As nuclear powers restart the arms race, unarmed nations call for reason

For advocates of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation, these are times of great foreboding. The arms control edifice, painstakingly erected by the U.S. and the USSR during the Cold War, seems to be dead in the water. Virtually all the existing treaties are being broken, ignored, bypassed or terminated.  

In February, Russia suspended its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, and revoked its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the U.S. Senate also refused to ratify. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that has just entered into force is in danger of being sidelined by the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Simultaneously, the international nuclear security architecture is under pressure from the expanding nuclear arsenals and tense negotiations between Beijing and Washington.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was to be the result of the idealism of smaller, non-nuclear powers, such as Austria, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Mexico and South Africa, which would create a legal and actionable means of prohibiting nuclear weapons. Nobody can deny that moving humanity away from collective nuclear suicide is a good thing. In an ideal world, it would be a commendable step forward.

It is also no coincidence that this treaty’s signatories have suffered directly from nuclear testing and associated ecological damage. Their visceral understanding that nuclear testing is a threat to humanity is not just born out of a desire to improve international security architecture, but also a deep-seated reaction against past tragedy. The fallout of past nuclear tests provides stark evidence of what happens when nuclear nonproliferation becomes an afterthought.

One of the key champions of the new treaty is Kazakhstan. The country was home to Semipalatinsk, the massive test site for the Soviet nuclear program, and its ecology has been forever scarred by the Soviet Union’s wanton disregard for public health via mismanagement of the fallout and the disposal of nuclear waste.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrew Russia’s ratification of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and hinted at restarting nuclear testing, Kazakhstan’s citizenry responded with a solemn warning: “Let us be a lesson.” Russia’s walkout from the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty reopens possibilities for it to test nuclear weapons in the open air. Indeed Putin has warned that he is prepared to resume nuclear testing.

This specific threat of atomic weapons testing and the more general growing threat of nuclear use caused the signatories of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to come together. Their concern is not just ethical but quite realistic. In the face of rising nuclear buildups and doctrinal precepts pointing to potential nuclear use among the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council, the signatories, especially countries like Kazakhstan that are adjacent to those nuclear-armed states, face a growing threat to their security. 

To the extent that nuclear powers can be persuaded to adhere to this treaty — so far, an arduous quest by the signatories — it enhances their security and reduces the chance of their being vulnerable to and victims of nuclear threats.  

Moreover, in an international environment that is moving away from binding formal treaties in favor of informal and much less constraining agreements and structures, this kind of treaty offers some, albeit limited, protection to states like Kazakhstan.  

The treaty both reflects and assuages mounting global impatience over nuclear powers’ refusal to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in their policies and their growing reliance on nuclear threats and doctrines allowing for nuclear use. Kazakhstan’s delegation to the U.N. General Assembly in the fall of 2023 publicly warned about these three aspects of the growing threat.  

Similarly, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the former high-level U.N. official for disarmament, strongly enunciated the nation’s support for the treaty and denuclearization of the overall global security agenda. More recently its foreign minister, Murat Nurtleu, echoed this position and supported measures to strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty along with activities to expand cooperation between member states of nuclear-free zones.

In another recent speech, Nurtleu restated Kazakhstan’s alarm at ongoing trends in world politics, stressing that among all the negative trends that are currently discernible, the nuclear arms race is the one most fraught with catastrophic potential. This threat requires a return to implementation and full observance of nuclear weapons treaties and for universalization of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 

There is no time to lose here, given the growing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and irresponsible behavior by state actors. The International Atomic Energy Agency has just reported that Iran has effectively stonewalled it on conforming to previous agreements on nuclear safeguards. Other reports show it is moving steadily to acquire a usable nuclear weapon without foreign constraints. Neither is it the only proliferating power, as both North Korea and Iran show. Nor do nuclear powers shrink from circumventing restrictions of proliferators, as support for North Korea and Iran illustrate.  

Thus, Kazakhstan and other signatories’ effort represents a last-ditch attempt to restore sanity and a sense of ethical restraint to world politics that we would be well advised to take seriously before it is too late. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’s nuclear doomsday clock is at 90 seconds before midnight and ticking.

Stephen Blank, Ph.D., is a Foreign Policy Research Institute senior fellow and independent consultant focused on the geopolitics and geostrategy of the former Soviet Union, Russia and Eurasia. He is a former professor of Russian national security studies and national security affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College and a former MacArthur fellow at the U.S. Army War College.