By Ramesh Jaura
Ahead of first session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) from 31 July to 11 August 2023 in Vienna, the Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, Abolition 2000 has warned of increasing risks of nuclear war by accident, miscalculation, crisis escalation and/or intent.
The forthcoming meeting will be the first of three planned sessions before the 2026 Review Conference. The Preparatory Committee, open to all States parties to the Treaty, is responsible for addressing substantive and procedural issues related to the Treaty and the forthcoming Review Conference. The Chair-designate of the first session is Ambassador Jarmo Viinanen of Finland.
A working paper of Abolition 2000 points to the importance of the forthcoming gathering in the aftermath of the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine—President Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons, bringing into sharp focus the compelling need for disarmament. Public tests of nuclear-capable missiles and forward deployment of atomic weapons to a neighbouring State (Belarus) demonstrate a high level of Russia’s willingness to use the weapons, it says.
The Ukraine war also has demonstrated the dangers of 21st-century warfare, with its mix of missiles, missile defences, aircraft, unpiloted vehicles, ever more complex earth- and space-based sensing and communications technologies, and disruptive electronic and cyberwarfare pushing the pace and complexity of war to the limits of human comprehension, states Abolition 2000.
The Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons rightly points out that “the intensifying array of antagonisms among nuclear-armed governments, of which the Ukraine war is just one manifestation, are accelerating a broad-spectrum multipolar arms race”. Fast-developing technologies ..
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