notably absent, despite the inevitable future global impact of these systems once they become cheap and accessible. Moreover, despite active civil society participation and input, the group’s work receives very limited public attention, and there is little critical focus on those blocking progress.

Encouragingly, there are some signs of change. UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric-Egger, have called urgently for international rules to regulate autonomous weapons systems to be negotiated by 2026.⁴ Regional conferences in Costa Rica,⁵ the Philippines, Trinidad and Tobago,⁶ and Sierra Leone⁷ have consolidated positions in support of regulation. Austria hosted a large international conference on these systems in April 2024.⁸ The chair’s summary⁹ of that conference has garnered endorsements from 40 states, signaling growing support for action.

In 2023, Austria, on behalf of 27 co-sponsoring states, introduced the first UN General Assembly resolution on lethal autonomous weapons systems,¹⁰ backed by 164 states. The resolution mandated the secretary-general to compile a comprehensive report on the issue, incorporating input from states, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector. Published in 2024 after a record number of states provided submissions, the report underscored the pressing humanitarian, legal, security, technological, and ethical challenges posed by autonomous weapons systems.¹¹ It also highlighted widespread support for a legally binding instrument and called for the experts group to fulfill its mandate. A follow-up resolution in December 2024 again received strong support, with 166 states in favor.¹² In 2025, the General Assembly will hold informal discussions to further address the issue.

The quest for regulating autonomous weapons systems continues to be hindered by geopolitical tensions, procrastination, and insufficient political momentum. Although there is growing recognition of the need for action, the necessary leadership to navigate these challenges remains elusive. The situation has been referenced as an “Oppenheimer moment.” There are indeed parallels to the post-1945 era when Manhattan Project scientists advocated for nuclear weapons regulation. Their warnings were overshadowed and ultimately ignored because of Cold War politics, resulting in a protracted nuclear arms race and an existential threat enduring to this day.

Despite loud warnings from experts, geopolitical tensions again are thwarting vital international action to regulate these systems, thus risking a new arms race and posing an existential challenge for humanity. Negotiation of international rules and limits on autonomous weapons systems is more urgent than ever. States cannot allow geopolitical rivalries to continue obstructing these efforts. They need to continue building a cross-regional partnership of states, international organizations, and civil society with the confidence to break out of the procedural deadlock because a greater good demands it.

ENDNOTES

1. See UN General Assembly, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Christof Heyns,” A/HRC/23/47, April 9, 2013.

2. Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, “Report of the 2019 Session of the Group of Governmental Experts on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems,” CCW/GGE.1/2019/3, September 25, 2019, p. 13.

3. See “GGE on LAWS, Rolling Text, Status Date: 8 November 2024,” n.d.

4. International Committee of the Red Cross, “Joint Call by the United Nations Secretary-General and the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross for States to Establish New Prohibitions and Restrictions on Autonomous Weapon Systems,” News release, October 5, 2023.

5. “Communiqué of the Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Social and Humanitarian Impact of Autonomous Weapons,” Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, Costa Rica, n.d.

6. “CARICOM Declaration on Autonomous Weapons Systems,” Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, n.d.

7. “Submission of the Government of Sierra Leone Towards the UN Secretary-General’s Call Outlined in Resolution 78/241 on ‘Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems,’ Adopted by the General Assembly in December 2023, Drawing From a Conference of Member States of Economic Community of West African States on the Peace and Security Aspect of Autonomous Weapons Systems, 17-18 April 2024,” May 23, 2024.

8. Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, “2024 Vienna Conference on Autonomous Weapons Systems,” n.d., (accessed December 18, 2024).

9. See “Humanity at the Crossroads: Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Challenge of Regulation; Chair’s Summary,” April 30, 2024.

10. UN General Assembly, “Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems,” A/RES/78/241, December 28, 2023.

11. UN General Assembly, “Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems: Report of the Secretary-General,” A/79/88, July 1, 2024.

12. UN General Assembly, “Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ireland, Kiribati, Liechtenstein, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Trinidad and Tobago: Draft Resolution; Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems,” A/C.1/79/L.77, October 18, 2024.

January/February 2025
By Almuntaser Albalawi

The risk of a regional war in the Middle East is now at its highest in decades, with the threat of further escalation, proliferation, and even the use of nuclear weapons or attacks on nuclear installations a real possibility. A direct confrontation between Israel and Iran could trigger major shifts in the nuclear doctrines of regional states and, beyond that, further undermine nonproliferation norms in the region and the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) regime more generally.

The prospects of a return to the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal remain remote, and regional arms control issues are rarely on the agenda of ongoing, high-level political and security talks. Moreover, nuclear rhetoric among elites in the region who advocate for the development of nuclear weapons, their use in conflicts, or the targeting of nuclear infrastructure further exacerbates the situation.

This alarming scenario is becoming more plausible due to the stagnation of the international nonproliferation regime and regional arms control diplomacy. Internationally, bilateral and multilateral disarmament and arms control regimes are in danger of becoming dysfunctional. Geopolitical tensions, threats of nuclear use, the expansion of nuclear stockpiles among nuclear-armed states, noncompliance issues, and a lack of progress in honoring past commitments and advancing beyond them have resulted in a loss of credibility and deadlocks within these regimes.

For years, NPT states-parties have discussed nuclear risks in the Middle East extensively, but failed to reach consensus on a final document at their last two NPT review conferences, reflecting widening global disagreements on the path forward for the global nonproliferation regime. The chances for a different outcome at the next review conference in 2026 also look bleak.

More robust and creative efforts are needed to go beyond the traditional nonproliferation tool kits and to facilitate and revitalize regional arms control initiatives in the Middle East. Against this backdrop, the five-year-old conference mandated by the UN General Assembly on the establishment of a Middle Eastern zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is the only existing forum where regional states currently discuss regional arms control.

Although this conference’s relevance should be higher than ever, it has received too little attention in the policy domain. The conclusion of the fifth annual session of the conference in November provides a timely opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved so far toward establishment of the zone, what challenges have emerged over the past five years, and how the conference impacts global nonproliferation and disarmament diplomacy.

Despite some noteworthy progress, including fostering dialogue among participating states on reducing WMD risks in the region, more work still is needed to sustain momentum in the future. This includes steps that the conference could take to strengthen its work and draw absent parties into the process. It is also essential that the conference explore potential implications for the NPT review process, given the interlinkages and interdependencies between the two processes.

The Middle Eastern Zone Conference       

Since the UN General Assembly adopted decision 73/546 in 2018 to negotiate a legally binding treaty establishing a Middle Eastern zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, five sessions have been held. The first session, in 2019, issued a political declaration emphasizing the inclusivity of the process. The declaration also included nonbinding political commitments, such as refraining from measures that prevent the achievement of the treaty’s objectives.¹ Although adherence by states is uneven, these commitments still carry political and normative weight.

By extending an open-ended invitation to all states in the region to join, conditioning the adoption of the treaty to the consent of all invited states, and committing them to pursue negotiations on the basis of arrangements freely arrived at by consensus—a principle that Iran and Israel regard as essential—the conference participants attempted to alleviate some concerns about the process, including of states feeling outnumbered in such a regional forum or disadvantaged in decision-making.

Participating states hoped the decision regarding modalities would encourage Israel’s participation and ensure the continued participation of other key states and observers from the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the NPT. Yet, the outcome was not realized for Israel or the United States. Israel’s main objections to the process are that it is held under UN auspices, is limited to weapons of mass destruction, and precludes discussion on regional security. Israel also noted that the Arab Group did not consult it before submitting the proposal on establishing the conference to the General Assembly.

In its second session, held in 2021 after the 2020 session was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference adopted rules of procedure and formally established that decisions on substantive and procedural matters would be made by consensus.² Recognizing the complexity of issues that the conference would have to discuss and the additional time needed for deliberations, the second session also created a working committee and an intersessional process between annual sessions. The working committee may report its work to the conference, but its outcomes are not binding.³

The informal status of the working committee, with its closed-meeting format and voluntary reporting requirements, provided some advantages. It allowed for deliberations to continue in depth between annual sessions, including engagement with external experts and scheduling technical briefings for delegates. It also allowed for informal discussion on technical and contentious topics, even in the absence of key relevant parties, without prejudice to the future work of the conference, positions, or options.⁴

Evolving Discussions and Views

During the second session, Kuwait, the session president, proposed initiating thematic discussions based on a comprehensive list of elements relevant to the future treaty.⁵ The ensuing exchange on contentious issues served as an informal guide for the topics discussed in subsequent sessions. States have used the annual sessions and working committee meetings to exchange views and build proposals, gradually forming their preliminary positions on elements of the treaty. Yet, participating states have stated consistently that conference discussions and statements should not be considered final positions or conclusions on any topic, given Israel’s absence.

The conference outcome documents show initial agreement on the future treaty’s general obligations and its ultimate objective of “enhancing regional and international peace and security through the complete elimination and prohibition of nuclear weapons and other [weapons of mass destruction].”⁶ To maintain consistency with their existing obligations, states mostly agree that the proposed zone treaty should be based on the three bedrock WMD treaties: the NPT, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).⁷

Using these existing treaties as a basis has helped the conference identify unexplored, region-specific issues for further consideration. Many of these issues, such as additional obligations and verification measures, institutional arrangements, and entry into force, are topics that still need further discussion in subsequent sessions.⁸

Verification is one of the most discussed topics in the ongoing deliberations. The conference agreed to build on existing international organizations, namely the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for verification mechanisms to avoid duplication. The unique scope of the zone treaty mandate and regional circumstances, however, have raised the issue of supplementary verification mechanisms to increase confidence in compliance. States have different views on the level of verification required to ensure compliance. Although some states hold that the regional circumstances require additional verification measures, others oppose adopting any measures that exceed those under the NPT, BWC, and CWC.

Such differences highlight the need for more technical and policy advice to supplement the states’ views and proposals, which could bridge gaps and advance negotiations. For example, technical advice could build a better understanding among states about the advantages and disadvantages of including regional verification measures to the BWC or the IAEA additional protocol as an obligation under the treaty.

Meanwhile, although most states recognize in principle the need for ratification of the NPT, BWC, and CWC by all states invited to the conference prior to the zone’s entry into force, views differ on timelines and implementation modalities, including for nuclear disarmament. One school of thought, raised by Iran, holds that disarmament and dismantlement should take place before states join the treaty and before the treaty enters into force. Proponents of the other school of thought, led by Egypt, advocate for more flexibility in considering different arrangements for dismantlement, including after the treaty enters into force or before it is ratified.⁹

Given regional nuclear energy plans as well as economic and development needs, peaceful uses and technical cooperation remain another heavily discussed issue. Participating states were explicit about avoiding a politicization of obligations that could restrict access to these technologies. Several proposals were put forward to promote and facilitate international, regional, and subregional cooperation, including a proposal for a fuel production consortium. There is convergence around the importance of creating regional mechanisms for promoting peaceful uses of nuclear energy and cooperation, but opinions diverge on their model and scope.

In the same context, the topic of unilateral coercive measures, such as sanctions, continues to create disagreement among states. Iran holds that the future treaty should provide assurances against such measures.¹⁰ Other states, although recognizing the illegality of these measures, feel that the conference is not the right forum to address this matter.¹¹

The Impact of Regional Crises

The fourth and fifth conference sessions, in 2023 and 2024, respectively, took place during an especially difficult time in the region. Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023; the subsequent Israeli wars in Gaza and Lebanon; and the risk of wider regional escalation added to existing challenges for the conference. Some observers say the Hamas attack is likely to solidify Israel’s positions, including a belief that the conference in its current scope harms Israeli security interests and thus makes Israel far less likely to engage with the conference any time soon.¹² Some states disagree, arguing that participation is without prejudice to national security interests because the conference’s current modalities protect against such undesired outcomes.¹³ Others say that the catastrophic loss of civilian lives and prolonged humanitarian suffering in Gaza and Lebanon, coupled with implicit and explicit threats by Israeli officials to use nuclear weapons in Gaza,¹⁴ make it difficult for Arab states to engage with the current Israeli government in the conference work and not to condemn its actions despite seeing the urgent need to bring Israel into the conference process.¹⁵

Despite the regional volatility, the last two conference sessions witnessed notable procedural and substantive progress. The conference improved its working methodology by appointing the incoming presidents at the end of the previous annual session. This allows them, with input from participating states, to set the agenda of the working committee or any other intersessional body from the start of their term, culminating in the annual conference.¹⁶

The fourth session adopted for the first time a substantive summary of the working committee’s work, reflecting views and deliberations on elements of a future treaty. Yet, the fifth session reversed course and only accepted reporting in an informal “president’s summary” format. Such a format impacts other associated outcomes of the intersessional work, such as the index of topics developed to guide future annual sessions, which currently lacks official status because it was only annexed to the president’s summary. Some states supporting such an informal reporting format may be concerned about making substantive views and outcomes of the committee’s work binding, but this approach could advance the conference work by establishing institutional memory.

Another first during the fourth session was a closed-door regional meeting held in June 2024 in Doha to support the conference’s work. The meeting brought together senior representatives of the participating states to discuss the challenges and the way forward for the conference. Held alongside the third Arab Forum on Non-Proliferation, Disarmament and Arms Control, one of the largest regional nonproliferation and disarmament forums in the region, it enabled delegations to engage with senior officials and experts from regional capitals, the NPT nuclear-weapon states, and international organizations on various zone-related issues.

Building on the insights gained during the Doha meeting, the fifth session resumed the discussion on reviewing the conference work and exchanging ideas for future sessions. The conference identified Israel’s absence as the key challenge to the process and discussed options for engagement, including establishing a contact group to communicate with absent parties and tasking successive presidencies to work on this with the UN secretary-general. Additionally, the conference explored proposals for strengthening its work, such as improving substantive reporting, documenting agreements to serve as building blocks for future negotiations, and establishing a group of former conference presidents to advise on promoting structured discussion and progress in future sessions.

Future Conference Sessions

Despite the slow pace, the conference process serves the fundamental goal of keeping the zone initiative alive during declining multilateralism, high distrust, and conflict. It also has created an ongoing formal dialogue among regional states about elements, concepts, and architecture of the future Middle Eastern WMD-free zone. Such a dialogue fosters a better understanding of states’ positions and concerns while also providing a platform for ideas that could alleviate some of the regional tension around WMD risks. Still, successful conclusion of the treaty remains uncertain as long as key challenges remain unresolved, such as Israel’s rejection of the conference and disagreements over strengthening the conference’s substantive work, ongoing regional noncompliance issues, and unsafeguarded WMD activities.

Discussing these challenges during the fifth session was a positive step, but the proposals for tackling these issues still need further clarification and formalization. For instance, proposals focused on sequencing discussion based on the index of topics and documenting agreements as building blocks for the treaty text need to be negotiated further to decide how they will be incorporated into the working methods and practices.¹⁷ Some elements might need to be adopted as decisions by the conference.

Strengthening substantive work is also linked to the broader question of how to advance negotiations in the absence of key parties. Ideas raised so far include starting to negotiate text elements of a future treaty or even drafting the preambular elements and general provisions known as the “draft zero,” which can be put forward before formal negotiations start and was recently suggested by some states.¹⁸ Mauritania’s remarks during the fifth session alluded to the option of drafting the treaty without the participation of absent parties.¹⁹

In the absence of a decision on this matter, states may focus on making the current substantive discussions more efficient and targeted, allowing the conference to continue laying the groundwork for negotiations. For example, the conference could encourage an open discussion about any concerns regarding topics left over from past sessions that may be considered when negotiations reach the drafting stage and identify possible solutions for these contentious topics.

Another idea involves including experts from relevant governmental agencies at the conference sessions and working committee meetings. This would strengthen delegations’ capacities and the level of instruction, coordination, and authority. The proposal made during the fifth session to establish a sponsorship program and encourage voluntary contributions to support wider participation by specialists and officials from states with limited resources could support these efforts.

Israel’s absence and, to some extent, the United States’ absence as an observer are viewed as a key challenge to the process. The treaty will hold little value without the participation of all regional states, especially those believed to possess weapons of mass destruction or those aspiring to acquire them.

Regional circumstances may not be conducive to significant progress now. Nevertheless, the conference could still take steps to make its work more appealing to Israel by providing it and the United States clarity on two issues that traditionally have been of utmost importance to Israel. First is the level of guarantee that the future treaty will provide concerning compliance and enforcement, including verification measures and compliance and enforcement mechanisms. Second is the scope of the treaty, particularly whether delivery systems will be included, and the extent to which the conference is willing to broaden the range of discussions to include other threats of relevance to Israel and the conference’s mandate. The conference also could consider inviting nonofficial experts from Israel and the United States to the informal working committee meetings. The aim would be to better understand the positions of absent parties and help identify venues and opportunities for engaging their officials in the future.

The conference should also consider enhancing civil society participation to expand regional participation and expert representation. Accredited nongovernmental organizations currently can attend the opening, closing, and general debate sessions but not the thematic debate, which comprises the majority of conference time. Furthermore, there are no segments designated for their statements during the conference, making it unappealing and financially unattainable to travel to New York merely to attend open sessions that are live streamed.

As a precedent, the president of the fourth session held an informal open meeting with civil society representatives on the margins of the conference. Two youth regional civil society representatives were also invited to share their perspectives during the Doha meeting in 2024. Another precedent was holding the first side event, open to both delegates and civil society, held by the UN Institute for Disarmament Research on the margins of the fifth session.²⁰ More of these efforts are needed to enhance the process by increasing transparency, inviting civil society to support the process, and developing ideas to address current challenges.

The NPT Review Conference

The fifth session called for increased engagement with relevant international forums and their members, including the NPT, to promote the conference goals and request the inclusion of relevant issues in the outcome documents of the NPT review conferences and preparatory committee meetings.²¹ This involves mobilizing political support and urging NPT states, including the three NPT depositary states, to uphold their responsibilities toward the establishment of the zone. This renewed attention to the interlinkages between the conference and other parallel processes, mainly the NPT, has possible implications for the review cycles.

Since the first zone conference session, in 2019, participants have been optimistic that disagreements over the language in the NPT final document concerning the zone could be prevented as a reason for breaking or preventing consensus during NPT review conferences. This was the case during the 10th NPT Review Conference, in 2022, when compromise language on the zone was agreed.

Two factors make it challenging, however, to predict how the zone and Middle Eastern issues will impact the dynamics of the future review conference negotiations. First, discussions on nuclear risks in the Middle East during the review conference are tied closely to the ever-changing political and security situation in the region, particularly regarding Iran and Israel.

Second, although the Middle Eastern resolution adopted by the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference serves as the terms of reference for the zone conference, participating states have not clearly defined the relationship between the zone conference and the NPT. Most participating states view the two as parallel processes or the conference as a venue for discussing the implementation of the 1995 resolution rather than replacements for one another. They affirm that past commitments made by the NPT conferences remain valid and that NPT states are still expected to contribute to the establishment of the zone. Yet, it remains unclear how or what exactly these expectations entail.

During the 2026 review conference, it can be expected that the Arab Group and Iran will seek language in the outcome document that endorses the zone conference process and calls for full participation by all regional states. Some states, particularly Iran, which expressed dissatisfaction with the language agreed by the United States and Egypt during the 2022 review conference, may push for stronger language, including explicit condemnation of Israel’s nuclear threats.²² Such a push is likely to receive support from the Arab Group, given the current regional dynamics.

Although it is impossible to decouple the NPT negotiations from regional politics, clarifying expectations ahead of the conference could reduce risks for both processes. One way to do that is to decide that substantive deliberations related to the zone would take place at the zone conference while the NPT continues to serve as a venue for seeking political support and consultations on broader challenges to the process. Delegating contentious substantive matters to the zone conference would preserve the time at the NPT review conference for negotiating all the other regional and nonregional specific issues and reduce the likelihood of disagreements.²³

ENDNOTES

1. UN General Assembly, “Report of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction on the Work of Its First Session,” A/CONF.236/6, November 28, 2019, p. 5.

2. The rules of procedures allow for voting in three limited cases: rulings on procedural motions related to the suspension of meetings, adjournment or closure of debate, and points of order as outlined in rules 10, 14, and 15. UN General Assembly, “Rules of Procedure,” A/CONF.236/2021/3, December 3, 2021.

3. UN General Assembly, “Establishment of a Working Committee to Continue Deliberations Among Members of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction During the Intersessional Period of the Conference,” A/CONF.236/2021/DEC.3, December 3, 2021, p. 1.

4. For example, the United Arab Emirates noted that the working committee serves as an avenue for discussing the steps required for making progress. Sudan emphasized that it could be utilized to discuss the concerns of all countries, and Kuwait remarked that it assisted in expanding Kuwait’s perspectives on how to move forward. For additional examples of how states referred to advantages of the working committee method and other related conference issues, see UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) Middle East WMD-Free Zone Compass, “Working Methodology of the UNGA-Mandated Conference: Working Committee,” n.d., (accessed January 1, 2025).

5. See UNIDIR, “Organization Meeting of the Working Committee of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other WMD in 2022,” n.d., (accessed January 1, 2025).

6. UN General Assembly, “Report of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction on the Work of Its Second Session,” A/CONF.236/2021/4, December 3, 2021 (hereinafter second session report), p. 4.

7. For more detailed views and statements by states on obligations, see UNIDIR Middle East WMD-Free Zone Compass, “Obligations,” n.d., (accessed January 1, 2025).

8. Some of these elements were highlighted in the second session’s report as issues the conference agreed to discuss further in subsequent sessions, also known as “Issues under Paragraph 51.” Second session report.

9. See Heidar Ali Balouji, Statement before the Fourth Session of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction, n.d., p. 1; Amir Saeid Iravani, Statement before the Fourth Session of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction, November 13, 2023, p. 4, ; Arab Republic of Egypt, Statement at the Third Session of the Conference on Establishing a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction, November 15, 2022, pp. 6-10, 
(in Arabic).

10. See Heidar Ali Balouji, Statement on inalienable right to use technology for peaceful purposes and unilateral coercive measures before the Third Session of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction, n.d.

11. UN General Assembly, “Report of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction on the Work of Its Third Session,” A/CONF.236/2022/3, November 21, 2022, pp. 5-6.

12. Ariel Levite, “An Israeli Vision of a Middle East NWFZ,” in Henry D. Sokolski, ed., “A Middle East Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Utopia?” Nonproliferation Policy Education Center Occasional Paper, No. 2307, November 2023.

13. See “Inclusivity Versus Self-Isolation: The Pressing Issue of the United Nations Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction; Working Paper Submitted by the Russian Federation,” A/CONF.236/2024/WP.1, September 30, 2024.

14. Michael Bachner, “Far-Right Minister Says Nuking Gaza an Option, PM Suspends Him From Cabinet Meetings,” The Times of Israel, November 5, 2023; Sam Sokol, “Far-Right Minister Eliyahu: ‘Even in the Hague They Know My Position,’” The Times of Israel, January 24, 2024.

15. For example, the national statement by Kuwait during the fourth and fifth sessions of the conference rejected engaging the current Israeli government and supported the League of Arab States and Organization of Islamic Cooperation decision to document possible war crimes. See Statement of Kuwait, November 13, 2023, p. 7, (in Arabic).

16. UN General Assembly, “Report of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction on the Work of Its Fourth Session,” A/CONF.236/2023/4, November 20, 2023, p. 3.

17. UN General Assembly, “Report of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction on the Work of Its Fifth Session,” A/CONF.236/2024/3, November 22, 2024 (hereinafter fifth session report).

18. See Statement of Qatar during the fifth session on behalf of the GCC, n.d., p. 4, 
(in Arabic).

19. See Statement of Mauritania during the fifth session, n.d., p. 3, (in Arabic).

20. The event featured a demonstration of UNIDIR tools for supporting the zone. See Almuntaser Albalawi, “UNIDIR Tools for Supporting the Middle East WMD-Free Zone,” November 19, 2024, posted December 13, 2024, by UNIDIR, YouTube.

21. Fifth session report.

22. 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, “Main Committee II: Summary Record of the 11th Meeting,” NPT/CONF.2020/MC.II/SR.11, October 25, 2022, paras. 75-76 (referencing 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, “Draft Final Document,” NPT/CONF.2020/CRP.1/Rev.2, August 25, 2022).

23. Almuntaser Albalawi, “A Balanced Approach to Addressing Nuclear Risks in the Middle East While Preserving the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” Peace Review, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2024): 238-250.

January/February 2025

The Foundations of Modern Arms Control: An International History, 1815-1968
By Robert M. Blum
Routledge
2024

The nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the broader bilateral arms control relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War often are heralded as the crowning achievements of nuclear arms control. Yet, there exists a long history that was crucial in laying the groundwork for these successes. Author Robert M. Blum explores this history from the end of the Napoleonic wars to the negotiation of the NPT, not as an inevitable trajectory but rather as a process by which a diverse set of actors gradually shifted international attitudes over time through varying historical and relational contexts. He traces this process from the early advocacy of mechanisms for arbitration to the international community’s embrace of “total and complete disarmament” and finally to the climate of compromise that shrouded the NPT negotiation process, which remains a hallmark of conventional wisdom surrounding modern arms control agreements. Crucially, Blum highlights the contribution of civil society and peace movements led by women and people of color. Their pressure campaigns often played a key role despite the widely varying levels of openness among government officials to such groups in negotiation processes. This concise history proves a valuable resource for anyone who seeks to better understand the modern day arms control landscape.—GARRETT WELCH

A Farewell to Wars: The Growing Restraints on the Interstate Use of Force
By Hans Blix
Cambridge University Press
2023

In the wake of the unprecedented Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many have concluded that the era of great-power competition has returned. Despite the heightened international context, author Hans Blix contests the traditional realist framework of writers such as Hans Morgenthau, Francis Fukuyama, and Azar Gat that views armed interstate conflict as an inevitable consequence of human nature. Instead, Blix presents a competing narrative that centers on the successes of international law and global diplomacy in limiting warfare. He leverages his decades of experience as a Swedish diplomat to contextualize evolving norms and legal frameworks, including the establishment of the UN system, the International Criminal Court, and various treaties and conventions that have been instrumental in constraining the use of force between and among states. Based on this, he argues that Russia’s war in Ukraine is a “major aberration” that constitutes a grave breach of binding international norms but that the norms themselves remain intact. This perspective carries significant implications for states, diplomats, and civil society attempting to shape an increasingly uncertain environment.—GARRETT WELCH

January/February 2025

More Data Is Not the Answer

Deterrence Under Uncertainty: Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War
By Edward Geist
Oxford University Press
2023

Reviewed by Herbert Lin

Some books are erudite and learned. Some books are entertaining and even funny. Some books offer a whole different perspective on a topic. Some books teach interesting things. Some books are well written. Deterrence Under Uncertainty by Edward Geist is exemplary in each of these categories. It is essential reading for a world awash with conversations about the revolutionary impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on armed conflict.

A bit of history is important to frame these conversations properly. In the 1970s, the Second Offset strategy was formulated as a way of using new technologies to counter the Soviet Union’s numerical superiority in conventional weapons.¹ Investments initiated in this time frame continued through the 1980s, and the fruits of these investments were on display during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Responding to Iraq’s ground invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and subsequent annexation of that Gulf state, the United States led an international coalition to eject Iraq from Kuwaiti territory and restore the latter’s sovereignty. Military operations against Iraqi forces in Kuwait began on January 17, 1991, with extensive aerial bombardments followed by a ground offensive on February 24.

Within 100 hours of the ground operation, a ceasefire was announced after coalition forces ejected Iraqi forces from Kuwait and then advanced into Iraqi territory. The use of precision-guided munitions; advanced command, control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems; and tactics enabled by these technologies resulted in remarkably low coalition casualties compared to previous conflicts. By contrast, Iraqi forces suffered significant losses, with tens of thousands killed or captured and vast amounts of military equipment destroyed. This swift victory underscored the effectiveness of the Second Offset strategy, which emphasized technological innovation to overcome numerical disadvantages on the battlefield.

In the wake of this war, many military decision-makers believed that a genuine revolution in battlefield awareness was closer than ever. For instance, Geist quotes U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Ronald Fogelman as saying in October 1996 that, “in the first quarter of the new century, it will become possible to find, fix or track, and target anything that moves on the surface of the earth.”² Five years later, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Owens suggested that the United States would “be able to see everything of military significance in the combat zone.”³

Lingering Ramifications

So it is today that the ramifications of the Second Offset are still felt as precision-guided munitions, delivered by stealth platforms and enhanced by global location awareness, continue to play a pivotal role in U.S. military strategy for engaging great powers in armed confrontation. These munitions, supported by advanced battlefield information systems communicating through U.S. Department of Defense networks, are intended to enable effective strikes against high-value targets even in heavily defended areas. Many of the platforms and munitions that would be used in such a conflict today are more advanced and sophisticated than those used in the Persian Gulf War, although many would be identical as well. Troops from that era would easily recognize the shape and character of many of today’s technology-enabled weapons if not their precise capabilities.

Military leaders and analysts are now pondering the significance of AI in this environment. In a key part of what reasonably could be called the Third Offset, that is, an AI-enabled Second Offset, the ability of AI to process vast amounts of battlefield data in real time is intended to provide commanders with an even more comprehensive situational awareness through the integration of diverse data sources, such as satellite and drone imagery, electronic warfare intercepts, and intelligence reports.

This information is combined with details about friendly forces, including where they are and what weapons they can bring to the fight, as well as environmental conditions, terrain, and the whereabouts of neutral actors or noncombatants. The resulting near-real-time situational awareness allows commanders to identify patterns and trends that might otherwise go unnoticed. This knowledge enables faster, more informed decision-making, which is essential in high-stakes environments where time is critical.

In this world, AI plays a critical role in a “God’s-eye view” of the battlefield, a concept rooted in the notion of “ground truth,” which denotes information gathered through direct observation and measurement. A God’s-eye view is utterly comprehensive, which means that it accounts for anything and everything that might be relevant to a commander’s decision-making. With a God’s-eye view, everything on the battlefield can be seen, what can be seen on the battlefield can be hit, and what can be hit can be killed. In this environment, victory soon follows.

Extending these capabilities for near-God-like battlefield awareness to the nuclear sphere does not take much imagination, given that senior military leaders have called for the seamless integration of nuclear and conventional command-and-control capabilities.⁴ Responding to such calls, analysts have raised concerns about the putative vulnerability of strategic nuclear systems.

Geist notes Rose Gottemoeller’s concerns that “[s]ecure retaliatory forces are becoming vulnerable…because ubiquitous sensing, paired with big data analysis [in context, an aspect of AI], makes it possible for adversaries to reliably detect those forces. Even moving targets, such as mobile missiles and submarines, may become vulnerable to detection and targeting.”⁵ He also notes Paul Bracken’s suggestion that “the long-prophesied epoch of splendid situational awareness is finally at hand because Al and deep learning will enable information fusion for data from many kinds of sensors, with a resulting ‘synergistic effect.’”⁶

Other analysts with similar concerns include James Johnson, who writes that “the integration of AI, machine learning, and big-data analytics can dramatically improve militaries’ ability to locate, track, target, and destroy a rival’s nuclear-deterrent forces—especially nuclear-armed submarines and mobile missile forces—and without the need to deploy nuclear weapons.”⁷ Johnson concludes that “the capabilities AI might enhance (cyber weapons, drones, precision-strike missiles, and hypersonic weapons), together with the ones it might enable (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, automatic target recognition, and autonomous sensor platforms), could make hunting for mobile nuclear arsenals faster, cheaper, and more effective than before.”

In a somewhat similar vein, other experts raise the possibility that AI may enable more effective targeting of mobile land-based systems,⁸ as the result of AI-enabled improvements in real-time surveillance coupled with a better understanding of the routines and doctrine that shape their dispersal patterns. Such improvements would take place through better processing of larger volumes of data from radar, satellite, and electronic sensors and the control of reconnaissance swarms of sensor platforms.

Geist’s Contribution

Into this conversation steps Geist. The heart of his contribution, a critically important one, is his insight that more data from sensors ultimately will not solve the problem, in this case, one of making now-survivable nuclear forces vulnerable to a splendid first strike. He notes that “[t]ime and again, when much-anticipated new computers and networks are placed into service, they fail to live up to expectations about their military effect.” Geist argues that “this pattern is not a coincidence, or the result of still-immature technology, but rather a straightforward implication of theoretical computer science” and that “‘lifting the fog of war’ is something that computers [no matter how powerful] cannot be counted upon to do.”

Why? The author offers two reasons. The first is relatively easy to understand: information that is received and integrated may be unreliable. As Geist points out, 
“[I]ntelligence about troop movements might be ingenious disinformation planted by devious enemy agents; data about... missile tests might be distorted by faulty sensors; meteorologists might be drunk or simply incompetent.” Worst of all, people do not know what they do not know—the famous problem of “unknown unknowns.”

With such possibilities, it is not clear that more data will help. To make sense out of data of uncertain quality or reliability, one needs a working theory of which data to ignore or how much to downplay it. Any such theory is necessarily formulated outside the scope of the data available. If there were data available to help such formulation, that data itself would be of uncertain quality or reliability. Of course, if the theory of what data to ignore or downplay is wrong, the computation will be less reliable than it would be otherwise.

The second reason, which is independent of the first one, is rooted in a concept known as computational complexity. Sensors provide data from the battlefield, and from this data, AI is supposed to determine, which is to say compute, the specific reality that this data represents, yet there are many possible battlefield realities that would be consistent with the data in hand.

Many of these possible but incorrect realities can be eliminated if more data were available (e.g., if more sensors were available). In many cases, these possibilities would be eliminated because they would not be consistent with the enlarged set of data. As more data and constraints are added, however, the computational task of processing and analyzing this information also becomes more complex and demanding.

The complexity arises from the need to handle large volumes of data and the intricate task of synthesizing this information into a coherent, accurate picture of reality. Each new piece of data must be integrated and analyzed in conjunction with existing information, often requiring complex algorithms and models. This process can be computationally intensive because it involves balancing the volume of data with the capacity to process it effectively.

Ultimately, although more data can help improve understanding of the battlefield, it also increases computational demands. Advanced computational techniques and resources are required to manage and interpret large datasets accurately. Even worse, ingesting even small amounts of additional data increases the need for computing resources faster than these can be made available. Geist argues that having a God’s-eye level of battlefield awareness requires being able to compute a solution of very high complexity.

The most significant of the necessary computational resources is time. It is obvious that the planning needed to conduct a disarming strike against land-mobile missile launchers and ballistic missile submarines requires that the necessary computations be doable in a tactically relevant time. A computation that takes a billion years to complete is not useful, and the fact that such a computation is possible in principle is irrelevant for all practical purposes.

To translate the idea of computational complexity into lay terms, Geist provides a creative analog to navigating a bureaucracy with Kafka-esque rules for anyone who must and can sign off on various forms before some administrative approval for a particular action can be obtained. In this case, the problem to be solved is obtaining such approval, and one can see easily that, by adding more information requirements to the various forms that must be submitted, the longer it will take to review these forms and hence the longer it will take to solve the problem. In this bureaucracy, it sometimes happens that before an administrator can sign off on some form, another form needs to be created, asking the submitter for different information.

In some bureaucracies, this is a never-ending process and might result in the self-contradictory result that before the approval for a particular action can be obtained, the approval must already be in hand. Even if that is not the case, that in principle the approval for that action can be obtained without such a circular requirement and the clerks involved in the process work as fast as possible, skipping lunch and working overtime, it still may take centuries for the process to terminate.

Given such analysis, one might conclude that a computational approach to battlefield awareness is a hopeless task. Taking into account two factors, it may not be hopeless. First, the above result of computational intractability from complexity theory is true only for the “worst possible” battlefield scenario. There may well be many battlefield scenarios, what might be called average-case scenarios, where the performance of a system for battlefield awareness would be acceptable. The question then is whether the system designer can say safely that the on-the-scene commander will never face a worst-case battlefield scenario. Understanding the nature of this problem helps a great deal because domain-specific knowledge can be used to justify such a claim. Perhaps in practice, only average-case scenarios will arise, in which case the system providing battlefield awareness is a big win for the commander.

Second, although calculating optimal solutions may be computationally prohibitive, calculating approximate solutions, that is, solutions that are nearly optimal, often can require far fewer computational resources. “Nearly optimal” means that the solution calculated is guaranteed within a factor X of the optimal solution. X is known as the approximation ratio, and if X were known to be 2, the calculated “nearly optimal” solution would be within a factor of ½, or 2 of the unknown optimal solution. Tolerance for a less-than-optimal solution is what makes this approach acceptable.

Unarguably, going down the path of approximate solutions entails some risk because it often involves making certain assumptions about the nature and structure of the problem. These assumptions are necessary to simplify the problem and enable the use of approximation algorithms that provide performance guarantees, such as specific approximation ratios. If those assumptions are wrong, the approximate solution calculated may be far from optimal, and the performance guarantee as described no longer will be valid. Yet, if system designers understand the problem well enough to make good simplifying assumptions, the system for battlefield awareness is again a win for the commander.

AI and Strategic Stability

Finally, Geist addresses a vitally important point omitted in most analyses of how AI might affect strategic stability. It is true that if states with nuclear weapons continue to design and operate their nuclear strategic forces the way they do today while technology continues to advance, they could start becoming vulnerable, but it is absurd to believe that these states will not do everything they can to reduce such vulnerabilities. Even if Nation A deployed a plethora of surveillance and reconnaissance systems to find the land-mobile missile launchers or the ballistic missile submarines of Nation B and even if A had the computational capabilities and resources to integrate volumes of data that are orders of magnitude larger than those that are flowing today, it is not credible that B would act passively and allow its second-strike systems to lose their ability to evade attack.

Instead, it would make much more sense for Nation B to deploy active and passive countermeasures to frustrate Nation A’s attempts to compromise its second-strike forces. B has the advantage over A in that B generally knows the capabilities and vulnerabilities of its own systems better than A and thus, with its own attack simulators, can test the effectiveness of a variety of countermeasures it could take against A’s threatened attack. A, not knowing B’s systems or countermeasures nearly as well as B, would be planning an attack without the benefit of knowing B’s responses. Indeed, Geist argues that AI would be most useful for B in developing and deploying its countermeasures.

This experience has been repeated again and again. When ballistic missiles became vulnerable to anti-ballistic missile systems, the operators of ballistic missiles developed multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles and penetration aids. When radar stripped away the cloak of invisibility for bombers and fighter planes, the operators of bombers and fighter planes deployed chaff and jamming technologies and flew low rather than high. In the future, as land-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile launchers or ballistic missile submarines become more detectable when operationally deployed, decoys, active sensor countermeasures, and other responses are sure to follow.

This book should be required reading for every strategic analyst. It appears to be the only published work outside the domain of the technical scientist or engineer that links the implications of new information processing technologies for battlefield awareness to the deep insights available through theoretical computer science.

It is tempting to assume that continuing exponential growth (the often-invoked Moore’s law⁹) in the capabilities of that technology will cover all computational contingencies. Yet, theoretical computer science, by comparison quite unfamiliar to most strategic analysts, clearly demonstrates the relationship between integrating more data inputs and increasing computational requirements. Geist’s short if densely argued treatise is a basic introduction to some themes in theoretical computer science that are as important to today’s strategic analyst as a familiarity with Moore’s law.

ENDNOTES

1. Rebecca Grant, “The Second Offset,” Air Force Magazine, July 2016.

2. See John A. Tirpak, “Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess,” Air Force Magazine, July 2000.

3. See William Owens and Ed Offley, Lifting the Fog of War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 96.

4. For example, Air Force Lieutenant General James Dawkins, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, has said that “[w]e’ve got to have [a nuclear command, control and communications system] Enterprise Architecture that provides [nuclear command and control] over assured comms for seamless integration of conventional and nuclear forces.” Theresa Hitchens, “Congress Fears DoD Not Prepared for NC3 Cyber Attacks,” Breaking Defense, December 11, 2020.

5. See Rose Gottemoeller, “The Standstill Conundrum: The Advent of Second-Strike Vulnerability and Options to Address It,” Texas National Security Review, Vol. 4, No. 4 (2021): 115-124.

6. Paul Bracken, “The Hunt for Mobile Missiles: Nuclear Weapons, Al, and the New Arms Race,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, September 2020, p. 98.

7. James Johnson, “Rethinking Nuclear Deterrence in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” Modern War Institute, January 28, 2021(emphasis in original).

8. Michael Klare and Xiaodon Liang, “Beyond a Human ‘in the Loop’: Strategic Stability and Artificial Intelligence,” Arms Control Association Issue Brief, November 12, 2024.

9. Data on semiconductor manufacturing indicate that Moore’s law, when framed in terms of an exponentially declining cost per transistor on a chip, is reaching the end of its useful lifetime. The actual cost per transistor began to level off around 2012, and it has followed Moore’s law predictions since then. See “Semiconductors,” in The Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2023: A Report on Ten Key Technologies and Their Policy Implications, ed. Herbert S. Lin, 2023.

Herbert Lin is a senior research scholar and the Hank Holland Fellow at Stanford University.

January/February 2025
By Daryl G. Kimball

Jaap Ramaker, an accomplished diplomat for the Netherlands who played a critical role in securing one of the most important nuclear nonproliferation breakthroughs, died on December 12. As chair of a UN committee at the Conference on Disarmament (CD), the soft-spoken but firm Ramaker guided multilateral negotiations on the long-sought Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to a successful conclusion in the summer of 1996. The treaty was opened for signature later that year.

Today, the CTBT has 187 signatories, including five of the eight countries that possess nuclear weapons. Although it has not yet entered into force, the treaty that Ramaker brought across the negotiating finish line has established a strong global norm against nuclear weapons test explosions.

Ramaker’s distinguished diplomatic career began after he earned a master’s degree in political science from the University of Amsterdam in 1967 and began working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the following year. By 1970, he was posted to the Dutch Embassy in Cameroon, then returned to The Hague to work at the Foreign Ministry’s central and southern Africa department until 1975. By 1977, he was serving as consul at the Dutch Embassy in Rio de Janeiro and later was promoted to first secretary and deputy chief of mission at the Dutch Embassy in Lisbon. He served as head of the ministry’s Middle East department in The Hague from 1980 to 1983.

Ramaker’s work in multilateral disarmament and nonproliferation began in 1983 when he was made an adviser and deputy head of the Dutch delegation to the CD in Geneva. Subsequently, he was assigned to New York as his country’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.

From 1990 to 1995, Ramaker was deputy head of mission at the Dutch Embassy in Russia and then ambassador to the CD. He was chairman of Main Committee III, on the peaceful use of nuclear energy, of the 1995 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review and extension conference in New York. That same year, Ramaker also assumed the chairmanship of the working group on legal and institutional affairs for negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and was later selected to chair the negotiations on the CTBT through the final and most difficult months of the talks.

As the CTBT negotiations resumed in Geneva in early 1996, India sought changes that would commit declared nuclear-weapon states to a time-bound nuclear disarmament framework. Despite this, Indian diplomats later announced that their government would not sign the treaty under any circumstances. At the same time, China and France were conducting final rounds of nuclear test explosions. New disagreements emerged on verification issues, while some states, particularly the United Kingdom, insisted that all nuclear-capable states had to ratify the CTBT to bring it into effect, a feature of the final treaty text that has slowed its formal entry into force to this day. By the end of June 1996, Ramaker, with help from “friends of the chair,” had resolved most of these issues, and he presented a final CTBT text for member states of the conference to consider.

India and Iran blocked consensus on the treaty text, however, ostensibly due to the failure to include disarmament pledges in the agreement. To overcome the CD’s consensus rule, Australia rallied global support to bring the CTBT directly to the UN General Assembly, which endorsed the treaty 158-3, with five abstentions, opening the way for the CTBT for signature on September 24, 1996.

In 1999, Ramaker became ambassador to Austria and international organizations in Vienna, including the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, which was established in 1997 to help implement the treaty. In 2003 he was appointed by CTBT member states as special representative to promote the ratification of the treaty for five years. During that time, he visited the capitals of many of the states that had not signed or ratified the treaty to understand their perspectives and to press for their support so that the CTBT can formally enter into force someday.

In a 2005 interview with Arms Control Today, Ramaker said, “It may take a while, but a permanent ban on nuclear weapon test explosions remains of tremendous importance for our efforts to prevent ever more states from acquiring nuclear weapons.” Going forward, he observed that “the CTBT, indeed the entire issue of nuclear weapons tests and nonproliferation, deserves a higher place in the list of priorities” and the treaty’s entry into force requires that it is discussed “at a sufficiently high, if not the highest, political level.”

January/February 2025
By Kelsey Davenport and Daryl G. Kimball

The United States accused Pakistan of developing long-range ballistic missiles and announced new sanctions on four Pakistani entities involved with the development of those systems.

U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer said Pakistan is pursuing “increasingly sophisticated missile technology,” including long-range ballistic missiles and large rocket motors that could eventually enable the country to “strike targets well beyond South Asia, including the United States.”

In a Dec. 19 speech sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Arms Control Association, Finer described Pakistan’s missile activity as an “emerging threat to the United States.”

In a Jan. 3 briefing for nongovernmental experts, senior U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, said that Pakistan’s capability to field long-range ballistic missiles is “several years to a decade” away and is part of an ongoing effort dating back several years to increase the range and throw-weight capabilities of the country’s ballistic missiles.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry did not confirm or deny that the country was developing long-range missiles in a statement issued Dec. 19. The statement said Pakistan’s strategic capabilities are “meant to defend its sovereignty and preserve peace and stability in South Asia.”

The senior U.S. officials also revealed at the Jan. 3 briefing that, to address U.S. concerns, Washington had proposed several “basic” confidence-building measures to Islamabad, including sharing telemetry information on Pakistani ballistic missile testing and setting limits on the outside ranges to which Pakistan would test its ballistic missiles. These ideas “were rejected” by Pakistani interlocutors, the U.S. officials said.

The day before Finer’s speech, the U.S. State Department announced sanctions on four entities under an executive order that allows the president to target proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. One of the entities, the National Development Complex, is “responsible for Pakistan’s development of ballistic missiles,” according to the announcement. The three other entities were targeted for supplying the National Development Complex with equipment relevant to missile development. This is the first time that the United States has sanctioned a Pakistani state-owned entity involved in missile development, Finer said.

Earlier this year, the United States also announced sanctions against commercial entities in Belarus, China, and Pakistan that “have supplied missile-applicable items to Pakistan’s ballistic missile program, including its long-range missile program.”

The foreign ministry statement said that the U.S. imposition of “sanctions defies the objective of peace and security by aiming to accentuate military asymmetries.” It accused the United States of engaging in “discriminatory practices” that undermine the nonproliferation regime.

Long-range ballistic missiles generally are defined as having a range greater than 3,500 kilometers and are used to deliver nuclear warheads. Pakistan’s longest-range missile system is the Shaheen-III, which was first tested in 2015 and has an estimated range of 2,750 kilometers.

India has flight tested the Agni-V long-range ballistic missile, which has a range of more than 5,200 kilometers, and is developing the longer-range Agni-VI, ostensibly to counter Chinese nuclear capabilities.

Pakistan’s decision to develop longer-range systems suggests that it may see an expanded role for its nuclear deterrent, which is largely focused on countering India’s nuclear and conventional weapons.

Pakistan’s existing tactical-, short-, and medium-range nuclear-capable ballistic missiles already allow it to strike targets in every corner of that country.

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a Dec. 19 press briefing that Washington hopes to “engage constructively” with Islamabad on this issue but that it is long-standing U.S. policy to deny support for Pakistan’s long-range ballistic missile program

January/February 2025
By Kelsey Davenport

Iran significantly expanded its production of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels in what appears to be a move to build leverage ahead of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump taking office on Jan. 20.

According to a Dec. 6 report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran’s monthly production of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 at the Fordow uranium-enrichment facility will jump from 4.7 kilograms to 34 kilograms. The increase is due to Iran’s decision to feed 20 percent-enriched U-235 into two cascades of more efficient IR-6 centrifuges to produce the 60 percent-enriched U-235. Previously, Iran fed the centrifuges with uranium enriched to 5 percent U-235.

Uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 poses a more serious proliferation risk because it can quickly be enriched to the 90 percent U-235 that is considered weapons grade. If Iran made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon, it would need to feed about 42 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 into centrifuges to produce enough 90 percent-enriched U-235 for one bomb. Increasing the production of 60 percent U-235 at Fordow, rather than Iran’s other uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, further heightens the threat because Fordow is a deeply buried site that is challenging to target militarily.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom condemned Iran’s actions in a joint Dec. 9 statement and strongly urged Iran to “reverse these steps” and “immediately halt its nuclear escalation.” The statement also raised concerns that Iran took the actions before the IAEA could implement additional safeguards.

According to the IAEA report on Dec. 6, Iran did not agree to IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi’s request to hold off on increasing its production of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 until after the agency could update its safeguards approach. The agency reported on Dec. 11 that Tehran agreed to “increase the frequency and intensity” of IAEA safeguards at Fordow and the agency implemented those measures.

Iran is required under its legally binding safeguards agreement to allow the IAEA to increase verification activities as its nuclear program expands.

Despite the implementation of additional safeguards, the United States raised concerns before the UN Security Council that Iran’s actions “suggest it is not interested in demonstrating verifiably that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.” U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the council on Dec. 17 that there is “good reason to be concerned about Tehran’s intentions” and Iran should “take actions that build international confidence and deescalate tensions.”

Iran’s decision to increase production of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 followed a notification to the IAEA that the state would begin enriching uranium using an additional 45 cascades of advanced centrifuges. The IAEA reported on Nov. 29 that the cascades would be used to enrich uranium to 5 percent U-235.

Iran first announced its intentions to expand enrichment capacity after the IAEA Board of Governors censured the state for failing to cooperate with the agency. (See ACT, December 2024.)

Iran did not indicate when it would begin operating the additional machines and will need to install additional centrifuges to meet that goal. According to an IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program dated Nov. 19, Iran was operating 78 cascades, but nearly half of them were the less efficient, more crash-prone IR-1 machines. Iran has an additional 30 cascades of advanced centrifuges that are installed but not being used to enrich uranium.

The  IAEA report on Dec. 6 confirmed that Iran began operating two additional cascades of IR-6 centrifuges installed at Fordow. The machines will produce uranium enriched to 5 percent U-235, according to the IAEA. The report did not indicate if Iran had begun operating any additional centrifuges at Natanz.

Iran’s nuclear activities appear focused on gaining leverage for negotiating a deal with the incoming Trump administration, but the increase in uranium enrichment to 60 percent U-235 and the expansion of Iran’s enrichment capacity allow Iran to move more quickly to produce nuclear material for weapons at a time when Iranian policymakers are debating openly the security value of a nuclear deterrent.

In a report released Dec. 5, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that Iran is “not building a nuclear weapon” but that the country has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce one.”

The report also assessed that public discussions regarding the security value of nuclear weapons in Iran reflects the “erosion of a decades-long taboo” that risks “emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus.” Iran may seek nuclear weapons to “rectify a strategic imbalance with its adversaries,” the report said.

Since the U.S. intelligence report was published, a key pillar of Iran’s national security known as its forward defense strategy faced another setback when opposition forces toppled the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Iran committed to supporting Assad in 2012 after a civil war broke out in the country and deployed military personnel to support Syrian troops. Additionally, Iran used Syria as a transit route for supplying Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and two other militant groups—Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen—as well as the ouster of Assad, significantly eroded Iran’s security.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a Dec. 22 interview on CNN that, with Iran’s conventional military capabilities reduced and the fall of Assad, it is “no wonder” that voices in Iran are calling for nuclear weapons.

Sullivan said the United States will need to be vigilant about the risk of Iran pursuing nuclear weapons and he is briefing the incoming administration on this issue.

The Trump administration has not revealed how it might reduce the proliferation risk posed by Iran. At a September campaign event, Trump said the United States will need to “make a deal” with Iran or face “impossible” consequences.

But it is not clear what type of agreement Trump may attempt to negotiate. After withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran during his first term in office, Trump said that he wanted to conclude a better deal with Iran, but his administration’s demands for a new agreement amounted to regime change and went nowhere. (See ACT, June 2018.)

Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told CNBC in an October interview that there will be “more focus on Iran” in the Trump administration and suggested that the United States will return to a strategy of “maximum pressure.”

But increasing sanctions pressure takes time, and the Trump administration faces a short time frame for reaching a deal with Iran. Without a nuclear agreement in place by October 2025, France and the UK likely will reimpose UN sanctions on Iran, using a mechanism that cannot be vetoed. That “snapback” mechanism was included in Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, and expires on Oct. 18.

In a Dec. 11 statement, France, Germany, and the UK reiterated their “determination to use all diplomatic tools to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, including using snapback if necessary.”

A nuclear deal is still possible if the snapback mechanism is triggered, but Iran has threatened to withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in response to the reimposition of UN sanctions.

January/February 2025
By Kelsey Davenport

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached after his short-lived declaration of martial law sparked protests across the country, and less than two weeks later, his acting successor was ousted as well.

The political crisis raised deep concerns about the stability of a key U.S. ally in the Pacific region where the United States is trying to manage security challenges with two nuclear-armed states, China and North Korea.

In a Dec. 3 announcement, Yoon said that martial law was necessary to counter “anti-state forces” seeking to “overthrow the liberal democratic system” by abusing legislative powers and cutting budgets. The forces included “pro-North [Korea]” factions, he said.

Yoon’s declaration banned all political activities and put the media under the control of Army Gen. Park An-su, whom Yoon named as martial law commander.

South Korea’s constitution allows the president to declare martial law to respond to a “military necessity” or to maintain public safety, but the backlash sparked by Yoon’s action suggests the majority of South Koreans did not believe his decision met those criteria.

Several hours after Yoon declared martial law, South Korea’s legislature, including members from Yoon’s People Power Party, voted to repeal the measure. The vote prompted Yoon to withdraw the declaration. He later apologized for the decision and committed not to impose martial law for the remainder of his term.

Despite that commitment and South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun claiming responsibility for the crisis and resigning, the National Assembly voted to impeach Yoon.

The first impeachment vote on Dec. 7 failed after Yoon’s party boycotted the proceeding, but a second vote on Dec. 14 passed 204-85. The second motion to impeach Yoon removed language criticizing his foreign policy and accusing him of antagonizing North Korea. Twelve members of Yoon’s own party joined the opposition to vote in favor of impeachment. The South Korean Supreme Court has 180 days to restore Yoon to office or confirm his removal.

Yoon defended himself after the vote and rejected the allegation in the impeachment motion that he “committed rebellion” that harmed peace in South Korea. Yoon said on Dec. 14 that he acted to prevent “forces and criminal groups” from “paralyzing the country’s government” and “threatening the future” of South Korea.

The leader of the Democratic Party, which controls the majority of seats in the National Assembly, raised concerns that if left in power, Yoon may attempt to declare martial law again, despite his commitment not to do that. Lee Jae-myung told the Associated Press in a Dec. 6 interview that there is a “high possibility that [Yoon] could do totally incomprehensible things on security, defense, economy and foreign affairs issues.”

Evidence collected after Yoon’s impeachment raises questions about whether his administration attempted to provoke North Korean aggression in order to justify declaring martial law. A senior South Korean investigator told the National Assembly that a notebook found during the Dec. 15 arrest of Noh Sang-won, former chief of the Defense Intelligence Command, included details about the martial law declaration and references to “inducing a North Korean attack at the [Northern Limit Line],” the maritime boundary between North and South Korea. Other lawmakers accused members of the military’s Headquarters Intelligence Detachment of disguising themselves as North Korean soldiers to provoke chaos. The spokesperson for the South Korea Joint Chiefs of Staff denied the allegations in a Jan. 2 press briefing, saying that “any suggestion that our military conducted operations to deliberately provoke North Korean aggression is completely false.”

After Yoon was impeached and suspended, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo stepped in as acting president, but opposition lawmakers voted on Dec. 27 to impeach Han as well, citing his failure to take actions necessary to complete Yoon’s impeachment process.

Even prior to the decision to declare martial law, Yoon’s approval rating was consistently below 20 percent. He faced several political scandals, including criticism for blocking an investigation of possible corruption allegedly involving his wife.

Lee suggested in an interview with The New York Times on Dec. 9 that his party was not completely surprised by Yoon’s decision to impose martial law. Lee said his party informally had discussed how to respond if Yoon provoked a conflict with North Korea and then declared martial law.

Despite Yoon citing “pro-North” sentiment in the martial law declaration, North Korea did not respond until Dec. 10, when its state-run media described Yoon as a fascist and said he created “pandemonium” in South Korea.

If Yoon’s impeachment is upheld by the Supreme Court, a presidential election must be held within 60 days. In that scenario, Lee is the favorite to become South Korea’s next president, according to South Korean polling analysts.

Lee’s election may reduce the prominence of South Korean rhetoric regarding a domestic nuclear deterrent, which largely comes from members of Yoon’s political party. It is not clear if Lee’s election would open up the political space to reduce tensions with North Korea, even though his Democratic Party is generally more open to negotiating with Pyongyang.

In addition to North Korea’s recent renunciation of the goal of unification, the state’s growing ties with Russia may continue to mitigate any pressure to resume talks with the United States and South Korea.

The United States said it believed that, for the first time, North Korean troops were killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine. In a Dec. 16 press conference, U.S. Defense Department press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that North Korean soldiers “engaged in combat in Kursk” a “little over a week ago” and “suffered casualties.” Ryder said North Korean troops are “legitimate military targets for Ukraine” given that they are engaged in combat as allies of Russia in its full-scale war against Ukraine.

In addition to the growing military partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang, the United States raised concerns during a Dec. 18 meeting of the UN Security Council that Russia “may be close to accepting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.” Such a move would reverse Russia’s “decades-long commitment to denuclearize the Korean peninsula,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said. She called on council members to “call out this recklessness.”

She also said that the United States is “particularly concerned” about Russia’s intentions to share “satellite and space technologies” with North Korea.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia defended his country’s relationship with North Korea, saying their cooperation “in the military and other spheres is in line with international law.” He said the cooperation will continue and that it does not pose a threat to the region.

January/February 2025
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

The United Kingdom has agreed to cede the disputed Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a deal that the UK and the United States say will ensure that the strategically important military base at Diego Garcia remains in their control for at least the next 99 years.

Under terms reached on Oct. 3, the UK agreed that Mauritius should have sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in the central Indian Ocean. This will include Diego Garcia, the largest island in the archipelago, which serves as a joint UK-U.S. military base. Diego Garcia carries strategic importance because of growing U.S. competition with China in the Pacific region and Chinese ties with Mauritius.

In a joint statement, Mauritius and the UK said that their “political agreement is subject to the finalisation of a treaty and supporting legal instruments, which both sides have committed to complete as quickly as possible.” But it still may face political hurdles given questions raised by skeptical politicians in Washington, London, and Port Louis.

“Under the terms of this treaty the United Kingdom will agree that Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia,” the joint statement said.

“At the same time, both our countries are committed to the need, and will agree in the treaty, to ensure the long-term, secure and effective operation of the existing base on Diego Garcia, which plays a vital role in regional and global security,” the statement said.

The agreement authorizes the UK to exercise sovereign rights over Diego Garcia for an initial period of 99 years and requires Mauritius “to ensure the continued operation of the base well into the next century.”

Several countries and organizations, including the United States, India, the African Union, and the United Nations welcomed the outcome of the Mauritian-UK negotiations, which took two years.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, applauding the agreement, emphasized the strategic value of keeping Diego Garcia under UK-U.S. jurisdiction. “This agreement will secure the operational future of the joint U.S.-UK military facility on Diego Garcia into the next century. Diego Garcia plays a vital role in U.S. efforts to establish regional and global security, respond to crises, [and to] counter some of the most challenging security threats of our time,” Blinken said in press statement on Oct. 3.

In a statement on Oct. 3, Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the African Union Commission, also hailed the agreement as a “significant milestone [that] marks a major victory for the cause of Decolonization, International Law, and the rightful self-determination of the people of Mauritius, bringing an end to decades of disputes.”

It commended “both Parties for honoring their international obligations based on the rules of law and justice” and called on them “to expedite the finalization of the legal aspects of the Agreement in order to allow Mauritius to exercise its full sovereignty over the islands.”

Despite this, diplomatic tension over the agreement is high. According to news reports, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, his advisers, and Republican members of Congress have questioned the possible impact of the agreement on U.S. security interests and expressed concerns that the agreement benefits China.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), whom Trump nominated to be secretary of state, told Politico in October that the handover of the Chagos Islands “would provide an opportunity for communist China to gain valuable intelligence on our naval support facility in Mauritius.”

“This poses a serious threat to our national security interests in the Indian Ocean and threatens critical U.S. military posture in the region,” he said.

In recent years, China has increased its presence in the region, including establishing a military base in Djibouti in 2017 and signing a free trade agreement with Mauritius in 2021. Since 2019, there also has been talk of Russia attempting to establish a naval base in Sudan.

Further, Mauritius is a state-party to the Treaty of Pelindaba, which established the African nuclear-weapon-free zone and commits states-parties “to prohibit, in its territory, the stationing of any nuclear explosive device.” The treaty also asserts that “each Party in the exercise of its sovereign rights, remains free to decide for itself whether to allow visits by foreign ships and aircraft to its ports and airfields, transit of its airspace by foreign aircraft, and navigation by foreign ships in its territorial sea or archipelagic waters in a manner not covered by the rights of innocent passage, archipelagic sea lane passage or transit passage of straits.”

The UK and the United States are nuclear-weapon states, and the ships, submarines, and aircraft that they either base or periodically land at Diego Garcia may carry nuclear weapons.

During a Dec. 2 debate in the UK Parliament, opposition Conservative Party members asked about negative security impacts of the treaty, but Luke Pollard of the Labour Party dismissed their concerns. “[T]he long-term protection of the base on Diego Garcia has been the shared UK and U.S. priority throughout, and this agreement secures its future,” he said. “We would not have signed off on an agreement that compromised any of our security interests, or those of the U.S. and our allies and partners.”

Nevertheless, the Conservative Party’s shadow defense secretary, James Cartlidge, has asked for further clarification on how the deal affects UK and U.S. operations in Diego Garcia, including those involving nuclear weapons, according to The Independent on Dec. 8.

“We need urgent clarity from the government on whether we, and the U.S., will have full military autonomy on Diego Garcia, after Labour’s new settlement kicks in,” he said. “[W]ill our ability to operate be wholly sovereign or subject 
to new rules that threaten our freedom of operation?”

“We already have a confused position and lack of transparency on the cost of the new deal. Far too many questions remain unanswered for such an important issue,” Cartlidge said.

The deal also is coming under pressure from newly elected Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam, who took office in November. He told members of the Mauritian Parliament that he is renegotiating the deal by submitting counterproposals.

According to reports by Reuters and other media, Ramgoolam said that the current deal “would not produce the benefits that the nation could expect from such an agreement” and that his government “is still willing to conclude an agreement.”

A spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, playing down the idea of a rift, told The Guardian on Dec. 17 that “it makes sense that we would engage with the new administration on the details of the deal.”

Mauritius has long argued that the UK forced it to give the Chagos Islands away in return for its own independence from the UK in 1968. Two years earlier, London concluded a secret deal with Washington to lease Diego Garcia for use as a military base in return for a $14 million discount off the purchase of U.S. Polaris ballistic missiles for UK submarines, according to an article from 1975 in The New York Times. As part of this deal, the UK forcibly expelled 1,500 to 2,000 islanders from the archipelago.

With its well-equipped capability to host U.S. nuclear-armed heavy bombers and submarines, Diego Garcia has served as a strategic military asset for the UK and the United States, including as a staging point for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11.