The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) remains the central legal and political framework for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, advancing nuclear disarmament and enabling the peaceful use of nuclear technology. Every five years, its States parties meet at a Review Conference to assess implementation and agree on future priorities. Yet the review process itself is under growing strain: since the 2010 consensus outcome, no Review Conference (RevCon) has produced a comprehensive outcome document. The 2026 RevCon took place against a backdrop of war, nuclear threats, renewed testing anxieties, debates over European nuclear capacities, attacks on nuclear facilities and the return of nuclear energy to climate and security debates. Its failure was therefore not surprising – but the extent to which even weakened language proved unacceptable was politically revealing. This report argues that the NPT’s credibility crisis is driven not only by geopolitical confrontation, but by a deeper imbalance between non-proliferation demands and insufficient disarmament implementation. For Germany and the EU, the task is clear: defend the Treaty by strengthening coalitions, preserving humanitarian and disarmament language, resisting the normalization of nuclear weapons in Europe and turning NPT commitments into practical policy.

“Have we forgotten that nuclear weapons make no one safer?” With this question, UN Secretary-General António Guterres opened the Eleventh Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons not as a diplomatic ritual, but as a political warning. His diagnosis was stark: a “collective amnesia around nuclear weapons” must be broken – a dangerous forgetting of the destructive power, the humanitarian consequences and the political instability that nuclear weapons produce. Guterres’ counter-formula was equally clear: “Disarmament is not the reward for peace. Disarmament is the foundation of peace”.

These words set the tone for a conference that did not take place at the margins of world politics, but at its centre. The 2026 Review Conference was not an isolated failure of multilateral diplomacy. It was a mirror of geopolitical crises. War, nuclear threats, new deterrence debates, attacks on nuclear facilities, the erosion of arms control, rising military expenditure, technological disruption and the renaissance of nuclear energy placed all three pillars of the NPT under pressure at the same time: disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful use. These pressures were explicitly named already at the opening.

Anyone who reads the debates in New York as a ‘technical treaty ritual’ therefore misses their real significance. Today, the NPT is not only an anchor of the nuclear order, but also a seismograph: it shows where this nuclear order is becoming fragile. The central question of the RevCon was not only whether states could adopt a consensual outcome document. It was: Are those states that rhetorically defend the NPT prepared to continue to bear the political costs for the Treaty’s credibility and effectiveness? These costs are historically unevenly distributed. Under the NPT framework, non-nuclear-weapon states are expected to continue renouncing nuclear weapons, while nuclear-weapon states and their allies modernize or expand their arsenals, and politically re-legitimize deterrence. This imbalance lies at the core of the current crisis: the NPT promises an order in which non-proliferation and disarmament belong together. Yet the reality of world politics gives many states the opposite impression – that nuclear weapons secure power, enhance alliances and reduce political vulnerability. This message is poison for the non-proliferation norm.

Guterres’ warning is therefore more than a rhetorical opening. It is a political test for the coming years after New York. If disarmament is not the reward for peace, but its foundation, then it cannot be postponed until better geopolitical times. It is precisely in times of crisis that the international community decides whether the NPT still is understood as a living treaty – or turns into the memory of an order that no longer takes its own promises seriously.

Under the current circumstances, no-one expected a major breakthrough; even a limited joint declaration, instead of a comprehensive outcome document would have been politically significant, as it would have signalled a minimum level of trust, willingness to compromise and institutional capacity to act. Especially in times of heightened confrontation, shared language is essential. It stabilizes expectations, keeps channels of communication open and protects the NPT from further erosion.

At the same time, such a defensive benchmark should not become the new level of ambition. A successful review process has to produce more than procedural calm. The NPT is more than a forum for crisis management and geopolitical conflicts, which is why its ambition cannot be limited to just barely avoiding the next failure every five years.

The first week showed that the RevCon could not be shielded from the wars and crises of the present. Russia’s war against Ukraine, the escalation in the Middle East, the debate over Iran, nuclear threats and the erosion of arms control set the tone. The question was not whether geopolitics would enter the NPT, but whether states would be able to address it politically without turning the Treaty itself into a stage for mutual obstruction. The dispute already began before the official start of the general debate, when the United States objected to Iran’s election as one of the Vice-Presidents of the RevCon. This showed that procedural questions can become proxy conflicts. Australia, the United Arab Emirates, as well as France, Germany and the United Kingdom joined the criticism by the US; in the end, the election was not prevented, but the states concerned politically dissociated themselves from it – a highly unusual, if not unprecedented, step in the NPT review process. As a result even the orderly opening of the conference – the bare minimum – was treated as a success.

This dynamic continued substantively in the general debate: while states broadly reaffirmed the NPT as the corner stone of the nuclear order, they also used the stage to bring familiar conflict lines to New York. What stood out was a double shift of responsibility. First, nuclear-weapon states in particular presented themselves as ‘responsible’ defenders of the regime, while downplaying their own contributions to the erosion of nuclear norms. In recent years, the United States has prominently claimed the role of a ‘responsible’ nuclear-weapon state. This self-description has become more fragile – not least because of Washington’s increasingly disruptive conduct over the course of the conference. At the same time, China and Russia used precisely this narrative to present themselves as defenders of treaty norms. This was also visible in the debate over the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT): after the United States once again accused China of having conducted a low-yield nuclear test, China rejected the allegation – pointing out that the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) had not confirmed any violation either – and framed it as an attempt to politically prepare the ground for a possible US return to nuclear testing. Russia, in turn, declared that it would only resume testing if the United States did so. France, meanwhile, accused Russia of pursuing a “revisionist, imperialist, and colonial policy”. Yet such language also exposed the selectivity of responsibility narratives: while nuclear-weapon states denounced each other’s violations and imperial ambitions, their own colonial histories and the humanitarian consequences of past nuclear practices remained largely unaddressed. ‘Responsibility’ has become less a verifiable practice than a rhetorical resource. This is precisely why the narrative itself deserves scrutiny: too often, it serves not to limit nuclear risks, but to justify continued possession, selective rule-binding and exceptional security claims. 

Second, responsibility was shifted through the technicization and abstraction of the discourse. Although a number of states supported Nuclear-weapon-free zones (for example Kazakhstan) and the CTBT (for instance France or Norway) in their opening statements, the political reason behind these norms, namely the humanitarian and ecological consequences of nuclear weapons, remained unmentioned, especially by nuclear-weapon states and their allies. The technicized focus on verification, monitoring and transparency functioned as the lowest common denominator: consensus-friendly, but depoliticizing. As Mexico cautioned, the NPT discourse risked overlooking “explicit or implicit threats of the use of nuclear weapons and voices seeking to normalize them”. The concrete suffering of affected people and communities thus receded into the background. 

As a result, the humanitarian dimension was increasingly outsourced to those states that continue to bear the consequences. Some delegations placed it explicitly at the centre of their opening statements: Egypt warned of the “catastrophic consequences of any use of nuclear weapons”, San Marino stressed the humanitarian impacts for “present and future generations”, and Kiribati referred to compensation for second and third generations and called for affected communities to be directly included in political processes. Algeria, recalling France’s nuclear testing on its territory, described the legacy of those tests as an “open wound” and stressed that affected communities “suffer these consequences daily”. These voices served as a reminder that the CTBT and the NPT are not ends in themselves, but emerged from the need to prevent nuclear violence and its long-term consequences.

In this context, the shift in Germany’s priorities is also striking. While in 2022 Germany still addressed humanitarian consequences, victim assistance, environmental remediation and gendered dimensions of nuclear harm, and was visible as an observer to the TPNW, these perspectives were completely absent from this year’s statement. In 2022, Germany was still among the 67 states that supported a joint statement on Gender, Diversity and Inclusion in 2022; in 2026, it was no longer part of it – even though states such as Hungary and Turkey joined. This is more than a semantic shift. It points to a changed set of priorities after the change in government: more strongly framed in security and alliance-policy terms, more cautious with regard to the TPNW and more restrained on those positive obligations that are central for affected states and communities. The signal was reinforced by the fact that Foreign Minister Wadephul did not attend the RevCon, despite being in New York at the time. For a country that seeks to defend the NPT as part of a rules-based order this was a missed opportunity to demonstrate the very multilateral credibility Germany claims for itself – and, in retrospect, sits uneasily with Germany’s failed bid for a Security Council seat. Credibility is not built only through commitments to non-proliferation and verification, but also by keeping visible the humanitarian reasons behind the nuclear order itself.

The absence of an outcome document is a setback, but it does not mark the end of political impact of the NPT. The RevCon still produces three outcomes: first, a clearer map of conflict lines – who blocks, who bridges, who delivers. Second, resilient coalitions on the CTBT, transparency, AI, safeguards, victim assistance and a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. Third, political follow-up tasks for the next PrepComs, UNGA resolutions, IAEA processes, CTBTO formats and TPNW meetings. Germany and Europe should not sit waiting for the start of the next Review Cycle. The real work begins after the failure.

European Nuclear Capacities: Compatible with Non-Proliferation?

For Germany and Europe, this means that the NPT cannot be saved by Europe thinking, speaking or planning in more nuclear terms. The debate on European nuclear capacities is understandable from a security-policy perspective, but it is not NPT-neutral. Russia’s war against Ukraine and doubts about the reliability of the United States explain why Europe is discussing French deterrent, nuclear sharing or even options for domestic nuclear programmes. Yet in the NPT context, precisely this language is read as a proliferation signal: if non-nuclear NATO states present nuclear weapons as an indispensable security guarantee, they weaken the very norm they claim to defend. This is where the credibility problem lies: Europe effectively argues that nuclear weapons are necessary for its own security, but illegitimate for others. This asymmetry may be explainable in alliance-policy terms, but it does not convince as a universal non-proliferation logic. The argument that nuclear sharing has prevented proliferation is also only partially convincing if the same states are now discussing new nuclear arrangements. Germany should therefore remain clear: no national or European acquisition options, no expansion of nuclear sharing and no normalization of nuclear weapons as a European security currency. European security must be strengthened – but through resilience, alliance policy and arms control, not through a proliferation debate that defends the NPT rhetorically while undermining it in practice.

CTBT, TPNW and Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones as Elements of the NPT

The CTBT, the TPNW and Nuclear-weapon-free zones are not side arenas, but strengthen the logic of the NPT: they give concrete expression to the test ban, disarmament pressure, regional non-proliferation and humanitarian responsibility. Germany should stop treating the TPNW as a competing framework and instead recognize its complementary role within the broader NPT architecture. It would be more useful to make practical use of areas of overlap – for example on victim assistance, environmental remediation, risk education, verification and WMD-free-zone processes in the Middle East.

Hard-Security Issues for Germany

Germany should not leave hard security to the nuclear-weapon states. Precisely as a non-nuclear-armed NATO state, it can show that security interests and non-proliferation belong together. Priorities should include protecting the test-ban norm, risk reduction, crisis communication, rules for AI, cyber and space in the nuclear context, robust safeguards for civilian nuclear cooperation and clear language against attacks on nuclear facilities.

The NPT Needs Political Reassurance

The NPT is not facing immediate collapse, but it is facing the normalization of its own loss of significance. A credible European policy must oppose Russia’s violations without adopting a more nuclear logic itself; it must prevent proliferation and take disarmament seriously again as a political task. Those who pursue only the first objective will weaken the other two in the long run. The NPT therefore does not need further declarations, but political reassurance: the will to implement disarmament obligations rather than merely cite them; the ability to build coalitions even without an outcome document; and the responsibility not to play security off against non-proliferation.