Looking ahead to the 2010 NPT Review Conference

Earlier this week, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted an event to highlight the release of a new report, “Restoring the NPT: Essential Steps for 2010,” authored by Carnegie Deputy Director of Nonproliferation Deepti Choubey. The report, which was supported by a grant from Ploughshares Fund, puts the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) into prospective and provides a roadmap for ensuring the success of the 2010 Review Conference.

In the report, Choubey notes that the May 2010 Review Conference, which will bring together representatives from the 188 states party to the NPT, is critically important as a barometer for the health of the nonproliferation regime. As Choubey explains, NPT Review Conferences, which are held every five years, are “tasked with assessing how well the provisions of the NPT have been implemented and for charting a course forward. In this way, they’re important, and vital progress can be made during them.”

However, at the most basic level, Choubey argues, the Review Conference is also a paradox: “Achieving even modest results will require many states to expend enormous amounts of political will and effort, but failure will come with serious consequences.”

So what is at stake at the 2010 Conference? Faith in the nonproliferation regime, according to Choubey: “For nuclear weapon states and Iran’s neighbors, there are doubts about the security benefits of the regime. But for other states, their faith in the equity of the regime is what hangs in the balance. But given swift action and the right conditions, the review conference is a key opportunity to restore that faith.”

American leadership will be crucial for a successful NPT Review Conference, and the rest of the world will be looking for concrete action to back up President Obama’s call for nuclear disarmament. Although ratification of the START follow on will be an important step, most countries will view the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) as the key piece of evidence that the U.S. brings to the Review Conference. Choubey says the best outcome would be an NPR that narrows the purpose and role of nuclear weapons, acknowledges the U.S.’s NPT commitments, and reconciles currently conflicting messages and nuclear policies.

After the launch of the report, Choubey joined Egyptian Ambassador to the United States Sameh Shoukry in a conversation moderated by George Perkovich, Vice President for Studies and Director of the Nonproliferation Program at Carnegie.

In his remarks, Ambassador Shoukry highlighted the importance of the NPT Review Conference as a forum for state to come together to strengthen the NPT and the nonproliferation and disarmament regimes as a whole.

Ambassador Shoukry also stressed the importance of the NPT Review Conference generating pragmatic and realistic “results that can be referred to and quantified to indicate that we are on the right road to strengthening the treaty, to maintaining its credibility, in providing the state parties with the necessary security, and elevating that security rather than decreasing it.”

Read the event transcript or watch the full event video below: