Obama administration officials on Tuesday doubled down on their opposition to international efforts to negotiate a nuclear weapons ban through the United Nations.
Anita Friedt, principal deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that pursuit of a nuclear weapons ban is “unrealistic and simply impractical.”
The U.N.’s Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations last month adopted with a 68-22 vote its report recommending negotiations in 2017 on a legally binding instrument banning nuclear weapons. U.N. Security Council permanent members and nuclear-weapon states China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States did not participate in the group’s meetings.
The U.S. State Department has previously said the group does not offer a practical, step-by-step approach toward nuclear disarmament; the U.S. therefore plans to reject any U.N. resolutions this year that would commence negotiations on a legally binding nuclear weapons ban.
According to Friedt, such a ban would be “unrealistic in that it fails to factor in the international security environment, and impractical since such a treaty would presently be unverifiable.”
“The unfortunate irony of the current ban treaty movement is that it could actually end up harming the proven, practical, and inclusive efforts that have achieved tangible results on disarmament,” Friedt said.
Jon Wolfsthal, special assistant to the president and senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council, said that no nuclear-weapon state would participate in U.N. First Committee negotiations on a ban treaty, which “will create new fissures in the nonproliferation treaty regime.”
“The [OEWG] could’ve actually been a forum created to achieve an open discussion about what is the future path for disarmament,” he said. However, “that whole process was preordained to create momentum for a ban treaty, which they knew from the beginning we were not supportive of.”
Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said last week his country would co-sponsor a resolution to convene nuclear arms ban treaty negotiations during a session of the U.N. General Assembly’s First Committee, which will take place in October.