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.
A State Department spokesperson said by email that “the most successful arms control and disarmament agreements have coincided with a favorable international security environment, and the presence of political will among all necessary negotiating partners, both of which we currently lack.”
The U.S. does not currently have the technology and capacity to ensure a ban treaty is verifiable, the spokesperson said, noting, “Absent from a ban treaty is a verification regime that accounts for the fact that the confidence level in verification must increase as the quantity of nuclear weapons fall.”
The OEWG was created last December as a subsidiary body of the U.N. General Assembly, tasked with facilitating multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations.
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.
This week, six states – Austria, Mexico, Brazil, Ireland, South Africa, and Nigeria – circulated a draft resolution calling for the U.N. General Assembly to craft a ban treaty. The First Committee will consider the draft next month.