Risks of nuclear conflagration have worsened because trust among nuclear weapon powers has fallen and they are improving their arsenals instead of disarming. This is frustrating decades-long anti-nuclear efforts by the United Nations and other campaigners.

Ringing alarm bells, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the UN General Assembly that progress towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons has stalled and is at risk of backsliding.

“Seventy-five years since the founding of the United Nations and since the horrific bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world continues to live in the shadow of nuclear catastrophe,” he warned. “Growing distrust and tension between the countries that possess nuclear weapons have increased nuclear risks.”

At the same time, programs to modernize arsenals threaten a qualitative nuclear arms race, based not on numbers but faster, stealthier and more accurate weapons.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only extracted a grim toll in lives and economic destruction but has also exposed the fragility of the international community’s ability to act in common cause, including the elimination of nuclear risk.

“Ultimately, however, the only way to completely eliminate nuclear risk is to completely eliminate nuclear weapons,” Guterres insisted.

The UN’s Conference on Disarmament (CD) established in 1979 is the main forum for negotiations on ending the nuclear arms race and prevention of nuclear war. Its Secretary General Tatiana Valovaya said there is an urgent need to “stop the erosion of the nuclear order. All countries possessing nuclear weapons have an obligation to lead.”

She was referring to the five nuclear powers with vetoes in the UN Security Council: United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. Partly because of their objections, the CD has been deadlocked for years.

In July 2017, the UN General Assembly approved a Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty that prohibits nuclear weapons in the hope of their total elimination. But it will enter into force after 50 ratifications and is still four countries short. Only 84 countries out of 193 UN members have signed it.

None of the five nuclear powers has ratified it. Surprisingly, Japan, the only country to have experienced nuclear bombings, and Germany, have also not ratified the pact. Those who have ratified are mostly small nations.

Guterres is not giving up. “The only guarantee against the use of nuclear weapons is their total elimination – but our world continues to live in the shadow of nuclear catastrophe. We must urgently reverse course and return to a common path to nuclear disarmament,” he insists.

But total nuclear disarmament remains a forlorn hope. ICAN, the Nobel Peace Prize winner that led the diplomatic fight for the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, estimates that nine countries spent $72.9 billion on their nuclear weapons in 2019. They include Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the US will spend $494 billion over the next decade if it carries out all its plans for modernizing and maintaining its nuclear arsenal.

New START, the only treaty restricting the size of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, is set to expire early next year, raising the alarming possibility of a return to an unconstrained nuclear race among the US, Russia and China.

The Trump administration is slow walking renewal of the New START treaty with Russia which expires in February 2021 and wants to include China’s nuclear weapons in a new pact. Beijing has flatly refused to cooperate although Russia would like to renew the current treaty for its maximum five-year period.

The separate Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) remains the cornerstone of the global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime. Its review conference due this year had to be postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is the treaty under which Iran is being asked to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons. The Trump administration is trying to hold it to account partly through a maximum pressure campaign of draconian finance and trade sanctions, which are painfully squeezing its people’s livelihoods.

“For the sake of all of our security, the world must return to a common path towards nuclear disarmament,” Guterres pleaded.