The Clock Ticks Down: The Final Stretch of the NPT 2026 Review Conference
"Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" is defining the final days in New York
After weeks of statements and gruelling rights of reply, the four-week 2026 NPT Review Conference has entered its final and critical stretch. The three Main Committees and their Subsidiary Bodies have concluded their work, and the question that hangs over everyone’s head here is whether a final outcome document can be agreed.
The past three weeks have starkly revealed just how intractable the differences between states remain. Check out my earlier takes on some of these flashpoints here and here. Most NPT watchers were clear-eyed about the challenges from the get-go. One only needs to read the daily news to understand the state of international politics.
The stakes for the NPT could not be higher. If another conference (the third in a row) closes without agreeing on a minimum understanding of how the regime functions, or should function, a new standard of paralysis might take root. Failure risks becoming the norm. This raises a significant question: will the treaty continue to command widespread, active support, or will its legitimacy be irreversibly eroded, besieged by fragmentation and irreconcilable views? Or, worse still, will it simply fall victim to widespread indifference?
Draft Zero
Throughout the conference, President Do Hung Viet has made clever efforts to manage time efficiently and force early substantive discussions. True to his promise, he produced a draft outcome document highly unusually early in the process.
This text, released on Wednesday, May 6th, midway through the second week, was presented without much pretence. It was labelled ‘Draft Zero’, hedging against strong early reactions and signalling clearly that more iterations would follow. To put this into context, during the last Review Conference in 2022, a draft of this nature was not produced until the final week.
Draft Zero made several key choices on format. Previous NPT outcome documents have been a salad bowl of formats: some long and detailed, others short; some focused heavily on reviewing past implementation, while others focused on forward-looking commitments. In the 1995 Review Conference, the outcome was simply three decisions and a resolution.
What President Viet presented was relatively short, carrying the style of a high-level declaration. It was structured with 16 preambular and 91 operative paragraphs, grouping key NPT articles thematically across seven sections, with two additional sections dedicated to the 1995 Middle East Resolution and enhancing the NPT review process.
From ‘Draft Zero’ to ‘Rev 2’
The President’s strategy was to use the Main Committees as negotiating forums to refine this text, rather than platforms for restating rigid national positions. In reality, state parties simply translated their national positions into a flood of amendments, pulling the early draft in every conceivable direction.
In response, the President released a revised draft called ‘Rev 1’ on May 13th (midway through week three of the conference) to give the main committees a chance to comment before their work concluded.
Both drafts have focused heavily on restating core principles while tiptoeing carefully around areas that delegations consider red lines. While this approach is necessary to find a baseline of support across deeply divergent interpretations of the treaty, it has resulted in a text that is low on ambition and energy.
By last Friday, the three Main Committees wrapped up their work. Unable to agree on clean substantive recommendations, each committee adopted a procedural report and essentially passed the buck to the President and the Plenary.
Despite the deep, unresolved differences, the Chair of Main Committee I maintained a hopeful tone, noting: “I do understand that there is a great deal of work to be done... but I believe that a successful outcome is possible.”
Main Committees II and III ended their work in a similar procedural manner, though notably without the same note of optimism.
The Plenary Reality Check
At the end of week three, the President announced he would circulate ‘Rev 2’ on Sunday evening. This latest version slightly expands the text to 19 preambular and 93 operative paragraphs, maintaining the original thematic structure. For context, the unagreed 2022 draft outcome document contained 187 review paragraphs and 102 forward-looking paragraphs.
On Monday of this final week, the President opened the plenary debate, inviting delegations to comment on Rev 2 sequentially, starting with the preamble.
By the end of the day, it was obvious this method would not work.
Two full plenary sessions ended without even finishing the comments on the preambular paragraphs; arguably less contentious than the operative part of the document. Just as in the Main Committees, the proposed amendments were reflections of divergent national stances, showing very little appetite for compromise or convergence.
This exposed a structural reality of NPT negotiations. It is very difficult to agree on a text in a sequential way. Key actors care deeply about a select issues and less about others. Handling paragraphs one by one prevents the cross-issue horse-trading required to build consensus. In NPT diplomacy, it has become a truism that ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.’
Going Underground
Recognising the gridlock, the President convened a brief session today (on Tuesday) and moved the proceedings offline and private. No non-governmental representatives or members of international or regional organisations were allowed in, and there is no broadcasting on UNTV.
With a few days still left, President Viet’s early strategy means that, despite the twists and turns of this week, he has a decent chance of success than many of his predecessors. By releasing the drafts early, he has bought himself a bit more time until Friday, when a final decision needs to be made on whether an agreement can be reached. However, barring a major surprise, it is clear that if an outcome document is achieved, it will be low on ambition and impact. Yet, in the current climate, that might just be enough to make everyone feel they have accomplished something.
Thanks for this, Hassan. I have a similar view of the prospects. A positive outcome is not beyond the reach of the conference.
I am withholding judgment on the President's tactics until we see how things end up, but I agree that the paragraph-by-paragraph review has not worked well so far, and his commitment to transparency has been put to the test. I think he was wise to go into closed session to avoid negotiating under the spotlight of UN Web TV, though the results, as we heard, are not much better.
My biggest hope is that the conference will be able to decide on some improvements to the review process, which has never worked as well as the underlying treaty. Historically, the perceived success or failure of the review conference has had little effect, and I think the lack of enthusiasm among the delegates is an indication that the stakes are actually quite low.
In the President's draft outcome Rev2, this key language was struck out: "calls on the nuclear-weapon States to declare that they will not be the first to use nuclear weapons and to undertake doctrinal and force postures measures to this effect."
The NWSs (minus China) are asserting the "right" to and "value" of retaining options to initiate nuclear war. This is fully consistent with their belief that threatening nuclear escalation promotes conventional de-escalation or at least restraint. When, in the 1950s, this "extended deterrence" was extended to Europe via NATO, there was at least theoretical reason to accord it credibility due to the West's "escalation dominance" over the Soviet Union. By the 1970's this had become a pure illusion and first use threats were no longer credible. But the alliance's investment in the "posture" (posturing?) made it virtually impossible to stand back. There are any number of reasons there has not been direct great power war since the 1970s, but extended deterrence is not one of them.
Nonetheless, East and West continue the charade declaring that NFU would make the world "safe of conventional war" and arguing that the risk of nuclear war can be so judiciously managed that making the world safe for nuclear war is acceptable. What anti-nuclear-weapon folks often miss is that there is no danger of intentional nuclear escalation (it's a major lose-lose proposition); the danger is that rhetorical escalation (explicit threats) increases the risk of inadvertent or unauthorized use.
The sole exception to this is the "corned rat", when total defeat might be staved off by a defender ready to take the world down with it if necessary. It's the essence of Israel's and North Korea's nuclear stances, and to a lesser extent Pakistans. The lesson: don't corner a rat.
Based on this perspective, I am NOT a fan of the talk of common security "replacing" deterrence. I greatly admire common security, but presenting it as a replacement to an illusionary deterrence only drags down common security and uplifts deterrence. Common security thinking is already a major force in the world today; deterrence's role is hype whenever it goes beyond deterrence of nuclear war, and even then the small chance of inadvertent war is totally unacceptable because the consequences would be so profound. Perhaps the key role for common security is to assure potentially-corner-able rats that the world wouldn't let that happen. In that regard negative security assurances need to be conventional (with NFU addressing nuclear assurances).
Returning to the original point, the general public of the NWSs need to be more fully aware that their leaders harbor the notion of actually kicking off a nuclear exchange or attacking a NNWS with nukes. I firmly believe most people, if also aware of the humanitarian consequences, are decent enough to see the immoral recklessness of that. The draft final outcome document still recognizes "the role non-nuclear weapon States can play in averting the danger of nuclear war." The role of the NNWSs is just this: to hammer away at the NWSs on their phony but reckless readiness to initiate nuclear war and the humanitarian consequences thereof. This -- independent diplomacy and public education/activism -- may be the sole way of achieving an actually meaningful breakthrough to a NWFW. It worked for the nuclear test ban!