What’s next for the nuclear ban treaty?

It is a remarkable summer for arms control conferences. In August, the states parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will meet in New York—two years, one pandemic, and one invasion after the meeting was originally scheduled. In late June, the states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) met in Vienna—five years after 122 nations voted to adopt the first international treaty to comprehensively ban nuclear weapons.

In the midst of a war in Ukraine that has brought not only Russian threats of nuclear weapons use but also new worries about nuclear proliferation, and at a time of ongoing modernization of nuclear arsenals, states parties attending the ban treaty meeting last month committed to “not rest until the last state has joined the treaty, the last warhead has been dismantled and destroyed and nuclear weapons have been totally eliminated from the Earth.”