Signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are set to convene a meeting at the United Nations from Monday, as hopes fade that they can reach any meaningful agreement amid soaring tensions between major nuclear powers.
During the landmark 2022 meeting, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned that humanity was “one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation”.
According to the global nuclear watchdog, the situation has only worsened since then, especially amid the ongoing war involving Iran. “I think there is a shared, if you will, sense of crisis among all states parties,” said Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.
“We don’t have any bilateral arms control agreements between the two largest nuclear weapon states,” she said, referring to the February expiration of the New START treaty between Moscow and Washington. “We are also beginning to see a quantitative increase in nuclear capabilities across all nuclear weapon states,” she added.
Heightened tensions between the United States and other global powers in the post-Cold War era have severely affected disarmament prospects, with declared nuclear powers now retesting rather than dismantling their stockpiles.
The treaty has been signed by all major powers in the world except for a few countries, including India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.
The nine confirmed nuclear-armed states — Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — possessed 12,241 nuclear warheads as of January 2025, according to the latest report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The United States and Russia together hold nearly 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons and have carried out major programmes to modernise them in recent years, according to SIPRI.
China has also rapidly expanded its nuclear stockpile, SIPRI said, with the G7 recently raising concerns over Moscow and Beijing boosting their nuclear capabilities.
Experts believe China is currently the only country expanding its nuclear arsenal at such a rapid pace. During a military parade in September 2025, China unveiled its nuclear triad in front of the world for the first time — a move seen by experts as a signal that Beijing’s strategic capabilities have significantly advanced.
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