Melissa Parke is Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. She formerly worked for the United Nations in Gaza, Kosovo, New York and Lebanon and served as Australia’s Minister for International Development.
The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is under unprecedented pressure as its 189 members are set to gather at the UN to prepare for a landmark conference to review the agreement next year.
While the NPT, which came into force in 1970, has failed to deliver disarmament, it has limited the spread of nuclear weapons and has been regarded by its members, including European Union member states, as “the cornerstone of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime and the essential foundation for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament” .
The NPT has been under strain for several years because the five original nuclear powers who joined the treaty – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – have failed to honour the commitment they made to negotiate disarmament in return for other countries agreeing not to develop nuclear weapons.
In recent years, powerful members, including the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, have made strenuous efforts to protect the treaty by pushing for and supporting UN sanctions on North Korea for leaving it in 2003 and developing nuclear weapons, and then imposing sanctions on Iran over concerns Tehran would follow Pyongyang’s example.
Iran signed an agreement in 2015, dubbed the Iran Nuclear Deal, with those six states to limit its nuclear programme, but this was subsequently torpedoed by President Trump in his first term, and a successor agreement has still not been agreed.
But now another, and arguably more serious, threat to the NPT has emerged and it comes from some of the very countries that have been insisting Iran must not be allowed to breach the treaty.
European leaders, among them Germany’s Chancellor-in-waiting Merz and Polish Prime Minister Tusk, egged on by cheerleaders in think tanks and the media, have been talking about acquiring nuclear weapons. This is an overt threat to leave the treaty. Meanwhile, French President Macron is talking about using his country’s nuclear weapons to provide a so-called nuclear umbrella to his EU partners. This could involve deploying nuclear-armed French aircraft to other EU states, mirroring Russian behaviour in Belarus, which was condemned by these very same states for undermining the spirit if not the strict letter of the treaty.
The NPT’s non-proliferation provisions are not optional. They are binding. And they are fundamental to global security. Any of the moves under discussion would almost certainly cause the NPT to unravel, with other countries likely to follow suit – think Iran, Saudi Arabia and South Korea for starters.
European leaders are clearly panicking in the face of two perceived threats: a hostile Russia that has invaded Ukraine and resents the support they have given to Kyiv has now been joined by the return of President Trump whose attitude to his NATO allies and Ukraine has made them doubt the US willingness to support them in a conflict with Russia. It seems several European leaders have forgotten their NPT commitments and are clutching at nuclear weapons as some kind of security blanket.
Yet, European countries, like all the others that joined the NPT, did so to ensure that nuclear weapons would not become a geopolitical bargaining chip. The Treaty is tasked to prevent precisely this logic — the idea that in times of insecurity, more nuclear weapons should be the answer.
The majority of countries understand that the theory of nuclear deterrence that the Europeans subscribe to and that underlies the current discussions about acquiring their own arsenals or seeking protection from France’s nuclear forces, is based on a fallacy and constitutes a threat to all countries. This majority rejects nuclear weapons with 122 having voted to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017 that strengthens the disarmament aspects of the NPT. To date, half of all states have signed or ratified it.
In addition to contemplating actions that would see them encourage rather than oppose nuclear proliferation, the Baltic States, Finland and Poland have gone even further in their attacks on international law by announcing their withdrawal from the treaty banning landmines. A step the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent condemned last week in uncharacteristically strong terms.
International humanitarian law underpins security and it is shortsighted and dangerous for governments to throw it out the window through fear. As the ICRC has said, “to adopt these rules in times of peace and to abandon them in times of war or increased tensions is to misunderstand their meaning entirely.”
In the case of nuclear proliferation, the NPT was agreed at a time when it was expected that more than thirty countries would develop nuclear weapons, making a nuclear war even more likely. In the event, only four more countries have joined the original five recognised by the NPT in becoming nuclear powers. These nine countries already pose a grave threat to the future of all complex life on Earth, so imagine how much more serious that threat would be if there is another wave of proliferation in Europe and beyond. More nuclear weapons for Europe would not be a security blanket, but a suicide vest.
For the security and sake of us all, European leaders need to stop and think. They must see that even talking about acquiring nuclear weapons is undermining the treaty they are legally committed to. If they were to follow through, it would be a grave threat to the rest of the world coming from states that have traditionally prided themselves on being responsible international actors.
At this critical moment, the answer to the elevated threat European leaders perceive lies in preserving and extending the existing protections in disarmament treaties like the NPT and the TPNW, as well as the rest of international law. This is the time not just to look at military capabilities, but to diplomacy and dialogue to reduce tensions and remove the sources of conflict.
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