On Monday morning, April 27, the 11th Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) opens at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, where it will meet through May 22.
The conference convenes in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. A consensus final document has not been agreed at any RevCon since 2010; failure for a third consecutive review would be unprecedented in the treaty’s history.
The contributing factors: France, under President Emmanuel Macron, is using the Iran war to push for “extended deterrence” arrangements bringing more European states under the French nuclear umbrella, expanding rather than reducing the role of nuclear weapons in European security. The U.S.-Russia New START Treaty expired in February. Open discussions of NPT “breakout” are reportedly underway in South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere.
