![]() ![]() ![]() We have many different views on the rights and wrongs of current geopolitical competition. Failure to uphold obligations under that treaty weakens our national and collective security and fails the test of statesmanship. Worsening great power competition has made it even more difficult to advance nuclear arms control and risk reduction more generally – for example, within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As the only existing nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, the world’s two largest nuclear-armed countries, the treaty’s collapse or expiration without a replacement would threaten a destabilising arms race.įailure to agree on a new nuclear arms control framework to replace New START before it expires in February 2026 would also make it more difficult to bring China, France and the United Kingdom into multilateral arms control, as all three are not ready to consider limits on their nuclear arsenals until the United States and Russia bring down their nuclear stockpiles. Yet United States-Russia strategic stability talks are in limbo and the New START treaty, which has played an indispensable role in ensuring reciprocal security, is now in question. ![]() ![]() In November 2022, G20 leaders (including the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and India) collectively agreed that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible. These five leaders, in January last year, declared the reduction of strategic risks and the avoidance of war between nuclear-weapon states to be their foremost responsibilities and that a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought. The world badly needs more nuclear arms control, not less.Īs security policy leaders from 50 countries in Europe, North America, Asia and the Pacific, we call on the leaders of Russia, the United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom to ensure that nuclear arms control will not be made yet another victim of geopolitical competition. Group Statement: Protecting nuclear arms control is a global imperative Read the statement in Arabic, French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, or Spanish. This statement, endorsed by contacts in China, France, Russia, the UK and the US – all five recognised nuclear weapons states under the non-proliferation treaty – supports a return to this diplomacy, and protection of nuclear arms control as a global imperative. In the darkest hours of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and United States were able and willing to discuss and agree measures to reduce the risk of nuclear war. In a joint statement coordinated by the European Leadership Network and the Asia Pacific Leadership Network, some 26 former Foreign and Defence Ministers, six former Heads of State, over 30 former Ambassadors, multiple senior experts and scholars, and dozens of former senior officials, including former NATO Secretary-General, Assistant Secretaries-General, and Military Staff including Supreme Allied Commander for Europe (SACEUR) make a case for prioritising nuclear arms control. As the Heads of the Group of Seven (G7) gather in Hiroshima this week, one of only two sites to witness the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons use in conflict, over 200 leaders and experts from 50 states warn of the need to compartmentalise nuclear arms control from great power competition. ![]()
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