RevCon 2026: Expert warns nuclear treaty under strain amid nuclear threats, global conflicts

The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is at a crossroads, says Kelsey Davenport, a non-proliferation expert speaking on the Global Dispatches podcast as the NPT Review Conference opened on Monday.

Ms Davenport, the director for Non-proliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association, said the review conference “is extremely significant because it comes at a time when nuclear norms and the broader non-proliferation and disarmament architecture are under attack on multiple fronts”.

She stated that the conference follows the previous two, which failed to adopt a consensus final document. Ms Davenport pointed out that the consensus final document generally contains actions that states commit to taking to further advance the treaty’s goals and objectives.

“A final document is not the only measure of success of an NPT Review Conference, but a lot of states put a premium on the adoption of this document to set a roadmap for how to ensure continued implementation of the treaty.

“The president of the review conference has stated that he wants to see a final consensus document adopted. But negotiating it is going to be extremely difficult given the number of issues that are likely to be contentious.

“First, looking at sort of the disarmament pillar, the last remaining treaty, the New START Treaty, that governed nuclear warhead numbers for Russia and the United States has expired,” Ms Davenport explained.

There are no constraints now on the U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons programmes, according to her.

“China is building up its nuclear warhead stockpile. All of the nuclear-weapon states are investing in new systems. These are viewed by many countries that are party to the NPT as a violation of the Article VI disarmament commitments.

“So, certainly, I think we’re going to see contention between the nuclear-armed states and the non-nuclear-weapon states over how to address and advance disarmament while all of these states are investing in new systems,” the ACA’s non-proliferation expert stated.

Ms Davenport believed that a number of non-nuclear weapons states “understandably feel betrayed by the nuclear weapons states continuing to invest in new nuclear weapons systems that may make the use of nuclear weapons more likely, and the broader failure of the international system to condemn aggression” by nuclear weapons states.

The investment in new nuclear weapons systems, the expansion of the Chinese arsenal, for instance, none of this is happening in isolation, according to the ACA director.

“It’s happening against the backdrop where Russia, a nuclear weapons state, waged an illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. It’s happening against the backdrop of the United States and Israel conducting illegal strikes against Iran,” Ms Davenport explained. “All of this drives questions amongst the non-nuclear weapons states about the value of the NPT in providing for their security. And it’s pushing states that typically have been proactive members in the NPT and pushing for disarmament to reconsider their relationship with nuclear weapons.”

She said the issues were all connected and had to be viewed within this broader security environment, where additional states “are beginning to ask if nuclear deterrence or if some type of nuclear extended deterrent relationship with the nuclear weapons state is more advantageous than pushing for full implementation of the NPT”.