The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council met this week in Washington, D.C., to review progress in the nuclear nonproliferation regime, express their vision for global disarmament, and renew the push for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
The P5 – the United States, United Kingdom, China, France, and Russia – released a joint statement Thursday reaffirming their voluntary moratoria on nuclear weapons testing while noting that these measures fall short of a legally binding agreement that entry into force of the CTBT would provide. The statement called on all states to suspend such tests pending the treaty’s entry into force.
The statement was issued just a week after the fifth underground nuclear test by North Korea, the only nation currently conducting such activities. It also comes ahead of an anticipated full U.N. Security Council resolution against nuclear testing spearheaded by President Barack Obama; Republicans in Congress charge Obama is attempting to skirt the Senate’s authority to approve U.S. ratification of treaties, while administration officials say the resolution would be strictly nonbinding. The resolution is expected to be introduced next week.
The P5 statement also expressed the nuclear-weapon states’ commitment to strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and pursuing a step-by-step approach toward disarmament “in a way that promotes international stability, peace, and security, and based on the principle of increased and undiminished security for all.”
The statement denounced recent efforts in the U.N. to craft a nuclear weapons ban treaty, saying these efforts neglect the global strategic context. The UN’s Open-Ended Working Group on multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations last month adopted a recommendation to begin negotiating next year a legally binding instrument banning nuclear weapons.
“Such efforts will threaten the consensus-based approach that has served for decades to strengthen the NPT regime and enhance the Treaty’s contribution to international security and may negatively affect the prospects for consensus at future NPT Review Conferences,” the P5 statement said.
Representatives of the P5, which will meet again in France next year, spoke of their meeting Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Vladimir Leontyev, deputy director general for nonproliferation and arms control at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at the event that the prospects for further arms reductions will depend on the “evolution of the strategic environment.” These arms reductions play a significant role in the U.S.-Russian bilateral relationship, with officials now working to identify a path forward for reductions beyond the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
Leontyev said that in the Russian view, progress toward nuclear disarmament is being hindered by problems such as the global deployment missile defense systems by the Unites States and its allies; U.S. development of precision-guided weapons under Prompt Global Strike; uncertainty surrounding the CTBT; and growing conventional weapons imbalances.
Moreover, nuclear disarmament initiatives are complicated by conditions in which “Russia is subject to very strong international pressures, including political and military pressure, and when foreign military capacities are deployed and built up next to our borders,” he said.
