Description
Amid escalating tensions among nuclear-armed states, renewed arms races, emerging proliferation fronts, and heightened nuclear threat levels, progress in global nuclear arms control and disarmament appears bleak. Since the 2010 NPT Review Conference, states have struggled to produce a consensus final document, primarily due to conflicting views on geopolitical disputes. Against this backdrop of division in multilateral nuclear diplomacy, the concept of “irreversibility” in disarmament has been repeatedly reaffirmed by a broad range of states – including the P5. Introduced in the 2000 Review Conference final document, “the principle of irreversibility” serves as a key step toward implementing the NPT’s disarmament pillar. Since then, commitment to the concept has consistently appeared in NPT documents, working papers, and statements. This paper argues that “irreversibility” has the potential to serve as a unifying concept in an otherwise fragmented arms control and disarmament regime. However, frequent rhetorical references to the concept in nuclear diplomacy lack clear explanations of what states mean when affirming their commitment to “irreversibility”, risking its effectiveness as a driver of progress. This study uses content analysis of NPT statements and interviews with diplomats from nuclear and non-nuclear states to examine whether diplomatic declarations on “irreversibility” in nuclear disarmament reflect genuine commitment or primarily serve as symbolic rhetoric.
