The final session was postponed several times on Saturday night in the hope of reaching a compromise after all. Unsuccessful. In the end, an exhausted and disappointed negotiator said that an agreement was very close. But one country refused: Russia. Moscow’s “no” tried to justify its chief negotiator with the argument that the planned final document was too political. This is because it criticized the Russian occupation of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.
Switzerland was heavily involved in the negotiations. She even managed, together with like-minded states, to enshrine two principles in the planned final declaration: one for more security of civil nuclear facilities and a second for reducing nuclear risks through more transparency, more dialogue, more crisis prevention on the part of the nuclear powers. No wonder that Switzerland’s chief negotiator, Ambassador Félix Baumann, is also disappointed. It was hoped that, despite the differences and the difficult international situation, an agreement would be reached.
Nuclear powers are recalcitrant
A real breakthrough, with which the nuclear-armed states would have committed themselves to concrete disarmament steps, was out of reach from the outset. According to Baumann, the nuclear powers are not prepared to do without nuclear deterrence. To put it more bluntly: Those countries that have nuclear weapons are recalcitrant. They don’t even want to explicitly state that they will never carry out a nuclear first strike.
Precisely because of the current tensions, however, it would have been important if they had at least acknowledged their previous commitments in a final declaration and recognized that a nuclear war cannot be won – and for that reason alone it must never be started.
The failure of the negotiations is now leading to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty being weakened rather than strengthened as planned. This puts the newer, more far-reaching UN nuclear ban treaty more in the limelight. It bans the manufacture, possession and of course the use of atomic bombs. However, not a single nuclear power has joined it and not a NATO state.
The world is at a dead end
Switzerland is also on the sidelines for the time being. In Berne, the reassessment of accession, which Parliament has also called for, is pending. There are two contradictory arguments: On the one hand, the failure of the negotiations on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty now speaks in favor of joining the stricter nuclear non-proliferation treaty in order to increase the pressure on the nuclear states. On the other hand, the Ukraine war speaks against the fact that Switzerland is currently opposing its NATO neighbors on the central issue of nuclear weapons.
It is obvious that the world is stuck in a dead end when it comes to nuclear disarmament. Even the smallest progress is blocked. From the UN Secretary-General to the global campaign against nuclear weapons Ican to many governments of non-nuclear powers, the disappointment, the outrage and the frustration are huge. It is not only annoying, it is also dangerous when, in times of such tense tension, no progress is made in nuclear disarmament.